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Lawyer Says Strauss-Kahn Didn't Know Women At Orgies Were Prostitutes

Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the studio of the French TV network TF1.
Francois Guillot
/
AFP/Getty Images
Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the studio of the French TV network TF1.

Former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who famously faced a sexual assault charge in New York City last year — a charge that was later dropped — is now being questioned by police in France about whether he was a customer of an alleged multinational prostitution ring.

His attorney, though, says Strauss-Kahn has a defense.

"One of Strauss-Kahn's lawyers has said that the former French presidential hopeful never knew that the women at orgies he attended were prostitutes," The Associated Press reports:

"He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you're not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman," Henri Leclerc told French radio Europe 1 in December.

From Paris, correspondent Eleanor Beardsley tells our Newscast Desk that Strauss-Kahn allegedly attended "libertine evenings" at hotels in Paris, Washington and New York City.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.