Sperm from ex-IMF chief found on maid’s shirt

NEW YORK—Investigators found traces of semen from Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the clothes of a hotel maid who accused the former head of the powerful International Monetary Fund (IMF) of attempted rape, media reports said on Monday.

DNA was found on the shirt of the chambermaid of Sofitel New York, who said she was attacked in Strauss-Kahn’s suite, according to NBC and ABC television.

The DNA matched sperm on the collar of the maid’s shirt, according to The Wall Street Journal and France 2 television channel.

The media reports quoted sources close to the investigation. But neither police, prosecutors nor Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers would comment on the reports.

According to The New York Times, a person briefed in the matter said the test results were consistent with what law enforcement officials had said about the account provided by the hotel maid.

The results are also consistent with what Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have suggested would be his defense—that a sexual encounter had indeed occurred when the maid came to clean his suite on May 14, but that it was consensual.

Other test results, including ones on samples taken from the hotel suite’s carpet, were pending.

The results described by the person briefed on the matter represented the first forensic evidence confirming that the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn had indeed engaged in a sexual act with the housekeeper, a 32-year-old woman from Guinea who was granted asylum in the United States and is raising her 15-year-old daughter.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the results had not been released.

Letter to IMF staff

Strauss-Kahn again denied the maid’s accusations in an e-mail message sent to the IMF staff on Sunday in which he expressed “profound sadness” at the way he resigned from his $450,000-a-year, tax-free post.

“I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face; I am confident that the truth will come out and I will be exonerated,” he wrote.

“In the meantime, I cannot accept that the (IMF)—and you dear colleagues—should in any way have to share my own personal nightmare. So, I had to go.”

Charges that he attempted to rape and sexually assault the chambermaid forced Strauss-Kahn to resign as IMF managing director last week and torpedoed his chances of standing in the French presidential election next year.

No comment

One of Strauss-Kahn’s defense lawyers, Benjamin Brafman, declined to comment on the test results.

In arguing for bail at Strauss-Kahn’s arraignment on May 16, however, Brafman said the defense team believed “this is a very, very defensible case.”

“The forensic evidence, we believe, is not consistent with a forcible encounter,” said the lawyer who visited his client on Monday afternoon for about an hour.

Substantial evidence

Prosecutors contended last week that while the investigation was in its early stages, the evidence against Strauss-Kahn “is substantial” and “continues to grow every day.”

“The complainant in this case has offered a compelling and unwavering story about what occurred in the defendant’s room,” said Artie McConnell, the prosecutor in the case.

“She made immediate outcries to multiple witnesses, both to hotel staff and to police,” McConnell added.

The woman, he said, also picked Strauss-Kahn out of a police lineup.

Flirted with staff

According to The Associated Press, the staff at Sofitel told authorities that Strauss-Kahn had made passes at them the day before the alleged attack, including flirting with a clerk and calling another employee to ask her up to his room.

A third person with direct knowledge of investigators’ interviews with the staff was quoted as saying that Strauss-Kahn had flirted with one female staff member who accompanied him to his suite to make sure his accommodations were satisfactory after he checked in on May 13.

The person said that Strauss-Kahn later phoned the desk clerk who had checked him in, asking her if she would like to get together with him when she got off duty.

The desk clerk refused, saying she was not allowed to socialize with the VIP guest, according to the person who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

House arrest

Released on $1-million cash bail and $5-million insurance bond on Friday, Strauss-Kahn has been placed under house arrest in a temporary apartment at the Empire Building at 71 Broadway, just steps from Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.

His original plan to take up residence in a luxury Upper East Side building upon his release from the notorious Rykers Island jail fell through on Friday after neighbors complained about his alleged crimes and the media encampment that materialized on their doorstep.

Strauss-Kahn, who faces seven counts of sexual assault, is scheduled to make a formal plea in his next court appearance on June 6.

Ian Weinstein, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, said that if Strauss-Kahn was convicted, “a sentence of 10 years in prison is entirely likely, and a sentence higher than that is entirely possible.”

‘Loving father’

Defense lawyers have described Strauss-Kahn as “a loving father and family man.” They say his actions after the alleged attack are not those of a guilty man eager for a quick escape.

According to his lawyers, Strauss-Kahn left the hotel, had lunch and then phoned later to ask if he had left anything behind.

When he was told by the hotel staff they had his cell phone, he told them exactly where he was: at John F. Kennedy International Airport on a flight bound for Paris. Authorities pulled him from the jetliner. Reports from AFP, New York Times News Service and AFP