The first results from DNA tests into the alleged sexual assault by the former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on a hotel maid in New York has confirmed a link between him and swabs taken from the woman’s uniform, reports suggest.
According to the Associated Press, DNA samples taken from Strauss-Kahn last week with his permission have matched material found on the maid’s shirt. Results of further tests have yet to come in, including a sample of the carpet and swabs taken from sinks and other surfaces in the hotel room.
Any genetic link confirmed in early tests is likely to be used by both prosecution and defence teams to support their cases. On the one hand, the New York district attorney’s office leading the prosecution may use it as evidence that a sexual assault took place on May 14 inside Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel hotel in midtown Manhattan.
But the defence could also cite the finding as evidence of a consensual sexual meeting between the former IMF leader and the maid. Strauss-Kahn’s main lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, has said in court that the evidence will “not be consistent with a forcible encounter”.
Unless solid forensic evidence is uncovered that points categorically towards a criminal act then any eventual trial is likely to come down to the word of Strauss-Kahn versus that of the unidentified woman as to whether any encounter was forced or consensual. He has been charged with two counts of committing a criminal sexual act, attempted rape, sexual abuse, forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment.
Pariah
Strauss-Kahn has been released under $1-million bail under stringent conditions that include wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to monitor his movements and a 24-hour armed guard. But he has turned into something of a pariah, unable to settle in any place because of the complaints of irate neighbours.
He is currently living in a temporary apartment on Broadway in lower Manhattan that is owned by the security company, Stroz Friedberg, assigned to guard him and ensure that he does not attempt to flee the country and return to his native France which has no extradition treaty with the US.
Earlier, he was forced to leave the Bristol Plaza on the Upper East Side after the residents’ board objected to the media scrum that had assembled outside the front door. He is now reportedly trying to rent a townhouse from which he could not be evicted. The woman is living at an undisclosed location in New York.
Reuters spoke to her family in Guinea in a village without mains water or electricity. A man called Mamoudou, believed to be her brother, told the agency: “In our family, we are above material things. Even if you a billionaire, we don’t care. The most important thing for us is how you follow God’s path.”
The average annual income in the village is about a dollar a day. Mamoudou told Reuters that his sister left the village after her husband died, moving first to a suburb of the capital, Conakry, where she learned how to sew and then on to New York where she now lives with her 15-year-old daughter. – guardian.co.uk