Linda Fairstein Flexes a Familiar Muscle Analyzing the Case Against DSK

Linda Fairstein has long been a guest on the Imus in the Morning program to promote her novels, like Silent Mercy, a New York Times bestseller. Today, Fairstein put to use another set of impressive skills, honed over 20 years as chief of the sex crimes unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, to explain the case against the now former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused last weekend of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York City. 
 
“You’re alleging the most serious crime in the penal law, short of murder, so people are taken pretty seriously when that call is made,” Fairstein said of a rape complaint. Following the initial charge, police take into account the demeanor of the person making the accusations. Immediate outcry, she explained, is critical.
 
“The bad history is people thinking about it for a day or two, deciding if they want the stigma of being a rape victim,” Fairstein said. “So when somebody has immediately gone to coworkers and colleagues and their boss, it’s usually out of their own hands about making the call, somebody else may pick up the phone. And that’s got a lot of credibility with the police.”
 
As helpful to a victim as it can be to act quickly, it is equally important that the police act quickly, especially in this case, where Strauss-Kahn was at JFK Airport, on a plane bound for Paris, ten minutes away from takeoff when they arrested him.
 
Interestingly, Fairstein is not a big believer in “he said, she said” cases of sexual assault. “If you’re a detective or a prosecutor who does this and only this, as these units do, you get pretty good at making the victim go through every detail of what happened in that room,” she said. In other words, investigators turn a 20-minute encounter into a four-hour interview, forcing the accuser to go over inane details to ensure accuracy.
 
Reports are that the prosecutors have DNA evidence, but it would not be strange for a hotel room where somebody had stayed for a few days to be covered in their DNA. “If the DNA is on the clothing, for example, of the housekeeper…then the story changes, and that’s very much in support of what her story is,” Fairsein added.
 
On the surface, there appears to be no motive for Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, an African immigrant with a child, to make this story up and open her life up to such scrutiny. That she was made to testify to a grand jury this week, so soon after the incident occurred, speaks volumes. “Often we’d have cases where you had to investigate for two or three weeks before you ever thought of putting a witness under oath,” Fairstein pointed out.
 
Having posted $1 million bail last night, Strauss-Kahn, whom the grand jury indicted, is now resting comfortably at a Manhattan apartment after spending a few days at Rikers Island jail. He’s being monitored both by the police and by an ankle bracelet to ensure he does not flee the country, which Fairstein thinks is unlikely anyway.
 
Though all signs point in the hotel maid’s favor, Fairstein said investigators would be crazy not to examine the possibility that something much different took place. “There are false reports of any kind of crime, and actually FBI statistics are a little higher for sexual assault,” she said. “I trust these teams of detectives and prosecutors, I know most of them. They’re really smart, good lawyers.”
 
Kind of like Fairstein herself. “What a great career you’ve had since…” Imus began, then paused. “Well, since you had a great career!”
 
-Julie Kanfer