DSK accuser says there are places he cannot use his power

Summary of story from Newsweek July 25, 2011

The maid who alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York has broken her silence and described what took place in room 2806 of a New York hotel in May (full WVoN coverage).

Nafissatou Diallo, who was paid $25 an hour for cleaning the 28th floor of the Sofitel hotel, described how, after she entered the room and made her customary call of “Hello? Housekeeping”, Strauss-Kahn grabbed and attacked her:

“I said, ‘Sir, stop this. I don’t want to lose my job.’ He said: ‘You’re not going to lose your job.’ I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him.”

Many aspects of Diallo’s account of the alleged attack that followed, the first in which she has been named, are mirrored in the hospital records. But after questions emerged about the 32-year-old’s reliability the case against the former IMF chief looks set to collapse.

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have  attacked the maid’s account, her reputation and background (see WVoN story).

It was only the next morning when she watched the news that a terrified Diallo realised who Strauss-Kahn was, she claims:

“I watched Channel 7 and they say this is [the] guy—I don’t know—and he is going to be the next president of France. And I think they are going to kill me.”

Diallo was later housed in a hotel, under protective custody, with her daughter. Neither of them were allowed mobile phones, and it was weeks before she was allowed to return to her apartment to pick up her possessions: “I don’t know why I have to do these things,” she said. “Is it because he is so powerful?”

To this day, we do not have Srauss-Kahn’s account of what happened in suite 2806.

Since his arrest, Strauss-Kahn has shielded himself with highly skilled lawyers and investigators who have kept his version of events off the public record.

DNA evidence in suite 2806 makes it virtually impossible to deny there was a sexual encounter between DSK and Diallo.

The Guinean doesn’t disguise her anger at Strauss-Kahn: “Because of him they call me a prostitute,” she said. “I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money.”

It’s possible that Diallo is a woman who has lived for the last few years on the margins of quasi-illegal immigrant society in the Bronx, associating with petty con artists and dubious types trying to get a foothold in this country.

But that does not preclude her having been the victim of a predatory and powerful man. Nor does it mean she will rule out an attempt to make some money from the situation.

Diallo said she hoped God punishes him. “We are poor, but we are good,” she said. “I don’t think about money.”

Her account of what happened has remained the same all along, Diallo says: “I tell them about what this man do to me. It never changed. I know what this man do to me.”