A fresh attempted rape suit against former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn yesterday threatened to wreck his hopes of returning to frontline French politics if acquitted at his New York trial.
Tristane Banon, 32, planned to lodge “a complaint for attempted rape” about eight years ago against Strauss-Kahn with French prosecutors yesterday, her lawyer David Koubbi told the news magazine L’Express on its Web site.
She had already publicly accused Strauss-Kahn of trying to force himself on her “like a rutting chimpanzee,” but said she was persuaded at the time that no one would take her word against the powerful politician’s if she sued.
Strauss-Kahn was charged in New York in May with trying to rape a hotel maid, but a judge freed him from house arrest last week after prosecutors said they had doubts about that accuser’s credibility.
The US case continues, but an acquittal now looks increasingly likely.
Banon, a French writer and journalist, told L’Express that “seeing Strauss-Kahn freed, then afterwards dining in a fancy restaurant with friends, that makes me sick.”
“I can’t bear hearing that I am a liar because I hadn’t lodged a complaint” immediately, Banon told L’Express, saying Strauss-Kahn had “his hands in my pants after he ripped off my jeans and bra.”
“Eight years ago when I talked about bringing a complaint, everyone had me believe that it would lead nowhere. In these matters it is one person’s word against another,” she added.
The revelations that the New York maid is suspected of lying to police has raised expectations that Strauss-Kahn will be cleared in that case.
Some of his allies in the French opposition Socialist Party have suggested he could return to fight French President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential election.
Before the New York scandal he polled as the person most likely to beat Sarkozy.
Banon’s legal action complicated the prospects of him returning in glory and prompted awkward questions for members of the Socialists, whom Banon says knew about her alleged ordeal at the time.
She said former Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande, currently polling as the leading Socialist presidential candidate, was aware of the accusations.
On Monday, Hollande said he had “no detailed knowledge” of the alleged incident, which Koubbi said took place in 2003.
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers Henri Leclerc and Frederique Baulieu hit back by threatening Banon with a defamation suit, dismissing her claims as “imaginary.”
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