Rumors Trump Facts in the Increasingly Sensational DSK Rape Scandal

For more coverage of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal, click here.

Rumors of a possible alibi for Dominique Strauss-Kahn didn’t last long, but that speculation was quickly replaced Tuesday with a new alternative defense: The sex was consensual. 

That speculation comes from the New York Post, which arrived at that conclusion based on vague comments from DSK’s legal team at Monday’s bail hearing, and an unnamed source who told the paper, “There may well have been consent.”

The Post’s ever-so-subtle lede:

France's leading presidential candidate may have pounced on a Manhattan hotel maid – but she wanted it, his lawyer asserted in court yesterday, hinting at what could be an explosive defense.

That assertion again? “The evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter,” DSK defense lawyer Ben Brafman told the judge Monday.

Not exactly definitive stuff, especially when you consider that the unnamed source was identified only as “a source close to the defense.”

(Although, in fairness to the Post, it would certainly be an “explosive defense” given that it’s a possibility that so far most people don’t seem to be considering.)

To be clear, DSK’s lawyers have yet to publicly offer the specifics of their defense strategy – either in court or out of it – and they may yet argue that the sex was consensual. But if the Post really is talking with people privy to the defense team’s internal thoughts, then it raises the question of why that person would share the information with the paper.

The likely answer would be that it was a bid to help DSK score a much-needed victory in the U.S. court of public opinion, a place where he has taken a beating since news broke of his arrest Saturday.

But if that was the intent, the effort was far from a success. The Post story quickly pivots from the consensual defense to what it calls “disturbing information” about how DSK was “coolly having lunch with his daughter” and conducting business phone calls after the alleged attack. And, of course, there was the front-page, all-caps headline: HE DID HAVE SEX WITH THE MAID.

As unsubstantiated as the Post story appears, it does, intentionally or not, speak to a larger point: Most of thinly-sourced information that has been reported by the media has come from either law enforcement officials or friends of the victim, not from the defense. As a result, much of the early reporting, naturally, follows the prosecution’s preferred narrative.

While possible defense strategies may continue to surface in the coming days – whether intentionally leaked by the defense or not – they are little more than rumors until the trial begins.

For more coverage of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal, click here.

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