France is outraged by IMF chief's 'perp walk'. Perp walks illegal in France.

Perp walks ordinary in US, an outrage in France




A sea of cameras captured a rumpled, handcuffed, angry-looking Dominique Strauss-Kahn as plainclothes detectives took the International Monetary Fund head from a police precinct to court. The images weren't unusual for a high-profile criminal case in the U.S., but in his French homeland, they'd be illegal.

While American authorities have condoned, or at least tolerated, such "perp walks" for more than a century, in France it's been illegal to show images of suspects in handcuffs since 2000. French politicians and citizens alike are upset by the images, which they say make Strauss-Kahn, accused of sexual abuse, appear guilty.

"DSK Handcuffed: Photo Shock," read a headline in Tuesday's daily Le Parisien.

"Dominique still is presumed innocent," said Martine Aubry, head of France's Socialist party, which had been expected to make Strauss-Kahn its nominee to challenge President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year's election.

Sylfie Vallon el Kadri, a French civil servant, said the images of Strauss-Kahn in court "were difficult to bear."


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/05/17/state/n150359D57.DTL#ixzz1MetywXwN

:snoop:

'men being men' enables this stuff. Personally, that shit about men cheating is somehow honorable is just that, shit. What it says to me is that French men have no honor and their word is worthless if they can't keep it in their pants. This guy should have been stripped naked and dragged out in chains for ruining the life of this woman, her daughter and the other two or three women that have come out about him including, I think I heard a frigging relative. Boo hoo, France. ( This is for the dinks that think cheating on your wives is their right, dickish behavior for a million reasons let alone the health risks of fucking around or seeing every woman as prey only and not for the rest who aren't dickish. Just so you know. )

The Americans would just deny it more or act more puritanical as a cover. Then again, I am biased with an evil French husband. Oh, he has such horrible ideas about women. I suppose he must be cheating on me all the time, even though he isn't. Lol.

Yeah, this strauss guy, if he committed the crime, is a prick, but most French people aren't. It is power that drives many people to think they can do this crap and not get caught.

well aware he uses force too.

i am sure that makes him more comfortable in continuing behavior.

sophisticated. i thought it was something they bragged about?

no talking about your husband.

But then again, they realize that he's under US law now.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

have you ever made the statement that bush and cheney and their administration committed a crime?

is it only certain people we are not allowed to draw conclusions on based on information we have?

who have a legitimate concern, that i happen to agree with as well.

it is down right scary to see how powerful an effect the media has had on public opinion when all the facts are not known... yet from what i read, the media has already convicted him, and it is having a huge influence on their audience.

have gotten to this point. but that being said

i was thinking thru the keeping everything hidden thru out. post 27. i dont know that it is such a good thing and can see all kinds of abuses that would allow those with power and money to never pay a price

sorry, but i don't get the point then.

however, i do see the point of the french law, especially in light of what is going on right now.

text book case, imo.

just because someone has not yet been convicted does not mean I cannot believe that he did the crime. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" simply means that the GOVERNMENT, LAW ENFORCEMENT, and THE COURTS cannot assume he is guilty, it has no bearing on public opinion.

right now this is a he said, she said dilemma... and we are far from knowing what happened.

we have information on this one mow. we have information on bushco. we draw conclusions. hypocrite is one that says, we are not allowed to draw a conclusion with this man, but bushco crime, hell, it is well known.

for you

because you drew a conclusion.

but i assure you, there will be those that will say you are declaring guilty without a fair trial

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Are you calling the victim a LIAR?

other than that, you have no way of knowing what the maid said. the maid has not spoken on the record, only through her lawyers & the court filing.

...contact. Not lips. Mouth. Forced oral sex.

The filing says "forcibly made contact with his penis and informant's mouth twice". It doesn't specify sucking, or internal contact, though that may have happened. We need to wait for a trial.

No...but I guess you know exactly who she is and why she would not lie.

I'm not calling her a liar...I'm just not rushing to judgment like you are.

the people of France have a myriad of different feelings, just like here.

Funny how so many DU'ers who would trash the USA and Americans for our XYZ take issue with pointing out a prevailing attitude in France.

That had to really hurt the old dear...LOL.

shame they don't like the 'perp walk', but the 'perp' wasn't walked in France.

They can run their country however they want.

They have universal health care and only half of a war going on.

as did the police. go figure. probably why he was arrested. all anyone knew is she was assaulted.

:(

than the maid, her family, friends, and neighbors do in their very own home.

someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. I suppose they believe this is a deterrent to crime, but most criminals could care less and the innocents suffer particularly a loss of dignity.

--snip--

The French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen had declared that suspects were presumed to be innocent until they had been declared to be guilty by a court. A concern of Bonaparte's was the possibility of arbitrary arrest, or excessive remand (imprisonment prior to a trial). Bonaparte remarked that care should be taken to preserve personal freedoms especially when the case was before the Imperial Court: "these courts would have a great strength, they should be prohibited from abusing this situation against weak citizen without connections." However, remand still was the normal procedure for suspects of severe crimes, such as murder.
--snip--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_code

but that police walked on either side and there were pctures.

If they want to keep their home-grown alleged sexual offenders at home, they won't see them getting arrested in this country.

(Allegedly, at least)

Which doesn't make any sense since in every case it would already be known that the alleged criminal was perp walked in handcuffs. Hiding this visual from the public smacks of trying to hide the truth - and a known truth at that.

because they'd be seen widely, including future jurors, and paint the suspect as a dangerous man who needs to be kept in handcuffs at all times. The handcuffs do not show 'a truth'. In many cases (such as this - a 62 year old man of moderate build with an escort of serving police officers) they are unnecessary - apart from PR for the police force.

in the legal systems of other countries. Not only the French who are learning from this example.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

:shrug:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28103.htm

By Mike Whitney

May 15, 2011 "Information Clearing House" --- I have no way of knowing whether the 32-year-old maid who claims she was attacked and forced to perform oral sex on IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is telling the truth or not. I'll leave that to the braying hounds in the media who have already assumed the role of judge, jury and Lord High Executioner. But I will say, the whole matter smells rather fishy, just like the Eliot Spitzer story smelled fishy. Spitzer, you may recall, was Wall Street's biggest adversary and a likely candidate to head the SEC, a position at which he would have excelled. In fact, there's no doubt in my mind that if Spitzer had been appointed to lead the SEC, most of the top investment bankers on Wall Street would presently be making license plates and rope-soled shoes at the federal penitentiary. So, there was plenty of reason to shadow Spitzer's every move and see what bit of dirt could be dug up on him. As it turns out, the ex-Governor of New York made it easy for his enemies by engaging a high-priced hooker named Ashley Dupre for sex at the Mayflower Hotel. When the news broke, the media descended on Spitzer like a swarm of locusts poring over every salacious detail with the ebullient fervor of a randy 6th-grader. Meanwhile, the crooks on Wall Street were able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to doing what they do best; fleecing investors and cheating people out of the life savings.

Strauss-Kahn had enemies in high places, too, which is why this whole matter stinks to high-Heaven. First of all, Strauss-Kahn was the likely candidate of the French Socialist Party who would have faced Sarkozy in the upcoming presidential elections. The IMF chief clearly had a leg-up on Sarkozy who has been battered by a number of personal scandals and plunging approval ratings...


...Strauss-Kahn had set out on a "kinder and gentler" path, one that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries or crush their labor unions. Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists who look to the IMF to provide legitimacy to their ongoing plunder of the rest of the world. These are the people who think that the current policies are "just fine" because they produce the results they're looking for, which is bigger profits for themselves and deeper poverty for everyone else.

Here's Stiglitz again, this time imparting the "kiss of death" to his friend Strauss-Kahn:

"Strauss-Kahn is proving himself a sagacious leader of the IMF.... As Strauss-Kahn concluded in his speech to the Brookings Institution shortly before the Fund’s recent meeting: “Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.”

More at link.

there certainly seems to be an agenda in the media at least to prosecute this guy without him having his day in court.

pretty scary anyway you look at it.

a car that runs on water - no one gets set-up to be a rapist. If the sex had been consensual, and it turned out the woman was one month shy of her 18th birthday and/or there was money on the table, etc, then you can talk about a set-up.


From what I've read, the only person who was set up was the victim, told that the occupants wanted the suite cleaned and given a time the suite would be empty.

They would have blown his fucking brains out long before you ever heard of these inventions !

prejudice jurors or even the general public.

something like this to be hidden even thru trial would allow a lot of people with power and money to get out of it. i would suggest the mere fact the cops and the maid didnt realize who the man is the only reason he was arrested in the first place.

thinking about what you say, i dont knwo that would be a good thing to allow these things to be hidden away with no transparency at all.

intersting. never thought about that

i am not applauding or outraged that it is. thinking about it, i guess i conclude, free press.

i got in an accident. i felt so bad. hit a woman on a bike. her fault. i was pulling out and looking behind me where traffic was coming. she was on wrong side of road.

but i still was so shaken up and felt so so bad. they were filming me. i told cops, i dont want them filming me. the cop felt bad but said their rights

are you sure you want to restrict another of the rights we have in this country

i didnt like it. but.... their right

The criminals tend to be escorted through a back hallway as to avoid any security issues, but otherwise public proceedings are essential to a civilized society.

You know what, Monsieur Le Great Seducer? This is the USA and we do things differently over here. I'm sure a Paris hotel maid would have been persuaded to hush things up, but you need to learn that in the USA, we don't care who you are, you just don't do shit like that. And if you do, you will end up doing a perp walk.

:shrug:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-france-backlash-20110518,0,1675294.story

Reporting from Paris—


It was only a matter of time after the arrest in New York of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges before the America-bashing would begin in France.

On day one, the scandal involving the International Monetary Fund chief and a hotel maid brought shock and stupefaction. Day two, shame and self-pity. By day three, France was looking for a messenger to shoot, someone to blame for the likely political loss of the Socialist Party leader many believed would be the next president.

And so the country launched itself into one of its predictable, periodic spasms of anti-Americanism.

How outrageous that New York police led Strauss-Kahn out of a Police Department facility in handcuffs, resulting in "grotesque" photographs — that were nevertheless widely published in France. What about the presumption of innocence? France wailed about headlines in U.S. tabloids — many of which were reproduced for French readers.

:rofl:

I am shocked.

Here's one from 2009

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/10/relatives-of-hate-crime-perp-he-doesnt.html

Are they breaking the law by showing them in France?

Just wondering.

than the hotel maid and her family, friends, and neighbors are at home.

Perhaps that ought to make the good citizens of France feel better.

And before anyone jumps at me--so is rape.

And the IMF for that matter.

the womans name that has been held was outed by the french. really

something to admire.

and are you suggesting that our court system does not believe innocent until proven guilty? i could swear that is how we operate, too.

would you rather make sure all this is hidden until after the trial? you know, take away news rights. less transparency. that is a good thing?

protective custody tonight than the maid, her family, friends, and neighbors are in their very own homes...

either.

So basically, guys like DSK can go under the radar sexually assaulting women and no one cares because it's not in the public spotlight.

Think Mad Men.

Legalized.

my opinion of course

They march them out before the cameras like they're some sort of prize down there...they want that blue ribbon before they turn their pigs into bacon.



We're just walking them from the car to the courtroom door. The French may not like it, but it's pretty tame by international standards.

the more "outrage" the better.

Do the people who oppose this also oppose making any pretrial hearings secret lest they "prejudice jurors"?

Yes the corporations exploit this, but a press that cannot say negative things or show negative things about certain classes of individuals is not free, imo.

According to the article, perp walks are not illegal. Publishing images of them is what is illegal. The restriction is not on the police but on the media (and anyone with a camera).

Scary.

The vast majority of people do not benefit from such laws in any way.

*rarely a difference these days, I know.

Unfortunately, they're not.

Supposedly the reason behind the law is that such photographs are prejudicial to the alleged criminal, but I don't understand how it can be seen that way when it is known that the alleged criminal was perp walked while handcuffed. If you already know that the alleged criminal was perp walked while handcuffed then how can it be any more prejudicial to see it? It smacks of a law that attempts to hide the truth (and a truth that is already known) which seems to me rather prejudicial toward the alleged victim.

This is America, don't come here and think you can assault a woman and not be treated like any other accused rapist. :mad:

"Sylfie Vallon el Kadri, a French civil servant, said the images of Strauss-Kahn in court "were difficult to bear.""

I'm sure we'll all manage to get through this tough.

Weren't you the guys who were cool with Roman Polanski and didn't think he committed any real crime?

if we do something they don't approve we get reports of how shocking and offensive is to them.

If they do something we don't approve of (like say offer a great deal of support for rapist Roman Polanski) and some Americans express outrage we are criticized for being stupid culturally insensitive Americans.

see, this is what i appreciate with you and i. we agree and we disagree. one never knows what it will be. i get surprises

to get special treatment.
If he didn't want to 'appear guilty', he should not have allegedly sexually assaulted this woman.