If, Strauss-Kahn argues hat the sexual attack on the African immigrant was consensual, then both Brafman and Strauss-Kahn are "rutting chimpanzees."
[Black Star News Editorial]
Every suspect and accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proved guilty.
This applies to all suspects and accused, whether people of modest means or of stately positions. Such is the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The seven-count criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn, includes rape, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment of an employee of the Sofitel New York Hotel in Manhattan; they are grotesque in nature when the complaint by the government is reviewed. He is alleged to have: forced his genitalia into the mouth of the victim, an immigrant from West Africa and hotel employee who had come to clean his room; alleged to have forced his hand into her crotch; alleged to have touched her breasts, and; alleged to have engaged in “anal sexual conduct” with the alleged victim “by forcible compulsion,” according to the complaint.
However, even more grotesque, and even uglier, than the charges against the Frenchman is his implied defense as suggested by one of his high-priced lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, whose past clients have included Sean P. Combs.
In remarks after his client was denied $1 million bail –which apparently Strauss-Kahn’s wife was prepared to post the lawyer– Brafman said: “The forensic evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter.” He also said: “And we believe there is a very defensible case.”
We have no problem with the second part of Brafman’s remarks. Any lawyer who takes a case must always believe that the case is “defensible” and act accordingly in launching an aggressive defense.
However, what’s indefensible, what’s ugly, what’s grotesque, what’s malicious, what’s slanderous, what’s obnoxious, and what’s down right shameful is any attempt to suggest that the alleged victim enjoyed the vicious attack described in the government’s case against Strauss-Kahn.
What else does “will not be consistent with a forcible encounter” mean? It means Brafman is suggesting that the sex was consensual–that an African woman who did not know Strauss-Kahn willingly submitted to be sexually molested. The alleged victim enjoyed the attack so much
that she immediately reported it to hotel security and police and later identified Strauss-Khan in a police lineup.
Strauss-Kahn, has apparently attacked another woman in the past.
A French journalist named Tristane Banon has already emerged to say that in 2002, when she went to interview Strauss-Kahn, he threw her to
the floor, tried to pull of her bra and her jeans and attempted to rape her.
She reported that she had to kick him to get away and described him as a “rutting chimpanzee” for his predatory sexual attack.
Banon says her mother, an official of France’s Socialist Party, of which Strauss-Kahn is a leading member –and was projected to be the country’s next president– talked her out of filing charges. What’s more, Banon has said she did not wish be the target of later revenge by the powerful Strauss-Kahn.
It is unacceptable that there is now an attempt to rape the Sofitel Hotel alleged rape and assault victim with words in the public arena.
If, indeed as Brafman suggests, that Strauss-Kahn will argue that the sexual attack on the African immigrant was consensual, then both Brafman and Strauss-Kahn, to borrow from the earlier reported victim Banon, are “rutting chimpanzees.”
“Speaking Truth To Empower.”
