French voters expressed disbelief as well as imaginative plot theories Sunday after waking up to the revelation that Dominique Strauss-Kahn was being held by police in New York on charges of sexual assault.
“This is completely surreal””politics is turning into a play,” said Hakim Bouras, 24, a bank information-technology technician, who said he voted for Socialist candidate Segolene Royal in the 2007 presidential elections.
In the hours since New York City police said Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been arrested after allegedly forcing a cleaning woman onto his bed and sexually assaulting her inside his room at the Sofitel Hotel near Times Square, images of the International Monetary Fund president have flooded the airwaves in France and dominated news coverage.
From what I’ve been reading in The (London) Telegraph and comments, everyone in the EU has known for a long time that this guy is a perv but they’ve looked the other way. They’re hoping he gets a full dose of American justice.
Ah, France, the country that refused to extradite a convicted child rapist because he was a movie director…..
A lot of the commentary from France has been completely ridiculous. However, one point they’ve made did strike home with me. Where did we get this barbaric “perp walk” custom? The French have complained about the spectacle of DSK’s being paraded in front of cameras in handcuffs. Of course, the response is that he is not being singled out and is being treated like any other accused. Their rejoinder is, why is any suspect treated that way prior to conviction? What legitimate purpose does it serve? In France (and most of Europe) one would simply not see such things, the dignity of the accused being a matter of some importance. I must say, in thinking about it, this is an element of our criminal process that we could well do without. It seems to have no purpose other that feeding the press’s prurient interest in marketing to the Schadenfreude ethic about in the land. Can anyone advance a justification for this kind of pre-conviction treatment?