Former IMF chief denies woman’s claim that he went ahead with sex act after she cried and gestured that she did not want to do it

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has told a court in Lille that he was unaware that women who participated in orgies at luxury hotels in Paris and Washington DC were prostitutes.

The former head of the International Monetary Fund denied a claim made in court earlier by a prostitute who said she cried and gestured that she did not want to perform a certain sex act with him, but that he smiled and went ahead anyway.

“It’s not my concept of sexuality to do it with a prostitute,” Strauss-Kahn said, adding that he preferred the “party atmosphere” of partner-swapping and swinging. He said group-sex sessions had been rare “recreation” in his hectic schedule as head of the IMF.

He said that despite the idea given in court papers of “frenetic activity”, the sessions were organised four times a year because he had been very busy “saving the world from catastrophe” at the time of the sub-prime crisis. At the same time, he sad he had had a “complicated relationship” with his wife, the French journalist Anne Sinclair.

Strauss-Kahn is on trial accused of aiding and assisting the prostitution of seven women between 2009 and 2011. It is alleged that he had group sex with prostitutes in Europe and the US hired by French businessmen friends at his instigation. Strauss-Kahn and 13 other defendants deny charges of pimping.

The court heard from Mounia, a prostitute from Lille, who court papers had described as having been the victim of sexual abuse as a child and having a chaotic childhood. Later she had had money problems and family problems as a single-mother and worked as a prostitute, she said.

She described how she was recruited by a businessman, David Roquet, and travelled from Lille to Paris by train for an evening at a smart Paris hotel in which she would be presented to Strauss-Kahn for sex.

She said Roquet told her she had to be “discreet” because of Strauss-Kahn’s high profile and that “everything had to be right for him”. She said there was a buffet in the hotel suite, a few words of introduction were exchanged and she was directed by Roquet to take a shower. She said it was “all well organised”.

Crying as she gave evidence, Mounia said she then went to a room with Strauss-Kahn but did not want to engage in a specific act and was in tears with him. “I showed my reticence with gestures … gestures that made myself understood. I didn’t accept that practice. I didn’t want that practice.”

Asked whether she said the word no, she replied: “I didn’t say it orally, but I cried a lot … ”

The judge interjected: “Didn’t he realise?” Mounia said: “Yes, because what I noticed was his smile – from start to finish.” She said what struck her was that he went ahead, smiling as she cried, and smiling until the end even though she had made it understood that she didn’t want to do it.

Asked if it was possible that Strauss-Kahn had misunderstood the issue of consent, Mounia said: “I felt that he understood. I was crying, I was in pain.”

Asked whether there was violence, she said: “It wasn’t violence, it was a sex act with force.” She said she didn’t dare tell him to stop because she was afraid she wouldn’t get paid. “I had to have the money, I needed it.” She said: “I felt very small.”

Asked by the judge: “Did you have the capacity to say no?” she answered: “I doubt it.”

The act was not named in court. In court papers, Mounia said she thought it was “counter-nature”.

Strauss-Kahn was asked by the judge later whether he had noticed Mounia crying. “No, I would have found it chilling,” he said.

He said he didn’t have a very precise memory of the woman. But he said he had no sense of “refusal”, adding: “When someone says no, it’s no.”

The other businessmen and police chief in the dock had earlier defined their understanding of swingers’ parties - described using the French term “libertinage” - as consensual partner-swapping and group-sex for the pleasure of all involved.

Asked if she experienced any pleasure from the evening, Mounia said “certainly not”; she had submitted only because she had money problems, she said.

“I felt like an object,” she said. The judge added: “You’re not the only person to say that in this case.”

The trial centres on whether Strauss-Kahn knew that the women at the group-sex “soirées” were prostitutes. He vehemently denies any knowledge they were prostitutes.



Questioned by one of Strauss-Kahn’s barristers, Mounia said that she had not mentioned payment to DSK before or after, and that she was not paid at the event or in front of him but in a taxi afterwards by the businessman who had brought her to the event.

She said that when she was asked at the evening what she did for a living, she had said she had children and that she was a bilingual secretary in Lille – a job she had sometimes held.

She did not speak to others about being paid, she said. She said she felt the atmosphere at the beginning of the evening when she arrived in the hotel suite was one of “boyfriend-girlfriend” - “everyone seemed to know each other.”

She said she felt it was clear that other women present were prostitutes because they were provocatively dressed. She said she was dressed more “classically” in jeans and a tailored jacket. Asked to describe the atmosphere of the evening, she said, “It was the atmosphere of a soirée prepared for people to have sexual relations with Dominique Strauss-Kahn.” She had told investigative judges during the inquiry that to her, “the behaviour” of the evening showed that there was clearly prostitution involved.

The court heard from another prostitute, Jade, who had been recruited by businessmen for an evening at a Paris hotel. She said she had seen Strauss-Kahn on a bed with numerous women, engaged in activity without a condom, which had “repulsed” her. She had insisted on a condom.



She said the evening bore no resemblance to a habitual swingers night when couples would talk first. “No one asked me my name, there was just a hand on my head to fellate him,” she said of Strauss-Kahn. She described the scene as “a bit bestial”.

Strauss-Kahn told the court he only had unprotected sex with longer-term consenting “girlfriends” and didn’t “experience” the events in the same way Jade and Mounia had described. He said that for him it had been very friendly.

Court papers have stated that the prostitutes in the case were sexually abused as children. Strauss-Kahn said their difficult lives may have made them experience things differently.

The court also heard how on another occasion Strauss-Kahn arrived for a business lunch in Paris, spent three minutes chatting to friends and then went downstairs to a disused disco and had sex with a woman he had never met before.

The woman was a prostitute who had been brought there by his businessman friends and paid. He said he had no idea the woman was a prostitute. “I’m not proud but around 10 times I’ve found myself in a situation where women offered themselves to me,” he said.

Strauss-Kahn, once tipped to be the next Socialist president of France but now a political pariah, confirmed his status as divorced, and said he was an international consultant.

The other defendants – accused of pimping with him by providing prostitutes for a dozen “soirées” between 2009 and 2011 in which Strauss-Kahn was described by investigating judges as the central pivot, and “king of the party” – had been the subject of expert psychiatric reports into their relationship to sex and women. But it emerged in court that Strauss-Kahn had refused to submit to a psychiatric personality report and had instead handed over a letter saying any psychological report into him was pointless because he felt he had “not committed a crime”.



Roquet and a fellow businessman friend of Strauss-Kahn, Fabrice Paszkowski, as well as the police chief Jean-Christophe Lagarde, who were present at the Paris soirée and other soirées with Strauss-Kahn, all deny pimping charges against them.

The trial continues.



