Strauss-Kahn countersues hotel maid in NY court for $1 million

Editor's Note: I reported on the assault exactly 1year ago, on the day after the story broke, and predicted that he would not run for President of France, and that he would escape prosecution. I also predicted that the maid was a setup to discredit Strauss-Kahn: See the video below.


Reuters
May 15, 2012

(Reuters) - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has filed a $1 million countersuit against the hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault, costing him his job and any chance of being elected president of France.

New York police arrested Strauss-Kahn a year ago when hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo accused him of forcible oral sex and trying to rape her in his luxury suite at the Sofitel Hotel in Manhattan. Prosecutors later dropped charges after losing confidence in Diallo's credibility.

The countersuit was filed Monday on the anniversary of the incident and a day before Francois Hollande - the Socialist who took the nomination that Strauss-Kahn once coveted - was sworn in as president of France.

Strauss-Kahn denied the allegations, saying the sexual encounter with Diallo was consensual. Diallo nonetheless sued Strauss-Kahn for unspecified damages in Supreme Court in the New York City borough of the Bronx, where she lived at the time.

Strauss-Kahn denies all wrongdoing in the countersuit and accuses Diallo of "knowingly and intentionally making a false report to law enforcement authorities."

"Soon after she entered the room, Ms. Diallo and Mr. Strauss-Kahn engaged in mutually consensual acts," the claim states. "No violence, force or coercion attended their sexual encounter, and Ms. Diallo suffered no injuries whatsoever."

The former international financier seeks damages for his arrest, which included jail time at New York's Rikers Island and house arrest in an upscale Manhattan neighborhood; for losing his job as managing director of the International Monetary Fund; and for harm to his reputation.

The countersuit seeks at least $1 million in damages plus an undetermined amount of punitive damages. It comes two weeks after Bronx Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon rejected Strauss-Kahn's motion to throw out Diallo's lawsuit on the grounds he had diplomatic immunity at the time of the incident.

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