hotel housekeeper

Hotel Housekeeper Tells Magazine of Her Encounter With Strauss-Kahn

In the interview, with Newsweek magazine, the housekeeper, a 32-year-old immigrant from Guinea named Nafissatou Diallo, said she had apologized and turned to leave when she realized that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s room was not empty.

“Oh, my God,” Ms. Diallo recounted saying as she caught sight of a naked man — Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund — in the 28th-floor suite she had entered intending to clean. “I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn responded, “You don’t have to be sorry,” and reached for her breasts, she told Newsweek.

“You’re beautiful,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said as he compelled her toward the bedroom, Ms. Diallo recounted to Newsweek, which also refers to her as “Nafi.” She said she told him to stop, saying: “Sir, stop this. I don’t want to lose my job.”

Much of the woman’s account tracks news reports about what she told the authorities about the encounter. Her allegations led to an indictment against Mr. Strauss-Kahn on charges including attempted rape. But some details are new, like her account of their dialogue and her account of her movements around the hotel immediately afterward. But they can be contradictory: She told counselors at the hospital right after the attack, for example, that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not spoken at all.

Her interview marks the first time either person who was present in the room has publicly provided a narrative of what occurred there. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have suggested that any sexual encounter was consensual. Her interview with Newsweek and a second one with ABC News, scheduled to be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday, appear intended to put pressure on the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to prosecute the case.

“I want him to go to jail,” Ms. Diallo told Newsweek. “I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money.”

In response to the Newsweek article, Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said Ms. Diallo was “the first accuser in history to conduct a media campaign to persuade a prosecutor to pursue charges against a person from whom she wants money.”

Both Newsweek and ABC published pictures of her, and the Newsweek story describes her physically — “her dark hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head,” for example.

Newsweek characterized Ms. Diallo’s account of the encounter as “vivid and compelling,” but said that at other points during the interview, which lasted more than three hours, she was less forthright. Questions about her past in Africa “were met with vague responses.” At times, her tears struck the interviewers as “forced,” according to Newsweek. The article also said that she is illiterate, unable to read or write any language. She spoke proudly of her job at the New York Sofitel, where according to the magazine she made $25 an hour plus tips.

Although Mr. Strauss-Kahn remains under indictment, prosecutors have expressed concerns about the accuser’s credibility as a witness, saying that she had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea. They also say she entered false information on tax returns and misrepresented her income to qualify for her housing.

Ms. Diallo described Mr. Strauss-Kahn as physically forceful, saying he behaved like “a crazy man to me.” Once in his bedroom, “he pulls me hard to the bed,” she told Newsweek. He tried to force her to engage in oral sex, she said.

The woman, who is taller than Mr. Strauss-Kahn, said she kept pushing him off, but she added that she did not “want to hurt him” for fear of losing her job. Mr. Strauss-Kahn shoved her to the bathroom, she said, forced her to her knees and made her engage in oral sex, holding her head “so hard” between his hands. At the end of the encounter, she said, she ran out and sought refuge in the hallway.

“I was standing there spitting,” she told Newsweek. “I was so alone.” She exchanged looks but not words with Mr. Strauss-Kahn as he left his suite and headed to the elevator, she said.

She also sought to explain her movements after the encounter, which prosecutors have questioned. She recounted how she went to a nearby room to retrieve her cleaning supplies and then re-entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite to begin cleaning it. “I went to the room I have to clean,” she said. She reported the encounter to a supervisor.

The whole encounter may have lasted just nine minutes. Citing an anonymous source, Newsweek reported that nine minutes after Ms. Diallo first entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite, he placed a call to his daughter, whom he then met for lunch.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b8c0985af59e68ff60f4cb90d821bf49

At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard

Some women avoid wearing skirts for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Others trade whispered tips about overly forward bosses. A 2008 internal review found few restraints on the conduct of senior managers, concluding that “the absence of public ethics scandals seems to be more a consequence of luck than good planning and action.”

This is life at the International Monetary Fund, the lender of last resort for governments that need money and, under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an emerging force in the regulation of the global economy.

But with Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest earlier this week and indictment on Thursday on charges that he tried to rape a New York hotel housekeeper, a spotlight has been cast on the culture of the institution. And questions have been revived about a 2008 episode in which the I.M.F. decided that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not broken any rules in sleeping with a female employee.

What may draw even more attention to the culture of the fund is the revelation of an affair involving a potential successor to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as managing director on Wednesday. Kemal Dervis of Turkey had a liaison while working at the World Bank years ago with a woman who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the relationship.

Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.’s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.”

“It’s sort of like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’; the rules are more like guidelines,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a prominent female economist who served as the I.M.F.’s deputy director for research from 2001 to 2003. “That sets the stage, I think, for more risk-taking.”

In 2007, officials at the fund declined to investigate a complaint by an administrative assistant who had slept with her supervisor, and who charged that he had given her poor performance reviews to pressure her to continue the relationship. Officials told the woman that the supervisor planned to retire soon, and therefore there was no point in investigating the charges, according to findings by the I.M.F.’s internal court.

The official, who is not named in the records, told investigators that he also had a sexual relationship with a second employee, and that he did not believe he had acted improperly.

In another case, a young woman who has since left the I.M.F. said that in 2009, a senior manager in her department started sending her increasingly explicit e-mails seeking a relationship. She complained to her boss, who did not take any action.

“They said they took it seriously, but two minutes later they were turning around and acting like everything was O.K. to the person who had done it to me,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she still works in the international development community. “He wasn’t punished. Not at all.”

Virginia R. Canter, who joined the I.M.F. last year with responsibility for investigating harassment claims, said the institution recently took a series of strong steps to protect employees. A new code of conduct adopted on May 6 specifies that intimate relationships with subordinates “are likely to result in conflicts of interest” and must be disclosed to the proper authorities.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/business/20fund.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Hotel Housekeeper Tells Magazine of Her Encounter With Strauss-Kahn

At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard

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