Like other lawyers I know, I don’t usually follow high-profile crime stories. Applying the law to the messy non sequiturs of life can be dissatisfying in the most dignified setting; media hyperbole makes it simply agonizing. Just ask the jurors, lawyers and insiders of the Casey Anthony case. So, reluctantly, I clicked the link from the New York Times’ recent asylum fraud piece to the paper’s earlier story about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser.
Apparently, we all hate her now.
She lied on her asylum application, and she now admits that she was actually raped in a different way than the way she described for immigration officials. She knows, and recently even spoke to, an accused marijuana dealer. She has lied about her eligibility for housing and tax benefits, and about money she has in different bank accounts. When prosecutors questioned her about these revelations for hours, she became upset (serves her right for ruining their case), and later avoided their requests for more time together.
In my career I have come to know the stories of thousands who pursue lives outside the mainstream of middleclass America, and I am not really troubled by this updated and flawed media version of the Strauss-Kahn accuser. She is more familiar to me than the “very pious, devout” victim the press and prosecutors initially tried to offer up for our approval.
I don’t know if Strauss-Kahn raped the maid in that Midtown Manhattan suite. (Neither do you.) I don’t know if the maid has falsely accused a wealthy guest just to score a fat settlement. (Neither do you.) I do know that we live our lives among people who took interesting and complicated routes to end up cleaning our hotel rooms or mowing our lawns, and sometimes even teaching our children or reading our x-rays. I also know that for many reasons these people face increased risks from crime and violence. And I suspect that there are certain kinds of predators who are very good at selecting their victims, looking for the kind of person who may be reluctant to tell, or if they do tell, who may not be believed.
Do I need to say it? None of these new revelations goes to any element of the case, and if we allow them to overwhelm our consideration of her credibility, we create a systemic bias in favor of certain abusers, and against certain victims. There is no good way to evaluate conflicting claims of sexual consent; the prosecutors here will need to prove that totality of the circumstances should not have led the hotel guest to believe that the hotel maid agreed to the act. They are the only two witnesses, and he has a right not say anything. He is protected by the Constitution, a legal team worthy of his generous retainer, and a homeland that believes he was framed. And now, it seems, he can count on an American public that demands purity from its victims.