The SK Affair

As far as I can understand, the evidence for SK (Strauss-Kahn)'s guilt stems from the following:

1. Inconsistencies in victim's account of rape
2. Claim overheard on telephone to boyfriend "This guy has money. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."
3. Suspicious cash-transfers to her account from people arrested for having marijuana
4. Saying she was gang-raped in her home country, when that is not the case.

Let's examine these four factors:

1. While this does shed some doubt on her testimony, inconsistencies in recounting a traumatic event - such as rape - do not mean the event hasn't happened. Because of the emotional impact of such events, it is somehow hard to keep the details of the facts straight, and what you are left with is the feel of the scene, and the major facts that stick out in your mind, where the details become blurred, subsumed by the memory of how you felt, as opposed to what happened when. As a matter of fact, sometimes it is the brain's defense mechanism to try to block the victim's access to memory of the facts. People sometimes black out sexual abuse. Additionally, rape trauma syndrome may account for some of the inconsistencies.

2. This is the most problematic factor. Nevertheless, I would want to hear the context of the phone conversation before jumping to a conclusion. In most countries, the question is not if a woman takes a risk, but rather, how much risk a woman takes - towards her career, her family life, her reputation - by properly accusing her raper. Was this comment meant to defend the woman's decision to publicly accuse a man she believed raped her, or was it merely a comment pointing towards ulterior motives? Without knowing the rest of the phone conversation, it is impossible to answer that question.

3. Having suspicious financial dealings, doing or trading drugs - none of these takes away the possibility for a person to be raped. Criminals can be rape victims as well.*

4. The woman put down the gang rap on her asylum application. She was afraid if she now admitted she was not gang raped, her asylum would be revoked and she would be sent back to her native country. Lying because one is desperate to get out of a war-torn country, and then, because one must continue the lie in order to not get sent back there, does not mean one is a habitual liar who can never be trusted.

Of course, three of the four factors (I exclude #3 completely) may shed doubt on her testimony, - but that should be up for a court to decide. While these factors provide the "reasonable doubt" necessary to get DSK off the hook, they do not provide the amount of doubt needed to forgo the trial altogether, and the way that the media has now assumed DSK's innocence, turning the accuser into the criminal, is shameful. If DSK can only be convicted of rape if there is not even "a reasonable doubt" about his guilt, shouldn't the alleged victim be given the same right by the media - to not be accused of falsifying her report as long as there is a "reasonable doubt" that she did so?

For more on the history of rape in the British and American legal systems, as well as rape in the current US jail system, see "Rape: Sex, Violence, History", by Joanna Bourke.

* As a matter of fact, criminals in American jails are often rape victims, but the injustices of the American penal system are another topic altogether. First of all, the prisoners experience a "social death", are alienated from kin, and are often forced into doing certain types of work for an exorbitantly low sum, which means that their conditions may technically qualify as slavery. (See David Brion Davis's "Human Bondage", for more details on definitions of slavery.) Second of all, conjugal visits must be allowed.