The Good, The Bad, and The People Who Don't Learn From Their Mistakes

One of the biggest news stories recently has been all about Dominque Strauss-Kahn. Recently, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was accused (and subsequently indicted) on an attempted rape of a maid in a high-end Manhattan hotel. As the story unfolded, more and more came out about Dominique's life, and it suddenly became clear that this is a guy who doesn't have a completely clean past.

BUT, this man was the same man who was expected to be the socialist candidate for the French presidency! How could everyone look past all of his shadiness to allow him to become such an increasingly powerful person? Of course, the New York Times did a little bit of digging and came up with an inflammatory article around how women at the IMF are helpless in the eyes of the predatory gazes of the men who work there. Although its clear that some of the facts are purposely placed to cause shock and awe (and probably don't have a strong base in fact) other facts are surprisingly spot on. NYTimes claims:

Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.’s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.”
“It’s sort of like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’; the rules are more like guidelines,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a prominent female economist who served as the I.M.F.’s deputy director for research from 2001 to 2003. “That sets the stage, I think, for more risk-taking.”

The article goes on to insinuate that it might have something to do with the demographic of the institution itself- citing that:

In recent years the fund has tried to diversify by hiring more women, Even so, only six of the I.M.F.’s 30 senior executives are women. Only 21.5 percent of all managers at the fund are women, compared with 32 percent at its sister institution, the World Bank, and 26 percent at the United Nations secretariat.

 Even the whole process itself is suspect. Supposedly, the actual incident happened in the middle of the afternoon- around 1PM- on Saturday. Dominique wasn't actually arrested until 2:15AM on Sunday, but he was taken off an Air France plane right before he was supposed to board a plane to go back to France. Why wouldn't, actually, why couldn't we have stopped him earlier? After the arrest, the NYPD got a lot of heat because they forced Dominique to do the "perp walk"- basically (gasp) handcuffing him and leading him to a police car in public. I'm personally with the NYPD on this one- they were doing things as they normally would for anyone accused of rape. Some say that it was unnecessary since the charges had not been proven and he's such a high-ranking, public figure. My response to that is, so now we're protecting the powerful against the public perception of them being terrible people when they're accused of being terrible people? It's a thin line I agree, but in this case I think it was understandable.

After his arrest, Dominique stepped down from his position at the IMF, but released a statement that he denied all of the accusations, but was stepping down to devote all of his time to prove his innocence. This, after he stepped out of the shower naked, sexually assaulted the maid, and, when she broke free, caught her and dragged her back to the bathroom where he assaulted her a second time. She finally broke free and immediately called 911. Yup, sounds pretty innocent to me. He claims it was consensual- doesn't the consensual nature stop when she runs away?

After all of this, when officials came to his hotel, they found it empty, as he was already on the Air France plane. However, the plane had been grounded, and he was luckily taken off the plane and into custody.  Through all of this, Dominique's wife has decided to stand by her man. A former television journalist, Dominique's wife Anne Sinclair was a celebrity who conducted over 500 interviews with politicians and important people all around the world.Weird thing is that this isn't the first time this has happened, as Dominique had an affair with an IMF staffer named Piroska Nagy in 2008. Afterward, he [unsurprisingly] kept his job.

Maybe I'm just a little too sensitive, a little too close, to how (sorry, but typically male) leaders abuse their power. I do want to mention that this is one of those unfortunate cases where the minority becomes representative of the majority- however unfair that may be. I work with many male leaders who I have nothing but respect for- true men who know that even with their power, they too need to abide by rules and restrictions and they are not exempt. To those men, I want to say thank you for being role models for others. For the others, I think their actions make it clear that they are not real men, and I don't think there's enough punishment in the world to cover their abuses- because it's not just their repugnant actions, it's also their mentality that it's somehow "okay" because of who they are. That's what the punishment should be for, because no one should be beyond the rules.