DSK’s initial case falling apart as new charges arise from another woman.

UPDATE: DSK accuser is suing the New York Post for calling her a “prostitute.”

It looks like Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s rape case is being thrown out for a perceived lack of “credibility” on behalf of the potential victim. We already knew this was coming, but a rather unfortunate precedent set for women coming out against sexual assault when they are not the Most Perfect Victim possible.

In the wake of this case falling apart it looks like another case has come to the surface. French writer, Tristan Banon who is also a friend of Strauss-Kahn’s daughter and a goddaughter of his second wife, plans to file a case against Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape in 2002.

William Saletan reports at Slate,

Banon says that in February 2003, when she was 23, she interviewed Strauss-Kahn for a book. Afterward, he phoned her and asked her to meet him at a Paris address for a follow-up interview. The address turned out to be an apartment. There, he touched her and became increasingly physical. She resisted. On a TV show four years ago, she said, according to a Telegraph translation, that the encounter “ended very, very violently because I told him clearly … We didn’t merely slap each other … I gave kicks, and he undid my bra, he tried to undo my jeans.” Agence France Presse translates her account differently: “I told him clearly ‘No, No!’—and we finished up fighting on the floor. “There wasn’t just a couple of blows. I kicked him, and he tried to unclip my bra, to open my jeans.” In an interview just published in L’Express, Banon describes

his fingers in my mouth, his hands in my pants … [He] grabbed my hand and arm, I asked him to let me go … He pulled me toward him, we came down and we fought on the ground for several minutes … He was violent. When I realized he really wanted to rape me, I started to give him a kick with my boots, I was terrified and I told him: “You’re not going to rape me?” And then I managed to free myself, I ran downstairs …

Banon says she tried to stop Strauss-Kahn by reminding him that she was close to his daughter’s age. She says he replied: “What does Camille have to do with it?”

DSK is, of course, hoping that the case in NYC falling apart will lead to these new accusations (which Banon has actually been public about this since 2007, she is just finally officially filing charges) looking less credible as well. But, like any accuser, Banon deserves to have her charges take seriously until proven otherwise. Sadly, when it comes to rape, officials seem more interested in the credibility of the victim being the “perfect” victim as opposed to whether she was raped or not.