Strauss-Kahn Affair: A Question of Principle

I maintain that this infamous “perp walk,” this exit from the Harlem police station under the flashes of photographers mobilized by the police, was a deliberate humiliation which in no way serves the establishment of the truth.

I maintain that to claim this ordeal would be “the same for everyone” is hypocrisy and a joke because for everyone, there is not, at the exit of every American police station, the same wall of picture hunters sending worldwide snapshots of their handcuffed man who has already been discredited. This equality of treatment is an illusion of equality that conceals an injustice.

I maintain that in giving Dominique Strauss-Kahn this debased image, then in insisting heavily on his imprisonment at the Rikers Island prison, which is reserved for detainees with transmittable diseases and finally, in matching his release to terms worthy of a Mafia boss is, yet again, unnecessarily harmful. It has been made as though he is already guilty and therefore, we have damaged the principle of the presumption of innocence, the pillar of all justice.

I maintain that the tabloid newspapers which, from the first moment and before anything was known of his version of events or even the basic facts, called Strauss-Kahn “depraved” (from the Daily News), were indignant about his release (New York Post: “the toad gets away with it”) and repeated unverified rumors which were always critical and changed every couple of hours (hasty departure; ticket bought in haste; seems stressed), established themselves as judges in the place of the judges, which is again a departure from the most elementary rules of law.

I maintain that we have seen the creation, around the presumed innocent Strauss-Kahn, of a trial based on opinion which, contrary to the other, is not burdened by evidence, nor proof, nor conflicting testimonials. And I maintain that it’s too loud, this trial, too powerful and too dramatic not to exercise, when the time comes, a terrible influence on the other, the official one, that will strive to establish the facts and nothing but the facts. The United States fears and sanctions, quite rightly, the application of pressure on witnesses; but what to say of this other pressure, no less criminal, on the judges being exercised by the self-proclaimed prosecutors of the tabloid press and, alas, in the same breath, the press in general?

I maintain that in the same vein, the words employed pressure on the judiciary. Saying, for example, “the victim” in place of the “presumed victim” when speaking about a young woman about which no one but the police knows anything (at least that’s something!) preserves her anonymity and therefore makes it the work of the lawyers and the jury to simply validate or invalidate the accusation. If the young woman is really already “the victim,” then Strauss-Kahn is already “the guilty,” and that signifies that it’s over, that there is no longer need for a Grand Jury –- or rather, yes, but only to keep up appearances, like a registration room for what the wolf pack will have decided.

I add in passing, taking aim at those who seem to believe that the fight against the trivialization of rape is achieved by the pulverization of the rights of the defendant, that I hold rape and attempted rape as crimes, that the presumed victim will have the right, if the crime is proven, not only to this “compassion” that the demagogues suddenly appeal for on a loop as they wish to place themselves in agreement with the all powerful public opinion, but to compensation coupled by punishment for the guilty. However I maintain firstly that, for the time being, while the judiciary has not finished its work of reconstruction, confrontation and verification of the points of view, “the victim” is only a presumed victim. Secondly, I maintain that supposing the assumed guilty would emerge innocent in the end, it would be he who is the victim of the whole affair and he would be without any possible compensation.

I maintain that those who are surprised that one does not take, on principle, the side of the “poor, immigrant woman” against that of the “rich and arrogant white man” suspected of raping her are reinventing an upside-down form of class justice. It is no longer like before –- “poor scum, the rich are always right” –- but rather, “rich scum, it’s the word of the poor that is sacred.” This prejudice here is no more or less revolting than the preceding: this reversal brings to mind, at least in France, the notorious Bruay-en-Artois affair, where a solicitor living near Béthune at the start of the 1970s was, because he was bourgeois, declared guilty of a crime. Later, when the hysteria had abated and his existence had been ruined, we were told that he had not committed the crime in reality. This memory sends a shiver down the spine.

I maintain henceforth, and more then ever, that there is only one urgency in relation to this drama: to make quiet the loudmouths and to protect the accused with the same concern –- but how far from that are we! –- as the presumed victim; to denounce this witch hunt, this kill, which is like a preemptive punishment and within which one discovers, everyday, a new twist (only a few hours ago, this hotel and then this university campus were refusing to receive Strauss-Kahn the Pariah and Sinclair the Jinx) to therefore leave the judiciary to calmly to their real work.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is my friend, but it is not the friend that I defend, it is the principle.