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Dominique Strauss-Kahn's 'swinging lifestyle' shocks France
Source: The Guardian
Dominique Strauss-Kahn's 'swinging lifestyle' shocks France
Angelique Chrisafis in Lille
Friday 13 February 2015 19.35 GMT
It is a saga of money, fame and destitute women ferried to luxury locations for sex with powerful men, against a backdrop of economic deprivation and social misery. France has been shaken this week by harrowing testimony from a trial in Lille that not only put in the dock Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief and one-time French presidential hopeful, but also examined a much wider, depressing picture of poverty, women submitted to sex acts against their will and alleged pimps who referred to them as “livestock”.
In court, Strauss-Kahn, 65, the one-time hero of the French left, flatly denied the accusation he aided and abetted the prostitution of seven women – a charge of “aggravated pimping” that carries a 10-year prison sentence. He said he never knew or suspected there were any prostitutes among the many women brought to him by regional French businessmen friends for group sex, at what he termed “festive afternoons” in Europe and the US while he was head of the IMF.
But after three days of distressing testimony at a court in Lille – during which two prostitutes said Strauss-Kahn had subjected them to a sex act they did not want, and he self-assuredly explained his appetite for group sex and how his sexual style was “rougher than the average man” – France began considering the wider implications of the vast trial known as the “Carlton Affair”, after the luxury hotel in Lille in which Strauss-Kahn has never set foot, but which was at the centre of the first investigation.
The grim stories of what the newspaper Libération called “the terrible daily reality” of prostitutes that emerged in the broader Lille trial have shocked France and could push the socialist government, which claims it wants to “abolish” prostitution, to resurrect its plans to criminalise paying for sex – a law that got through parliament but has stalled in the senate.
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Angelique Chrisafis in Lille
Friday 13 February 2015 19.35 GMT
It is a saga of money, fame and destitute women ferried to luxury locations for sex with powerful men, against a backdrop of economic deprivation and social misery. France has been shaken this week by harrowing testimony from a trial in Lille that not only put in the dock Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief and one-time French presidential hopeful, but also examined a much wider, depressing picture of poverty, women submitted to sex acts against their will and alleged pimps who referred to them as “livestock”.
In court, Strauss-Kahn, 65, the one-time hero of the French left, flatly denied the accusation he aided and abetted the prostitution of seven women – a charge of “aggravated pimping” that carries a 10-year prison sentence. He said he never knew or suspected there were any prostitutes among the many women brought to him by regional French businessmen friends for group sex, at what he termed “festive afternoons” in Europe and the US while he was head of the IMF.
But after three days of distressing testimony at a court in Lille – during which two prostitutes said Strauss-Kahn had subjected them to a sex act they did not want, and he self-assuredly explained his appetite for group sex and how his sexual style was “rougher than the average man” – France began considering the wider implications of the vast trial known as the “Carlton Affair”, after the luxury hotel in Lille in which Strauss-Kahn has never set foot, but which was at the centre of the first investigation.
The grim stories of what the newspaper Libération called “the terrible daily reality” of prostitutes that emerged in the broader Lille trial have shocked France and could push the socialist government, which claims it wants to “abolish” prostitution, to resurrect its plans to criminalise paying for sex – a law that got through parliament but has stalled in the senate.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/france-dominic-strauss-kahn-prostitutes-pimping-trial-lille
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