Attempted rape, groping: More skeletons tumble out of Strauss-Kahn's closet

Skeletons kept tumbling out of disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn even as his defenders maintained his adversaries framed him in the sex assault case in New York.

Close on the heels of his fall from grace, a Paris woman said Strauss-Kahn had tried to rape her ten years ago. The 31-year-old woman, Tristane Banon, Strauss-Kahn's latest accuser, is the god-daughter of his second wife.

According to her, the French politician lured her to an apartment in 2001 offering to give her an interview, but pounced on her and started ripping her clothes apart. I kicked him, I called him a rapist, he didn’t seem to care, said Banon, who was a trainee journalist at the time.

She said the famed ladies' man was acting like ‘rutting chimpanzee’. Banon appears determined to take her case forward and file a police complaint. Sources close to her said she was in the process of making a report to Paris police, the Daily Mail reported.

The 62-year-old French presidential hopeful was pulled out of a plane and arrested on Saturday afternoon after New York police got a complaint from a hotel maid that he tried to sexually attack her in his hotel suite.

The accuser, a 32-year-old African American woman, told police Strauss-Kahn forced her to give him oral sex and puller her clothes off.

He was arraigned in court on Monday where he pleaded not guilty. Strauss-Kahn has also undergone a physical examination sought by the prosecutors to gather evidence against him. He is currently held in New York's notorious Rikers Island prison without bail.

Though his supporters have refused to believe the theory that he forced himself upon an unwilling woman, the top politician has had issues with women in the past. In 2008, an affair with a junior colleague at IMF had come to light and Strauss-Kahn had apologized.
Also in 2008, a French woman MP had accused him of groping her.

His wife and friends have rejected the charges against him. Ann Sinclair, his wife, said she “does not believe for a second that Strauss-Kahn did what he was charged with. I don't believe for one second the accusations made against my husband. I have no doubt that his innocence will be established, she said.

The Mail reported that Strauss-Kahn had feared that his adversaries will use a woman to discredit him. It emerged today that he had once said he feared political opponents would pay a woman more than $1million to say he had raped her, the Mail reported.

There is now a totally structured and orchestrated campaign, which has already been announced by Mr. Sarkozy and his closest allies, to attack the character of Strauss-Kahn, french Socialist politician Jean-Marie Le Guen said.

Strauss-Kahn’s official biographer also defended him. I can’t believe he would force himself on an unwilling woman. That doesn’t make sense, said biographer Michel Taubmann, according to the report.

If anything he was the one harassed, not the reverse — I’ve seen time and again women MPs, party workers, brazenly passing on notes, hoping he would notice them.