IMF chief under suicide watch
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, right, head of the International Monetary Fund, with his attorney Benjamin Brafman, is arraigned Monday, May 16, 2011, in Manhattan Criminal Court for the alleged attack Saturday on a maid who went into his penthouse suite at a hotel near Times Square to clean it, in New York. Strauss-Kahn must remain jailed at least until his next court hearing for attempted rape and other charges, a judge said Monday.
Associated Press
NEW YORK
IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was placed under a suicide watch in jail, while pressure mounted on him to resign Tuesday, and the hotel maid who accused him of attempted rape said through her lawyer that she had no idea who he was when she reported him to the police.
Law-enforcement officials emphasized that Strauss-Kahn had not tried to harm himself but that guards were keeping a close watch on him just in case.
Meanwhile, details began to emerge about his accuser, a 32-year-old immigrant from the West African nation of Guinea with a 15-year-old daughter.
“There is no way in which there is any aspect of this event which could be construed consensual in any manner. This is nothing other than a physical, sexual assault by this man on this young woman,” her attorney, Jeffrey Shapiro, told The Associated Press. He added: “She did not know who this man was until a day or two after this took place.”
Strauss-Kahn, the 62-year-old managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested Saturday and is being held without bail at the city’s Rikers Island jail.
Police and prosecutors said he ambushed a housekeeper who had come to clean his $3,000-per-night room at a New York hotel. Lawyers for the influential banker challenged that account, saying the evidence doesn’t support accusations of forcible sex. They wouldn’t elaborate.
The woman’s lawyer, Shapiro, said there was no truth to suggestions that she had fabricated her account.
“Her life has now been turned upside down. She can’t go home. She can’t go back to work. She has no idea what her future will be, what she will be able to do to support herself and her daughter,” Shapiro said.
The woman, he said, came to the U.S. seven years ago under “very difficult circumstances” and is raising her daughter by herself now that the girl’s father is dead. The family was granted asylum in the U.S., and she is a legal resident. She has worked at the hotel for three years, according to Shapiro.