NEW YORK - A hotel maid who accuses ex-International Monetary Fund boss DominiqueStrauss-Kahn of sexual assault sued him on Monday over what she calls a "violent and sadistic"attack in an upscale suite that left her life "in shambles".
Nafissatou Diallo, the Manhattan maid who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexuallyassaulting her, speaks during a media conference at the Christian Cultural Center in the Brooklynborough of New York in this July 28, 2011 file photo. [Photo/Agencies] |
Lawyers for the maid, Guinean immigrant Nafissatou Diallo, wrote in the lawsuit that Strauss-Kahn "intentionally, brutally and violently sexually assaulted Ms Diallo and in the processhumiliated, degraded, violated and robbed Ms Diallo of her dignity as a woman".
The lawyers, Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, promised to tell a jury about otherinstances when Strauss-Kahn sexually attacked women in hotel rooms and apartments, coercedemployees into complying with sexual demands or accosted women with inappropriate sexualremarks and tried to get them to perform sexual acts.
They said the lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages, would "redress the violent and sadisticattack by defendant Strauss-Kahn on Nafissatou Diallo when he sexually assaulted" her on May14 at the Sofitel hotel in midtown Manhattan.
The lawsuit says Strauss-Kahn injured Diallo's shoulder, bruised her vagina, tore her pantyhoseand violently grabbed the back of her head during the attack.
The lawsuit, filed in state court in the Bronx, accuses Strauss-Kahn of acting like a commoncriminal afterward, fleeing the hotel so quickly that he left behind traces of his semen, along withbloody tissues.
"In his haste to flee the scene of a crime, he rushed out of the hotel with toothpaste smeared onthe outside of his mouth and was looking over his shoulders," the lawsuit says.
The attack has left Diallo physically and psychologically harmed, with permanent damage doneto her professional and personal reputations along with severe mental anguish from which shemay never fully recover, the lawsuit says. She suffers great emotional distress, humiliation,depression and physical pain, and the experience has "left Ms Diallo's life and her youngdaughter's life in shambles", it says.
Lawyers for Strauss-Kahn said the maid's lawsuit has no merit and their client will fight itvigorously.
"We have maintained from the beginning that the motivation of Mr Thompson and his client wasto make money," attorneys William W. Taylor and Benjamin Brafman said. "The filing of thislawsuit ends any doubt on that question."
The filing of a lawsuit so quickly after an arrest provides an avenue for lawyers to pursueevidence and interview witnesses for a potential civil trial while memories are fresh.
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