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Anastasia Balezdrova

Less than a month ago the stunned world watched on the TV how the recently mighty Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken in handcuffs to the police station, and then to the famous prison Raykars Island, charged with sexual assault against a maid in the Sofitel.

There is only scarce information on what happened in the covenant hotel suite so far. This made the admirers of all kinds of conspiracy theories, but also reasonable people wonder whether the known by the initials DSK and a great admirer of the fairer sex raped the maid indeed or his weakness has become a weapon in the hands of his enemies.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will appear in court after a few days. GRReporter consulted lawyer Alexandros Sarivalasis about the way the case will be examined.

"I speak based on what we know from the media, because we are not familiar with the case file. What I can say is that everything depends on the facts. They are particularly important in defining the crime. The difference in even one component can completely change the nature of the action and reduce the time of sentence serving from life imprisonment to 6 months.

We theoretically would assume that Dominique Strauss-Kahn forced the maid to make oral sex with him. In this case we are talking about raping."

But how such an act is defined as raping? An ordinary person would say that the victim could easily injure the attacker and escape.

Here we are talking about proving the action. The term "forced" means doing something forcibly. The Penal Code reads "with a physical violence or in any other threat." In the case of Strauss-Kahn, we could assume that he either compelled her by force, or has threatened her that if she refuses she would lose her job; she would be extradited from the U.S., etc.

Alternatively, it could turn out that he was trapped, but it will also have to be proved in court. Because the boundary between "I know that your threats are not serious" or "I know that I can avoid you," which actually means that I am affected by you, but I am doing it at will and "believe fully in your threats" is very thin during the evidence stage of the process.

But if we have the presence of bodily injury everything I mentioned becomes void.

Is there any term for bodily injuries?

It is the forensics that deals with them. All this is related to how severe or mild is the injury. Nails scratches could vanish after a few days. A more severe injury could be evident for a longer period of time. In such a serious crime, however, the practice is a forensic doctor to examine the victim immediately.

Is it easy to prove such a crime?

It is not easy. It must be proved. And since there are usually no witnesses, in these cases we are looking for people who could have been at the door or in the next room and could have heard cries or it could has seemed that there was a fight and the woman tried to get away from the attacker or tried to come out. There is information in the case of Strauss-Kahn that there is a video, which shows that the maid left the suite crying.

But the testimonies of both parties are very important in criminal law because the judge has broad discretion. This includes the way of talking, inconsistencies, etc. Things are quite clear in legal terms. The difficulty in these cases is always the evidence.

The case with the recent head of the International Monetary Fund and the maid renewed the discussion about sexual abuse in Greece. The lawyer Yana Koulouri explained the current legal framework in the country.

"The truth is that we were late to respond to this phenomenon in Greece, but in the rest of Europe too. It was registered first in a European parliament resolution in the 1980s, then followed a recommendation, and finally there came the European directives in 2002 and 2006. Greece adopted the first directive with the law from 2006. The term "sexual abuse" was registered at that time for the first time

The criminal provisions, which are in force today, were used until then and but they anyway "covered" a large part of what the law defined as sexual abuse. The law describes the call for sexual acts or lustful gestures that affect human dignity and are made within employment relationships or during a job search."

During the meeting on "Sexual abuse in Greece: Legal framework, dimensions, consequences" organized by the General Secretariat for Gender it became clear that the cases of sexual abuse in Greece have increased during the first five months of 2011. During this period, 12 women have searched help from the Greek Ombudsman while in the past two years 17 complaints have been registered. According to the competent assistant to the Ombudsman Matina Yanakourou, the reasons for this increase are "the worse working conditions in both private and public sector due to the crisis and the fact that women are fired with greater ease today."

In fact, the number of women who are victims of sexual abuse or other violence at work is significantly higher. "Women do not dare to complain fearing they would lose their jobs and would have a bad reputation. Their dependence on the job often puts them in the role of victims of various pressures." According to studies, one in every two women in Greece has become a victim of discrimination at work.

The lawyer and independent expert of the European Commission Sofia Spiliotopoulou spoke about the difficulties in proving sexual abuse. She made reference to last year's decision of the Administrative Court that the abuse is considered to be carried out if other women testify that they were victims of sexual abuse by the particular offender.