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Little is known about the chambermaid who said that French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her in a New York City hotel room last month. But details are beginning to emerge as lawyers and reporters dig deeper into the woman's background, uncovering bits and pieces of a life that began in a little village in the African country of Guinea.
In a report by the 'New York Times' this morning, the woman's family described her as a shy, hardworking, Koran-observant widow and mother who made her way to the Bronx not long after the death of her husband.
The woman, 32, has so far shied away from media attention as defense lawyers for Strauss-Kahn, who before his arrest was the head of the International Monetary Fund and a leading contender for the French presidency, allege that whatever sexual contact the two had was consensual, not forced, as prosecutors contend. Strauss-Kahn's defense team has also said in court papers that they have "substantial information" that could "gravely undermine her credibility," according to recently published news reports.
In interviews with family back in Guinea (the family's home is pictured above), a largely Muslim country in West Africa, and with friends and former employers in New York, the 'Times' pulls together a somewhat incomplete bio, but one that so far is the most detailed picture of the woman. Its opening graphs read:
She was born in a mud hut in an isolated hamlet in Africa with no electricity or running water, a 10-minute hike to the nearest road. Unschooled, she was married off to a distant cousin as a teenager, had a daughter and was soon widowed.
"She is a village girl who didn't go to school to learn English, Greek, Portuguese, what have you," her older brother, Mamoudou, 49, told the Times. "All she learned was the Koran. Can you imagine how on earth she is suffering through this ordeal?"
"The place where she is now," he added, "I don't even know where it is."
At least one reader decried the tone of the story as patronizing and offensive and that the portrait painted of the woman is as little more than an "unschooled" peasant.
In the end though, what this profile seems to do is further one of the larger themes of this somewhat international drama that is playing out in our theater of criminal justice: the word of a humble immigrant is being pitted against one of the most powerful men in the world, a wealthy white man accused of trying to rape a poor black woman.
And as attorney's dig deeper into or defend this woman's character, and journalists pour over the alleged victim's once unremarkable life, the storyline and the perception of this woman's character will likely shift depending on who is telling the story.
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