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When Nafissatou Diallo tries to clean Suite 2806 at the Sofitel Hotel in New York, he finds himself hoping for the French Socialists. He is naked. That was in 2011. Now he’s talking about it.
On May 13, 2011, Nafissatou Diallo was one of hundreds of invisible maids in a New York luxury hotel. She was 32 years old and had learned early on what was to be quickly confirmed again in 2011: what she feels and wants doesn’t count for much. Marries at 14. Diallo says today that she cried at her wedding. Her husband dies when she was 19 years old. She remains alone with her daughter. She leaves her native Guinea and applies for asylum in the United States. She wants to earn money so that, according to Diallo, her daughter can “do what I never could: go to school.”
On May 14, 2011, Diallo is no longer invisible. That day she meets Dominique Strauss-Kahn in Sofitel suite number 2806. For Diallo, Strauss-Kahn is initially just a naked man in front of her. For the rest of the world, Strauss-Kahn is director of the International Monetary Fund and a great hope for the French socialists for the presidential elections of 2012. What exactly happened in Suite 2806 can no longer be reconstructed. Diallo says that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her.
For Strauss-Kahn it was “a moral error”, not a crime
Immediately after the incident, which Diallo today only calls “the accident,” he goes to the police. Strauss-Kahn was arrested the same day. He vehemently denies all allegations. Investigators find Strauss-Kahn’s sperm on Diallo’s work clothes. In a television interview in September 2011, Strauss-Kahn said that there was a consensual sexual encounter, which was “a moral error”, but not a crime. There is never a guilty verdict or acquittal, the process ends in December 2012 through a confidential agreement between Diallo and Strauss-Kahn.
Diallo becomes “the woman who brought down Strauss-Kahn” through her ad. Strauss-Kahn’s sex life is analyzed in detail, his supporters call him a “seducer”. His case is told as the story of a brilliant economist who falls victim to his libido. Regardless of whether Diallo or Strauss-Kahn is to be believed, the incident could have been the subject of discussion about the frequency with which domestic workers are victims of sexual assault. How rarely are they shown and how often are they explained.
#MeToo changed the debate
If you want to know if #I also changed the debates, just look at how Diallo was talked about in 2011. She had to take legal action against being called a prostitute, Strauss-Kahn’s defense attorneys let it be known that she was not “very attractive”, that is, she was not a victim of credible rape, with some outlets describing the extreme power imbalance between the two as a stroke of luck for Diallo. After all, the penniless maiden received money for silence.
For the first time since 2012, Diallo has spoken for himself. In an interview with “Paris Match” he accuses the New York prosecutor of “cheating” him. “I told the truth,” says Diallo, if Strauss-Kahn “were poor, he would be in prison today.” She never saw herself as a feminist, but now she wants to “create a foundation for women like me who come to the United States without speaking the language, without education, and who experience terrible things.”
“If you want to be president of a country, you don’t attack the people.”
After Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, 57 percent of the French said he was “the victim of a smear campaign.” Diallo received death threats. In 2015 he opened a restaurant in the Bronx, “Chez Amina”, named after his daughter. There I was so besieged by “curious people”, according to Diallo, “that I had to close.” He has “rewritten the history of France,” the “Paris Match” reporter told Diallo, Strauss-Kahn could have become president without him. Diallo responds: “If you want to be president of a country, you don’t attack the people.”