PARIS — More than a year after resigning in disgrace as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is seeking redemption with a new consulting company, the lecture circuit and a uniquely French legal defense to settle a criminal inquiry that exposed his hidden life as a libertine.
Strauss-Kahn, 63, is seeking to throw out criminal charges in an inquiry into ties to a prostitution ring in northern France with the legal argument that the authorities are unfairly trying to “criminalize lust.”
That defense and the investigation, which faces a critical judicial hearing in November, have offered a keyhole view into a clandestine practice in certain powerful circles of French society: secret soirees with lawyers, judges, police officials, journalists and musicians that start with a fine meal and end with naked guests and public sex with multiple partners.
In France, “Libertinage” has a long history in the culture, dating from a 16th-century religious sect of French libertines. But the most perplexing question in the Strauss-Kahn affair is how a career politician with ambition to lead one of Europe’s most powerful nations was blinded to the possibility that his zest for sex parties could present a liability, or risk blackmail.
On Thursday, Strauss-Kahn broke a long silence to acknowledge that perhaps his double life as an unrestrained libertine was a little outre.
“I long thought that I could lead my life as I wanted,” he said in an interview with the French magazine Le Point. “And that includes free behavior between consenting adults.”
Whether his downfall will have a lasting impact on the culture of sexual privilege in France remains uncertain. He declined to be interviewed for this article.
This month, Strauss-Kahn won a legal battle after a French prosecutor dropped part of the investigation into an alleged sexual assault at a hotel in Washington. A Belgian prostitute recanted her accusation, saying the encounter was rough sex play, but Strauss-Khan is still a suspect for involvement in a prostitution ring.
