He’s been convicted by public opinion, but Strauss-Khan deserves a fair trial

AS ONE of my Facebook friends aptly put it, now that Queen Elizabeth and President Barack Obama have left our shores we’re back to the French and the Germans dropping in to tell us how to run the economy.

One of the former who won’t be calling to offer his gracious “advice” on the national finances, however, is Dominique Strauss-Kahn (known in France simply as DSK). The chambermaids at the Merrion Hotel can breathe a sigh of relief. Or can they?

The now ex-head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and prospective Socialist Party favourite for the presidency of France has, of course, been arrested and detained for the alleged attempted rape of a maid in his $3,000-a-night suite at the Sofitel in New York.

Given that the IMF that preaches the gospel of fiscal restraint to the profligate nations of the world that is quite a sum and perhaps tells us much about what’s wrong with international bureaucracies. But, since we don’t know if the IMF or DSK himself — a far-from-poor socialist — was picking up the tab, let’s leave that by the by. There is always that nagging hatred of the have-nots for the haves, those who will always say someone who pays $3,000-a-night for a hotel room deserves to be stung up. But, to my knowledge, enjoying nice hotel rooms is not a crime.

Neither is finding chambermaids irresistible, even if it is unwise. Rape, on the other hand, most certainly is a crime. So is sexual assault. The perpetrators deserve no mercy. Castration is too good for them.

But, before we send anyone — even champagne-quaffing mandarins — to the gallows, wouldn’t it be in order to give him a fair trial first? Or am I being old-fashioned?

We don’t actually know whether DSK sexually assaulted a Guinean chambermaid. We do know that she told her supervisor that is what happened. We do know that he was hauled out of the first-class cabin of the Air France flight to Paris and indicted.

We do know high-ranking detectives, not the average beat guys, were sent to the alleged crime scene. We do know the DNA evidence was processed in hours, not days as is normally the case. We further know he was handcuffed and paraded before the cameras before being photographed naked. We also know this instantly recognisable person was initially denied bail and held in solitary confinement in a tough jail despite having surrendered his passport. Lastly, we know his IMF career and presidential ambitions were effectively over once the US Treasury Secretary came out demanding his resignation.

All this on the word of a single chambermaid. Are we forgetting that people accuse other people of crimes all the time?

I have nothing against hotel maids. They do difficult jobs, usually with tremendous courtesy and presumably for not very much money. And there is absolutely no reason to believe the maid in question is anything but a fine upstanding person but, given DSK denies any wrongdoing, wouldn’t a moment’s investigation and legal process be in order before this set of events, destroying a man’s reputation, was set in train?

It’s perfectly possible, perhaps even likely, he is guilty as charged but that is by no means certain. Prosecutors say he forced the maid to have oral sex with him? How exactly? Did he have a gun or a knife? Or did this short, fat old man somehow otherwise intimidate her? And did she try to raise the alarm? This was a busy hotel, after all, not a private house.

All the details will one day come out in court, a jury will decide and a judge will either order him free to go or send him down. But given that he is innocent until proven otherwise, hasn’t DSK been treated just a little bit shamefully?

Yes, allegations of sexual abuse have to be taken seriously but knee-jerk presumptions that the woman is telling the truth and the man is lying are no kind of justice. The only thing that has been proved to date — despite the suspicious drip-drip leaks from within the NYPD of titillating detail — is that the way the DSK case has been handled is shambolic.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, must carry the can. When asked why DSK was forced to run the gauntlet of paparazzi in handcuffs — the infamous “perp walk” — that serves no purpose but to pillory a person still presumed to be innocent, he remarked “don’t do the crime”. Yes, we know what the allegation is, but where is the proof that a crime has been committed?

I hold no candle whatsoever for DSK. If I were French, I would probably vote back Nicolas Sarkozy next year despite all his broken promises. But has no one in the US any sense of fairness these days?

Yes, they do — it’s just that their fashion sense is stronger. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, unless he (or she) belongs to a group whose guilt it’s fashionable to assume. In 17th-century Salem, it was anyone accused of witchcraft. In the 1950s, it was any writer or actor so much as alleged to be a communist. In this day and age, it is any man accused of sexual misconduct.

Ah, but aren’t I overlooking all the circumstantial evidence? What about the French journalist who claims DSK behaved towards her like “a rutting chimpanzee” back in 2002? Tell it to the court, I say, don’t jump on some reality TV show bandwagon eight years later.

But hasn’t DSK had innumerable affairs and hasn’t he been married three times? Lest we forget, alleged rape and acts of adultery is not a causal relationship. Both are bad but only one of them is a crime. Lots of people (women as well as men) have affairs, French politicians perhaps more than most. Many people get divorced, too, sometime more than once. But it does not make them perverts, let alone sex criminals.

It reminds me of the attempts at the height of the Church sex abuse scandals to conflate being gay with being a paedophile. A gay man can be a paedophile, but being gay is not the cause for being a paedophile. In fact, numerous reports show the majority of paedophiles in the priesthood was not gay. This also applies to the general public. So to talk about the history of gay people in the Church in the context of the abuse scandals was to imply a causation that does not exist.

Something similar is happening today. The intention is clear: to subliminally link some unflattering aspects of DSK’s character with the alleged rape of a member of a hotel’s cleaning staff. Are we really saying his adultery is some definite indication of malicious disrespect toward women that could have led to this alleged rape? Certainly his wife doesn’t think so.

To be crystal clear, if Strauss-Kahn turns out, after a fair trial, to be a violent sex criminal, may his sentence be harsh indeed.

But the way in which this case is being processed is profoundly worrisome. The authorities, for whatever reason, have publicly asserted a foregone conclusion. What used to be called the American due process of law has been seriously diminished.