Dominic Strauss-Kahn released

Yes, that is what I meant fewcloudy. I also hope she gets compensation from (I think) the Daily Post or some other rag for insinuating she was a prostitute.

I'm just saying that male dominated society is more likely to run with scenario;

a) hot chambermaid/scheming out for money bitch/lying scheming woman (and in this case all three!!)

than it is with;

b) sexually incontinent male with sense of entitlement and a whole lot of power and international level influence gets let off the hook.

Even though b) is common and therefore plausible and a) is not. (Unless one watches too many porn films and adheres to rape myths that is.)

Your notion of a conspiracy with regards to the courts leading women to believe courts care about them is just weird and not very related to what I am saying.

Defending alleged rapists comes done to one thing - convincing juries that 'she wanted it'. There are various methods for doing this; the victim's choice of clothing, the victim having ever in their entire life lied about anything, the victim being portrayed us the sort of person who would suck a stranger's penis whilst doing their job. Enter rape myths stage right.

Surely you meant 'Why shouldn't she get some compensation after what she is alleged to have went through?

Dominique Strauss-Khan/Julian Assange, both a right pain in the ass for the US, both accused of sexual assault, how very convenient. Mission No 1 accomplished, DSK no longer head of the IMF, first case can now be dropped. Let's wait and see...

Sorry I don't get your point? Who is ascribing a view to all Americans? I might be being a bit thick sorry

Cheria - but that's the French view (or a French view - the view, unfortunately, of a few high-profile dolts here). I don't know if it's fair to ascribe the same view to Americans/American men/all Americans.

To back up beachcomber's point here is one of the rent-a-quote's comments when he was arrested : video and script

Roughly translated this guy said the DSK's misdemeanour was nothing more than a bit of skirt liftinwith a servant ! You see how these people laugh it off?

Here's another interesting link for you: oh it makes me so angry

Shows the attitude over here in France we were discussing earlier. Grrr

Diallo shouldn't be judged on her past behaviour or on the behaviour of any other person - a sentiment that I completely agree with. Are we saying this about DSK too then?

Again, I'm not defending DSK, I'm enquiring as to balance.

Jenny if you want to reserve judgement because you don't know all the evidence, you may do so. I am under no such obligation because I am not involved in any way, shape or form in the trial.

Do you apply this honorable principle to every aspect of your life? I very much doubt it. We all make assumptions about things many times every day since it is impossible to be in full possession of the facts about everything and life would be unworkable if we had to.

For example, do you know that the food you are buying from the supermarket was properly prepared? No. You assume it was because there are rules about this sort of thing and the balance of probabilities is in your favour. But you weren't there to see it, were you? And every now and again we see a case where a plaster is found in someone's tin of beans...

Bet you don't start refusing to buy food from shops though.

Beachcomber - but then do we have to believe that the apparently sincere decision by (male) prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr to take up the case was actually some other part of the worldwide patriarchal conspiracy? A ploy to make women believe that the courts care about them? If the US establishment subscribed to the "hot chambermaid" cliche then why bother even following up Diallo's accusation?

"Beachcomber - I don't think we are being asked to believe that "chambermaids" (plural) are gagging to "service" anonymous hotel guests in hotel rooms and to risk their livelihoods with louche behaviour, etc, etc. This is a case about one chambermaid, not all chambermaids"

I disagree.

We are surrounded by characterizations of female sexuality that come direct from the male gaze, and which are spun all the time, to give credit to the idea that women who are going about the daily business, are sexually available and will jump at the opportunity of a bit of hurried rough sex with a stranger - the sexy nurse, the up for it secretary, the hot teen, the prick tease student, the French maid, etc etc.

Mrs Diallo is a victim of that sort of patriarchal bullshit. We are expected to believe that she would engage in a sexual encounter with a perfect stranger because everyone knows that chamber maids are hot for it. Not the other way round as you put it.

The up for it chamber maid is a pretty old patriarchal construct (it is the modern version of the up for it servant to the rich). It has been around for a lot longer than poor Mrs Diallo and the odious DSK.

Alice - I agree inasmuch as no legal system should preclude a rape victim from obtaining justice in court JUST BECAUSE she has in the past displayed "bad character", as legally defined.

A concrete example - I smoked pot as a student; years later I am raped. The defence in the rape case rake up my student drugs dabbling and this is instrumentalised to discredit me as a witness. In my book, this would be wrong. It would also be wrong if my history involved shoplifting or more serious crimes. There is no reason to deny a shoplifter justice when he or she is the victim of a crime.

But the situation is different if my "bad character" is constituted by my lying/failing or refusing to be consistent about the circumstances of the alleged rape. These lies or omissions go to the heart of the issue of whether or not there was rape, or whether or not the proven sexual encounter was consensual.

At the beginning of the case, I worried on Diallo's behalf that the DSK defence juggernaut would bring up lots of evidence of her unreliability IN OTHER ASPECTS AND PERIODS OF HER LIFE to discredit her and blow off the case. They had a go at doing so but the prosecution persisted.

But things are different if she lies about the circumstances of the alleged rape itself. What can the prosecution do in such a case but give up?

fewcloudy only voicing what a lot of people would do in that context. No, I don't blame her. She was poor and the victim of someone more powerful and, to her, unbelievably rich. Why shouldn't she get some compensation for what she went through? Why does the fact she was, to some extent, interested in money once she knew who he was, go against her? She wouldn't be the first or the last, and none of us know what we would do in that context.

jenny you are trotting out the "we should ignore statistics if they don't back up what I'm saying" line. Again.

No I'm not, and never have.... You are accusing me of this, again. Not the same thing.

I have not queried the 6% statistic (although it would be interesting to see how that figure has been reached). I have said that people are taking the 94% and applying it to this case. How do they know this isn't one of the 6%? I agree that the balance of probability may well be against DSK, but I do not agree that that is enough for anyone to say that he is definitely guilty. I am not defending him, I am defending the principle of reserving judgement where one does not know. I am very interested to note that I am being accused of defending DSK even though I am not. If there were people on here saying that they believed she was lying I'd be taking issue with that position too.

Slhilly - you do not know what happened in the room. He may have been guilty of a thousand rapes in the past and it would not make him guilty this time. I am correct in stating that people in this thread have decided he is guilty without knowing categorically that he is and they seem justified in doing this. If they feel that this is justifiable, do they also feel that it is justifiable if a court were to take this view? This is not an unreasonable question.

Having read the document I can see why the decision was made :(

Cheria said "I don't blame her for wanting to make financial gain". Sorry, but I would suggest voicing that type of thinking can only help keep the number of successful convictions low.

And (for the conspiracy theorists), one might say that the accusations lasted just long enough for Strauss-Kahn to lose his job at the IMF and someone more favourable to the US to take over, then were suddenly dropped...

Scaevola, I'm not sure this is right:
"Passages within the linked letter show a sympathetic policy towards both those with previous histories of unreliability and to those whose story changes (ie only comes out fully) over time."

I think all we can say is that "Passages within the linked letter assert the existence of a sympathetic policy towards both those with previous histories of unreliability and to those whose story changes (ie only comes out fully) over time."

The proof is in the prosecuting (or not prosecuting).

ClareinFrance, I don't know how it works in the US, but I once served as a juror in the UK. I asked for explicit guidance on the question of "if I can construct a very unlikely chain of events in which the behaviour in question was not, in fact, criminal, does that mean I must not convict?" The answer that came back was an unequivocal "no". That bar was too high: instead, I had to test the version of events that the prosecution (and defense) described for plausibility, based on what I knew as an ordinary person about the way the world worked.

The way the world works for me does not include many chambermaids who suck the cocks of rich strangers on randomly encountering them in hotel rooms, ie this is a theoretical possibility but hardly a likely explanation. Obviously, you can see where this is going - the defense would then have wanted to try to establish that Ms Diallo had done this kind of thing before. So at least she was spared that ordeal, except of course for all the venal unsourced smears about her sexuality that appeared in the media.

Truly, "Justice? Just us" today.

The forensic evidence - according to AyeRobot's link - does not provide evidence of force. And, although the prosecutors go out if their way to show it does not necessarily mean this, the lack of his DNA inside her 2nd pair of tights and knickers could be taken to indicate that part of her account is not truthful.

Her multiple accounts of what happened in the immediate aftermath - despite prosecutors repeated requests for the truth - appear to be the main reason for the prosecution to be dropped. Had she changed her story once, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, then the prosecution may well have continued. But at least three versions (one changing in light of key card evidence), and so long after the incident, are clearly problematic. (Though the bit that is missing from AyeRobot's link is information on the supervisor's account - one has to assume however that it is also not indicative of one version over another).

If there is a message here, it is that repeated changes of story will undermine credibility to the point where criminal prosecution is no longer possible.

I hope the civil case will look at why she changed her story so many times and at such a comparatively late stage. Passages within the linked letter show a sympathetic policy towards both those with previous histories of unreliability and to those whose story changes (ie only comes out fully) over time. The (detailed) timeline in this case presents different problems, which do not seem to be covered by typical example.

Beachcomber - I don't think we are being asked to believe that "chambermaids" (plural) are gagging to "service" anonymous hotel guests in hotel rooms and to risk their livelihoods with louche behaviour, etc, etc. This is a case about one chambermaid, not all chambermaids- and it is therefore perfectly possible that this one individual did in fact depart from all logic by engaging in this kind of behaviour and taking this sort of risk.

I am not saying that this is what Diallo did. I doubt that it is. But the law is obliged to deal in these terms and to apply its own rules. If it is not possible to make out the elements of an offence based on the evidence, then there can be no conviction.

What is unfortunate here is that Diallo seems to have paid dearly for her lies (with the probably dismissal of the prosecution) while DSK has not paid for his.

Yeah we've heard that 'she's a gold digga whore' stuff before. (It's the rich cousin of the 'she's a bitch out for revenge' rape myth.)

Beachcomber, you've hit the nail on the head about what gets me in this case - the prosecution have said that because of inconsistencies in Ms Diallo's testimony alone, they have dropped the case. They do not even mention the fact that any DSK testimony about what you would have to believe to think this encounter was consensual would be completely implausible. That is just ridiculous.

Fewcloudy what people don't think about is that this was in a local dialect and therefore is open to translation issues. AND during that same conversation she described what happened to her friend and repeated it was an assault. She never said it was consensual.

I don't blame her for wanting to make financial gain. In her position, once I realised who it was, I think I may have done the same in that context.

This quote is in The Independent today;

In a recorded conversation between Ms Diallo and a man detained in an Arizona jail, conducted in a dialect of her native Guinea, she said words to the effect that "this guy has a lot of money. I know what I am doing".

And there is a difference between having an opinion on something and being constitutionally involved in a case.

You can have an opinion without that having to mean that you want the law changed to mean "presumed guilty until proven innocent." Another straw man argument.

Your if ... then logic doesn't strike me as sound at all, Jenny

Problem with your "if": one doesn't need to believe DSK is guilty solely because only 6% of rape claims are fake, even if two posters have chosen to. It's also because the known facts about what happened make anything else seem just wildly unlikely. See what BC wrote. See what I wrote earlier.

Problem with your "then": it is your consequence - a strawman. There are other, better things to do, to address the problem than reverse the burden of proof. That's why I pointed you in the direction of the Women Against Rape website.

You then finish by re-stating your starting position: that believing DSK's innocence is the same as believing his guilt. But I've already addressed that twice in previous posts, giving a whole list of reasons why the two are not equivalent. There are other facts that make one possibility more compelling than the other. I know that I don't know what happened in that room. But I never claimed to. I just think I have a pretty damned good inkling, given what is in the public domain, and that what happened in that room was likely to have been a rape.

Do you think that it is somehow morally unacceptable for me or others to publicly state that, regardless of whether he's prosecuted, we believe DSK raped Ms Diallo? If so, why?