News is leaking about the identity of the woman who reported that IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn assaulted her.
I had already formed a mental picture of a petite woman with a humble manner, [later reports– she is a tall woman] an immigrant, a woman of color [legal resident from West Africa, possibly a refugee from political violence].
Bits of news stories– Fox saying sources were surprised ‘she wasn’t a seductive-looking woman’, a neighbor saying she was shy and frightened of the crime in her building, a report she was originally from Senegal [or Guinea, they are adjacent].
I think she appeared to be physically unassuming and unassertive, and looked like an easy mark to a man accustomed to success in bullying. She was stronger than she looked, clearly. The economist made a costly error in judgment.
Strauss-Kahn already has the best lawyers in the world lined up against New York prosecutors. It’s the free market vs the government. One blog commenter speculated that the maid is an operative of the darker races vs the European hold on the IMF. Others that it’s a right-wing smear campaign. I think it will emerge that this guy is a perp who has been enabled for too long.
I would love it if readers shared stories they might have about jobs and how they are treated when they wear a uniform– cleaner, food server, security guard, health care. We want to be a classless society, but we’re not there yet. Still, it is high drama to see a working woman stand up to a millionaire and claim justice.
UPDATE: From the Houston Chronicle…
The woman’s lawyer, Shapiro, said there was no truth to suggestions that she had fabricated her account, describing her as an honest woman with “no agenda.”
“Her life has now been turned upside down. She can’t go home. She can’t go back to work. She has no idea what her future will be, what she will be able to do to support herself and her daughter. This has been nothing short of a cataclysmic event in her life,” Shapiro said. He said she “feels alone in the world.”
The woman, he said, came to the U.S. seven years ago under “very difficult circumstances” and is raising her daughter by herself now that the girl’s father is dead. The family was granted asylum in the U.S., and she is a legal resident. She has worked at the hotel for three years, according to Shapiro.
Bernard-Henry Levi, important French guy, has found the fatal flaw in the victim’s story here…
I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.
So, you see, it’s all her fault for thinking she could walk into a hotel room alone just because it was her job to clean it. [ A normal person, when a maid knocks, would say, ‘come back later’. But we’re in Levi Land, an alternate world where jumping out and assaulting someone is the lesser crime.]
It will be fun if there’s a reaction from the hospitality industry, where employers are not eager to pay two people to do a job if it can be done by one. When I worked in motels near Green Airport and at the Marriott we seldom worked in pairs, but what do I know, I’m only a former maid.
I was staying in a motel just this weekend, and the room cleaners, male and female, were pushing carts down long hallways just as I remember it. But what do I know? I don’t stay in the $3,000 a night suite.
MORE UPDATE: This is via Echidne of the Snakes. Ben Stein, noted Creation Scientist and entertainer, wrote a post in American Spectator. He loves hotel maids, when they are not the thieving incompetents he is so often unfortunate enough to endure. Economists, on the other hand, are not the type of person you imagine committing violent crime, so Strauss-Kahn’s word should be bond enough to let him go back to France. Bad Habits blog takes this argument apart.
Recurring Nightmare 
This rape,like most,was about power probably more than about sex.
A Eurotrash bigshot like him could’ve hired a stunning escort willing to do(probably)whatever he wanted for what to him would be spare change.
But no,he just had to take what he wanted from a woman who wasn’t inclined to be a prostitute.
I cannot fathom sex offenders.I arrested enough of them.I’d as soon have done some really bad things to them,but I didn’t.
I get it if one adult pays another for sex-it’s their business.I don’t judge that kind of stuff.
I actually don’t care what any consenting adults do with each other,but how can someone want to violate another person like that?
I just hope this disgusting perv suffers in prison.Really badly.
I know,Nancy,that isn’t nice,but so what?
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Like what, on a scientific scale you hate this kind of crime more than I do? Because I don’t see prison violence as an extrajudicial punishment?
If he’s guilty I hope the judge gives him a sentence that will send a message and deter other perps.
I think the trial will be a real drama of a poor working woman against a powerful man, and that will rock our world.
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I wasn’t comparing how much we detest this crime.
I just don’t want him in PC.Let him take his chances in the general population.
We had a thief in my unit in Vietnam.With everything else going on he had to steal from other GI’s.
He fell in some concertina wire.Shame on us.
He should be glad he was alive.
BTW it was OK to steal from other units to benefit one’s own.
The Navy is still missing a truck,LOL.
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regarding past treatment by WHITE collar men. I had worked at the Metacomet Country Club. One day I was serving a table of 8 men in the “mens grille.”Women were not allowed, including wives. I was slapped on the ass soooo hard the other waitress heard it, approximately 50ft away. Needless to say I was VERY embarrassed and brought it to the attention of the management. I was soon fired.
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Sorry to hear that. I used to work at the Marriott, it was a weird job but mostly I was alone in empty rooms. I was always on my guard, and I hope Marriott is using cameras now in those halls and elevators.
To me it really stands out that the maid reported the crime and her supervisor called the cops right away. I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. It’s the right thing to do, but you story is one example of how often employers fail to do the right thing.
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I think I have figured out how different we are.
You are hoping for this case to become iconic,symbolic,etc,whatever term is suitable.
I see it as a rape case,period.
I remember back in the 50’s a Florida state trooper arrested 4 white guys for raping a black coed.It was almost unheard of back then and they were all convicted and sent to prison for a long time.
The trooper didn’t seem to get what all the fuss was about because he said it was his job to lock up rapists.End of story.
I recall the judge was Leroy Collins,later governor of Florida.He was one of a few southern governors,along with Folsom of Alabama who didn’t play along with vicious racism of the time.
With you,things seem to be part of some big picture and with me they are just what they are,nothing more,nothing less.
A rape is a rape.
I really liked seeing the hypocrisy of the Hollywood left going through spasms to “explain”Polanski.
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You’d see more reality if you looked at the minimum-wage left. And there’s an old story about the big picture, you’ve probably heard it.
It’s the one about the people who live next to a river and they’re always having to rescue drowning people floating downstream. Someone finally starts to wonder what’s happening upstream.
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I don’t have to look further than my son to see the problems of crap jobs,low wages,and unemployment.He has a daughter and there’s another child on the way.
He was denied unemployment after being fired from a job he held for six years because a manager got into a beef with him and his so-called union turned out to be worth exactly zero.
Since then he’s taken whatever he can get by way of work.No welfare.They get food stamps and Neighborhood Health Plan.That’s it.
being pro-life,my wife and I are ready to help out with the new child from our income because it’s not theoretical with us.
I didn’t exactly spend my life in some Yuppie milieu.
Actually,between Vietnam,working as a court officer in the NYC court system,and my time as an INS agent,I was pretty cognizant of some of the ugliest aspects of our society.
I also grew up in a working poor environment.I had relatives who went to prison and it wasn’t for insider trading.
I find it’s more productive to concentrate on specific problems than to try saving the world.
Actually,in your job you’ve undoubtedly learned that.
Getting lectured to by spoiled brats from Brown U.and Ocean State Action is something I can do without.
Same for to the manor born rich boys like Chafee and Whitehouse.
trying to think about the “big picture”has always given me a headache.
If the world is a stage,I sure never felt like an actor,more like a stagehand.
The last time I was any kind of an idealist was when I was about 14.
In about a thousand years no one will be able to tell who was important and who was a wino laying in the gutter from examining our remains(I’m getting cremated).
I had a weird thing happen recently.
I found a Vietnam Wall memorial site where you could leave messages-I left one for a buddy who was one of twelve men killed in one incident on what was to be thier last day in country.It was our unit’s worst day.
About two weeks later I went back there and his widow had posted-she had just found the site after 42 years and was overwhelmed at the idea that people remembered her husband.The others had known him in younger days and apparently I was the only one who’d served in the same unit.
I wonder about things like that,but I can’t make sense of it.
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Correction:Collins was the Governor,the judge was named Walker and imposed life sentences.
The loacal sherrif’s department was actually the agency that arrested them.
Some crimes are so bad that they disgust anyone,regardless of racial attitudes.The jury was all male and all white.
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