Sex assault complaint to be filed against Strauss-Kahn in France

A new accusation of attempted rape will be filed against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn in France Tuesday as a separate case against him appears to be on shaky ground in New York.

Writer Tristane Banon, 32, alleges that Strauss-Kahn attacked her eight years ago, her lawyer David Koubbi said, adding that he will file her complaint with French prosecutors Tuesday afternoon.

After Koubbi announced plans to file the complaint Monday, a Strauss-Kahn lawyer in France said he had filed a counterclaim against Banon for “false declarations.”

Once French prosecutors receive the complaint, they will determine if there is enough evidence to press charges.

The statute of limitations on attempted rape is 10 years. The limit for prosecution of sexual assault is shorter, but Koubbi told CNN affiliate BFM on Monday that Banon’s accusation was attempted rape, not sexual assault.

The new legal fireworks came after questions arose about the truthfulness of a housekeeper who alleged that Strauss-Kahn, 62, tried to rape her in his New York hotel suite in May.

Asked about Banon’s allegation, Strauss-Kahn’s co-counsel Benjamin Brafman said in New York, “I do not wish to comment.”

Banon’s mother, Socialist politician Anne Mansouret, said shortly after the housekeeper’s accusations were splashed across front pages around the world that her daughter had been attacked by Strauss-Kahn in 2003 but that she had discouraged her at the time from filing charges against him.

Mansouret, a member of parliament, said she cautioned Banon not to file a police report at the time for fear it would hurt her journalism career.

Strauss-Kahn was never charged in connection with the alleged attack in France on Banon.

But in light of the charges against Strauss-Kahn after the alleged incident at a Sofitel hotel in New York, Banon’s attorney, Koubbi, said a few weeks ago that he and Banon were considering filing a complaint.

Koubbi said the cases were not connected.

“I don’t see any reason why these two cases should be joined, because either the prosecutor has enough elements to condemn Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the United States — and if he does, he should do it — or he needs to bring two cases together to get a conviction,” he said in June.

“In that case, we do not want to participate,” he added.

Strauss-Kahn’s attorney in France, Leon Lef Forster, did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations in May.

Mansouret recently pulled out of the Socialist Party presidential primaries. Strauss-Kahn had been a front-runner for the party nomination until the New York arrest, and suggestions that the case was foundering have revived talk of his chances in next year’s presidential elections.

Mansouret described herself last week as “the woman who embarrasses the Socialist Party.”

“I am … a sort of collateral damage in the DSK affair. I knew for a long time that my political career was sealed with this bomb, but I didn’t imagine that this bitter past could be revived so violently,” she wrote Friday on the Rue89 website, referring to the alleged attack in New York.

In May, Mansouret said that in 2003, her journalist daughter had interviewed Strauss-Kahn in his office in the National Assembly.

However, after the interview, Banon received a text message from Strauss-Kahn, saying he was not happy with the interview and asking if he could speak with her again, Mansouret said.

After Banon arrived at the address Strauss-Kahn had sent her, he locked the door to the room they were in, took her hand and grabbed her arm, according to Mansouret.

Banon told him to let her go, and the incident ended with the two struggling on the floor, Mansouret said. Banon managed to escape the apartment and locked herself in her car, where she called her mother.

Mansouret said she arrived about an hour and a half later to find her daughter still locked in the car and looking “roughed up.” The heel of one shoe was broken, Mansouret recalled.

But Mansouret told her daughter not to file a complaint out of concern that she would become known as Strauss-Kahn’s victim.

CNN does not typically identify sexual assault victims, but Mansouret said her daughter gave permission for her name to be disclosed.

In New York, the prosecution’s case against Strauss-Kahn has been shaken in recent days after sources revealed that the housekeeper at the Sofitel hotel had been less than truthful with investigators. Within two days after the alleged attack occurred, she spoke by phone with a boyfriend in an Arizona jail in a recorded conversation.

A source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN that the housekeeper said that “she’s fine and this person is rich and there’s money to be made,” as originally reported by The New York Times.

The 32-year-old immigrant has admitted to prosecutors that she lied about her whereabouts following the alleged attack, the details of an asylum application and information she put on tax forms, according to documents filed in court Friday by prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Friday that the woman also admitted to lying about being a victim of a gang rape.

In angry remarks delivered outside the courthouse, the woman’s attorney, Kenneth Thompson, acknowledged problems with his client’s credibility. But the bottom line, he said, is that she was attacked.

“That was true the day it happened, and it is true today,” Thompson said.

“She has described that sexual assault many times to the prosecutors and to me. And she has never once changed a single thing about that account.”

The indictment and charges — including criminal sexual acts and sexual abuse — still stand. And though Stauss-Kahn is now free to travel in the United States, a judge said authorities have continued to withhold the French financier’s passport.

CNN’s Jim Bittermann, Susan Candiotti and Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this report.

Source: CNN