Journalist insists she was lucky to escape rape by Strauss-Kahn
One day after former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn appeared on French television to speak publicly about his alleged sexual assaults for the first time, one of his accusers made an appearance of her own, charging that it was a simple matter of luck that prevented her from being raped by him. Tristane Banon, a 32-year-old writer and journalist, told France’s Canal+ television that Strauss-Kahn had tried to rape her in an apartment during an interview in 2003. “Very quickly, we were fighting,” Banon said, describing how Strauss-Kahn allegedly double-locked the door after she entered. “If I had not been very lucky, it would have ended in rape.” Banon, who filed her case against Strauss-Kahn earlier this year, said she did not report the incident at the time because she would have “been on the verge of suicide.” Strauss-Kahn also faces accusations sexual assault from New York hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo. He maintains that his relations with Diallo were consensual and called both women “liars.”