The news has been swamped with various items about the alleged rape of a hotel maid by Dominique Strauss-Kahn (the former head of the IMF). The alleged rapist has been paraded in front of the media wolves by the US authorities, vilified in the press with the stories containing the fig-leaf of the word “alleged”, and suffered worse in the “blogosphere”.
He has been effectively forced to resign from his job as the head of the IMF, and can pretty much say goodbye to his chances of becoming the next president of France.
Just the beginning of what he deserves, if he raped the hotel maid.
A gross injustice if he is innocent.
And as yet, we simply do not know if he is guilty or not. Despite those who believe in the old “no smoke without fire” saying, we need to wait until the trial before knowing if he is found to be guilty or to be innocent. Until his trial, he should be presumed to be innocent.
How On Earth Can He Be Innocent?
After all, the hotel maid has claimed he raped her, and identified him. Surely there can be no mistake. Actually there are a whole bunch of reasons why he may be innocent :-
- The maid was raped, but by someone else with a similar appearance. It is easy to imagine how a rape victim might be confused afterwards, and mistakenly accused Dominique. Perhaps it is not very likely, but it is possible.
- The maid is mentally unbalanced and imagined the rape. Again not that likely, but possible.
- Consensual sex took place, but the maid for whatever reason changed her mind after the event. Yes this does happen from time to time.
- The maid maliciously falsely accused him of rape. There are a variety of reasons for this, and the conspiracy theorists will like this one … if you wanted to get the head of the IMF “out of the way” because he was about to do something that would spoil your plans, there is pretty much nothing better than a false accusation of rape to do so.
None of this should be assumed of course … a woman has made an allegation of rape, and it should be treated as though it were true until it has been tested in a court of law. Indeed appropriate treatment (including counselling) could well result in additional information for a trial … whether it is supportive of the allegation, or refutes it.
How Can We Do This Better ?
At present, there is a presumably innocent man who has only just been released from prison into bail conditions that probably qualify as “house arrest”. His name is known, his family is known, and he has lost his job. All of this could happen to you whether or not you are likely to go out and commit rape (and women should note that this does include you!).
The victims of rape quite rightly get anonymity, but what about the alleged rapist ? If he or she is innocent, surely they deserve anonymity too ? Forget that you may be protecting a genuine rapist, at this point the alleged rapist is innocent.
Anonymity for an alleged rapist is the right thing to do. Difficult in practise to implement given that many will need to be kept in prison pending trial, and in cases of famous people like Dominique it may well be that their name escapes. But we should be trying to do the right thing even if it is difficult.