If you were a disgraced politician accused of pimping and rape in a trial that revealed your fondness for anal sex and orgies with young women, what would be your first message to the world after your acquittal?
For Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former finance minister of France and ex-managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the answer turns out to be: “Hello Twitter! Jack is Back.”
Strauss-Kahn, whom a French court acquitted on June 12 of allegations that he knowingly hired the services of hookers, left that enigmatic message on his Twitter account, @dstrausskahn, on June 21, when he joined the social network. He has not tweeted since, though he has amassed 44,000 followers in the space of three days.
— DSK (@dstrausskahn) June 21, 2015
The cryptic message “lit a fire under the imaginations” of many, according to an article in Le Point, a French weekly. The article sought to connect the tweet to the trial, which many found interesting not because of what Strauss-Kahn, or “DSK” as he is known in France, said he didn’t do, but because of what he said he did do – namely having rough anal sex with women half his age.
While he denied knowing his sexual partners were prostitutes, he did not dispute sodomizing several of them at after-hours sex parties in hotels as of 2010 – one year before French prosecutors heard his name while investigating a prostitution network in Lille, northern France.
During the trial, Jade, a prostitute who was sexually abused as a child, described the atmosphere at a Paris hotel orgy where she pleasured DSK. “No one asked me my name, there was just a hand on my head to fellate him,” she said. DSK subjected her to anal penetration against her wishes on a different occasion, she said, adding: “I didn’t have time to say no.”
DSK described the orgies as relief from his stressful work. He told the judge he knew neither that Jade was a hooker nor that she felt he had forced himself on her. He apologized for causing her any discomfort or pain against her will. But accounts of his calculated love of debauchery left many wondering as to the sincerity of his regret, or whether he viewed his sex partners as anything more than sex dolls with a pulse.
Once a promising Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency – many French Jews hoped he would become the first member of the tribe to hold the post — DSK arguably has paid dearly for his double life. His political career ruined and his name synonymous with shameless exploitation of the poor, his ex-wife (Jewish) television presenter Anne Sinclair left him in 2013.
Still, some were inclined to believe his expressions of regret in court came from the heart – an impression strengthened by DSK’s insistence that he truly believed the young women he penetrated were just looking for a good time, and his out-of-court settlement with a chamber maid from a New York hotel who accused him of rape. U.S. prosecutors cleared him of the rape and related charges in 2011.
Lingering doubts were likely not allayed by the triumphant tone of DSK’s latest tweet, according to Le Point, which offered several interpretations of the text to its readers.
“Jack is Back is what the prostitutes and police officers of Whitechapel used to say regularly in 1888,” the paper read, in a clear reference to Jack the Ripper — the uncaught slayer of several prostitutes in London.
