It was in 2012. The DSK affair shook the political sphere across the world and above all, it shook the French presidential elections of 2012.
"I have been deprived of justice", these are the words of Nafissatou Diallo. The one who shook the political sphere with the DSK affair, confided again to Paris Match. Nine years after the events, she considers that her life is not at all the same since this scandal. In 2012, she accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault in a suite at the Sofitel hotel in New York, United States. At the time, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was Managing Director of the IMF. He is in the race for the presidential elections in France. The DSK affair had caused an uproar and the brutal downfall of the businessman. If a complaint had been lodged and an investigation had been opened, the criminal justice system had finally dropped all charges against him.
I decided to give the truth
It was therefore on December 10, 2012 that we saw Nafissatou Diallo for the last time in the media. Nine years have passed and confiding in Paris Match, she claims to have felt deeply neglected ever since. She explains why, today, a book on her ordeal will be released: "This story will follow me until the end of my days, and it is impossible for me to remain silent. So I decided to give my truth. I suffered a lot and heard, read, a lot of horrors on me. I want to tell people who I am ", she tells the newspaper that met her at the chapel of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn.
According to her, no justice has been done concerning her. Nafissatou Diallo believes that she has been completely neglected in this case: "I was tricked and betrayed. I will never get over the way New York prosecutors treated me." All this is without counting the harassment she suffered afterwards, forcing her to move: "I was inundated with letters, mostly strangers, who spoke to me as if I had hit the jackpot and asked me for money. Some accused me of having tricked DSK, of having done so. sing. There's been a whole bunch of conspiracy theories… I had to move out of my apartment, move into a secure building outside of New York City. "
Because of what they did to me, I wanted to kill myself
She didn’t mince words when, on the verge of tears, she spoke of the media coverage of the case. Nafissatou Diallo returned to an article in New York Time who at the time claimed she was a prostitute. The newspaper had been sued for defamation: "Because of what they put me through, I wanted to kill myself. I was called a prostitute." Today she is struggling to rebuild her life, far from the harassment and death threats she has suffered. This is why, when Paris Match asks her where she lives, she decides to remain silent, ensuring safety away from her detractors. She also explains that she has already been followed to her home: "One night, coming home from my restaurant at 2:30 in the morning, I was followed by a 4 x 4 from the Bronx to Connecticut where I lived. I was in a panic, I was shouting, 'Leave me. quiet! ' But no matter how fast I accelerated, it was impossible to lose him. At the entrance to my parking lot, he followed me so closely that he managed to pass before the barrier closed. "
I'm not the person they described
During this interview, she also returned to the position of power that would have favored Dominique Strauss-Kahn. According to her, if the man she accuses of sexual assault got away with it, it was because he was rich: "I assure you that if he had been poor, on the streets, a tramp, he would be in prison today. They treated me like a prostitute when in reality I was working hard to give my daughter a future. . " Besides the release of his book, Nafissatou Diallo hopes for a better future and plans to found an association helping women who, like her, arrived in the United States without education, without speaking the language, in a precarious situation and having lived the worst.