International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaves the New York Police Department Special Victims Unit headquarters in Harlem May 15, 2011.
From his initial perp walk to his jubilant stroll out of a Manhattan courthouse, the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn may be remembered as the most famous nonprosecution in history. In May, the onetime chairman of the International Monetary Fund and odds-on favorite in France's next presidential election was hauled off a Paris-bound plane at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. As Strauss-Kahn — no stranger to accusations of sexual impropriety — was whisked off to the city's infamous Riker's Island jail, some cheered that justice would finally trump wealth and power. Others were more circumspect, and not without reason. Amid serious questions about the accuser's credibility, the charges against Strauss-Kahn were thrown out on Aug. 23, allowing him to return to France. Lost amid the press scrums and protests over l'affaire DSK was the admitted infidelity of a man who came close to leading a major world power, a detail that rarely found the spotlight. Strauss-Kahn would certainly not have been the first philandering head of state — of France or many other nations — but further sexual assault accusations, coupled with his entanglement in an ongoing prostitution scandal in northern France, have almost irreparably damaged his political career.