Dominique Strauss-Kahn Files $1M Suit Against NYC Hotel Maid
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Jim Spellman/Wire Image(WASHINGTON) — On the day he may well have been sworn in as the new president of France, former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn filed a million dollar countersuit against the New York City hotel maid whose accusation of attempted rape cost him his job and derailed his political aspirations.
In court papers filed in the Bronx, Strauss-Kahn said he suffered “grievous harm” to his personal and professional reputation, “emotional distress” and financial hardship because of what he called Nafissatou Diallo’s “malicious and wanton false accusation.”
It was a year ago Diallo accused Strauss-Kahn, once one of the world’s most prominent bankers, of trying to sexually assault her inside room 2806 at the Sofitel in Times Square. Criminal charges were dismissed when prosecutors came to question Diallo’s credibility.
“Ms. Diallo’s conduct,” Strauss-Kahn’s lawsuit said, “was so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized society.”
Diallo’s attorneys, Ken Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, called the countersuit a “desperate ploy” in a statement provided to ABC News.
“One year to the day of his brutal sexual assault of Ms. Diallo,” they wrote, “this is yet another example that personifies Strauss-Kahn’s misogynistic attitude.”
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