Guinean immigrant Ms. Nafissatou Diallo, who accused the former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, speaks at a press conference with her lawyer Kenneth P. Thompson (L) and Pastor of the Christian Cultural Center, Rev. A. R. Bernard (R) on July 28, 2011 at the Christian Cultural Center, in Brooklyn, New York. (Hayden Roger Celestin image)
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. Aug. 9, 2011: An African immigrant hotel worker who claimed she was raped by former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has slapped the French politician with a civil lawsuit.

Nafissatou “Nafi” Diallo filed the suit in Manhattan civil court on Monday, just weeks after her shedding the cloak of anonymity associated with alleged rape victims and giving several media interviews and a public press conference.

In the suit, Diallo alleges that the man many call DSK, came at her from behind with “depravity in his heart.”

Diallo said DSK allegedly forced her into oral sex on May 14th in the over $3,000 a night, number 2806 suite at the Sofitel Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

In previous media interviews Diallo said Strauss-Kahn emerged naked from a shower to “grab my breasts” and despite her pleas, forced her head down to his penis. She told Newsweek that he pulled her buttoned up uniform up around her thighs and tore down her pantyhose, gripping her crotch so hard that it was still red at the hospital, hours later.

He pushed her to her knees, her back to the wall, according to the Newsweek interview and forced his penis into her mouth, she said, and he gripped her head on both sides.
“He held my head so hard here,” she was quoted as saying, putting her hands to her head. “He was moving and making a noise. He was going like ‘uhh, uhh, uhh.’ He said, ‘Suck my’—I don’t want to say.”

The report from the hospital where Diallo was taken later for examination notes that “she felt something wet and sour come into her mouth and she spit it out on the carpet.”
“I got up,” Diallo told NEWSWEEK. “I was spitting. I run. I run out of there. I don’t turn back. I run to the hallway. I was so nervous; I was so scared. I didn’t want to lose my job.”

She said the alleged rape incident has left her and her 15-year-old daughter traumatized.

“We cry every day. We can’t sleep,” Diallo, who migrated to the U.S. in 2003 told the packed press conference in a quiet, nervous and hesitant voice.

The hotel maid, who earned $25 an hour plus tips cleaning rooms daily, also commented on some press reports that have turned her from a victim into a predator. “A lot of people calling me a lot of bad names. I hear a lot of things, a lot of bad things. I say ‘God why me, why me?’” she said.

Her public media blitz come as prosecutors have expressed doubts about her credibility, suggesting they may drop charges against Strauss-Kahn, 62.
He has denied seven charges of attempted rape and sexual assault and his defense team have called on prosecutors to drop the charges amid doubts over Diallo’s credibility.

Diallo’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, for his part said if prosecutors do not press charges then this client will slap Strauss-Kahn with a civil suit. Strauss-Kahn is due back in court on August 23rd.