If you're a woman, the abrupt dismissal of all rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn has got to frighten you a little. The implications seem to be that it is illegal to rape an honest woman, but it's okay to rape a woman who has credibility issues.
Writing for the New York Post, Andrea Peyser expresses disgust for both the alleged victim and her attacker, but seems especially repulsed by Diallo, calling her "sneaky and obscene," and saying she "has no one to blame but herself."
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Jim Dwyer defends Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., for dropping the case. Dwyer felt that it would have been "unethical and a fool's errand" for Vance to take it to court. As Dwyer explains it, the dramatic tale told by the housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, about being gang-raped by soldiers in Guinea -- during which she launched into a performance full of tears and drama worthy of the greatest Shakespearean actor -- was a work of pure fiction. Prosecutors were freaked out by her subsequent, convoluted explanation for lying to them -- to the point where they finally reasoned that, if she could put on such a convincing performance about a fictitious rape, what jury would ever believe her about a real rape?
According to Dwyer, "Having been tricked by Ms. Diallo, none of the seasoned lawyers... could ask a jury to convict Mr. Strauss-Kahn based on those very tools of dramatic persuasion." He concludes that prosecutors did "their jobs right (cutting) through the underbrush to search for the core truth."
The "core truth" here, of course, was that prosecutors didn't think they could win this case -- not necessarily because she wasn't raped, but because they didn't think they could convince a jury she was. Yet, in filing for dismissal, prosecutors themselves offered a convoluted and tortuous explanation for their reasoning. They appeared to go gentle on the alleged attacker, except to sort of suggest that he was guilty and just got lucky this time. But they had a lot to say to his alleged victim. They "slammed her," according to the New York Daily News, for lying to them about the gang-rape; for having ties to a convicted drug dealer; and for lying about how much money she made.
It's the nightmarish scene that plays out in the minds of many women who are rape victims -- that if they took their allegations to court they would end up being the ones on trial, rather than the rapist -- and heaven help them if they should have a blemish in their past.
Apparently, if Nafissatou Diallo had been a good, honest woman, prosecutors would have tried harder to go after her alleged attacker.
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"Sexual assault reporting tends to drop off after a high-profile sex crime case fails" is a very dangerous statement. It promotes the condemnation of alleged perpetrators without fair investigation in order to keep sexual assault reporting high.
It's striking how much she needed to clear her name and how her attorney overlooked the risk of her publicly speaking about the case, thus risking to contradict herself even more in case of a cross-examination in trial. The right thing to do is of course to wait for trial and clear your name then and there. She had a choice. She made the wrong one.
As for accusing her, she is more of a proven criminal than DSK - who has not as far as we know cheated on his taxes, lied under oath, and used someone else's visa to enter the USA.
I didn't see too many complaints about how DSK was vilified in the media at the very beginning of the case and their disregard of the presumption of innocence. So if someone needs to be blamed for the vilification of the accuser, it's the media, and not the DA nor DSK's team who simply did what had been done about DSK at the time of his arrest - leaked to the press certain pieces of info and let them treat this information
The report hardly mentioned the lies related to finances or her immigration documents. Paperwork and finances should have nothing to do with an allegation of assault.
It discussed at length the lies she told about the case, her interaction with prosecutors, and the medical/forensic records - hardly anything you should trivialize as a "blemish".
"We did not like the way she reacted to the stream of sometimes missleading leaks all to her detriment from our office and the smear campaign led by the defence that she was a hooker by showing her face in public and giving her story to the world to fight those smears"
There is no implications that it is okay to rape a woman who has credibility issues because not alleged but real victim is DSK and Diallo is an attacker who started a smear campaign against him.