DSK Rape Case Takeaway No. 6:
Alleged Victims Can Change the Script
by Akiba Solomon | Colorlines
Last week, a variety of media harped on the imminent demise of the rape case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn because of his accuser’s so-called credibility problems. Despite the backlash (and in notable cases the backlash to the backlash) against her, the Guinean Sofitel housekeeper isn’t going away quietly.
She proved that last Wednesday when she rightfully sued Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post for libel. From a copy of the filing, which refers to stories and headlines like, “DSK MAID A HOOKER: ‘Took care’ of guests on the side”:
“In, several news articles published in both the hard copy and online editions of the New York Post on July 2, 2011, July 3, 2011 and July 4, 2011, Defendants falsely, maliciously and with reckless disregard for the truth stated as a fact that the Plaintiff is a ‘prostitute,’ ‘hooker,’ ‘working girl” and/or ‘routinely traded sex for money with male guests’ of the Sofitel hotel located in Manhattan. Defendants also falsely stated in the New York Post that the Plaintiff recently engaged in acts of prostitution with various men at a hotel located in Brooklyn following the sexual assault and while under the protection of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and that she was turning tricks on the taxpayers’ dime.”
What makes the prostitution accusation so egregious is that it’s based on the word of an unidentified source on or affiliated with Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s investigative team.
Read more @ Colorlines
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Akiba Solomon writes Colorlines' Gender Matters blog and is an NABJ-Award winning writer, freelance journalist, editor and essayist from West Philadelphia. A graduate of Howard University, the Brooklyn resident co-edited Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts (Perigee, 2005), an anthology of original essays and oral memoirs about Black women and body image.
