The presidential erection of Dominique Strauss-Kahn

She readily admits she could never have achieved this without a good deal of lying and cheating in order to tell people what they wanted to hear. At every step she was assisted by fellow Africans who knew what she had to do as a single mother in order to survive.

According to confidential information leaked to the press by one of DSK's victims, he admitted in private to having certain pathological problems while fiercely defending his public image as a respectable senior statesman and economist of world-wide renown, socially and humanly irreproachable.

His public image has, nevertheless, been dealt a serious blow by the cavalry charge he made, totally naked, in pure hussar style on poor Nafi when she unsuspectingly entered his suite to make up the bed and do the cleaning. Before the hussar attack he was tipped to become the next president of France. Now, 80% of French voters do not want him to participate in the socialist party primaries.

A political comeback, nevertheless, remains possible. A majority of socialists would accept him in the government, but not as Prime Minister. He still has to face a civil case brought against him by Nafi in the Bronx and two other complaints lodged in France.

The fact is, as things stand today, justice has not been done. Justice was stopped dead in its tracks in the Supreme Court of Manhattan. DSK was not found innocent. He was not judged. The material evidence was eloquent but insufficient, alone, to prove guilt, and Cyrus Vance Jr. saw Nafi as no match for the defence lawyers. He discounted the sincerity of her distress, failing to see beyond the codes of her modest milieu (the underclass of the Bronx) and underestimated the ability of a jury to perceive it more clearly than he could himself. This is admitted in the report "If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot ask a jury to do so".

That is a very sad and regrettable confession. It sums up the problem in a nutshell, underlining the cultural gap and incomprehension that existed between Nafi and the brilliant district attorney who is the son of Cyrus Vance, (Sr.), Secretary of State to President Jimmy Carter. It is a pity he chose not to proceed to trial. He might have won.

Silence is golden so they say and that is what saved DSK. At no point was he obliged to answer any questions. Anything he said could have been used against him. He followed his lawyer's advice and exercised his legal right to remain silent. He did so for the full three months of the investigation. Neither Vance nor the judge ever heard DSK's version of the story. Nobody did.

The whole thing was a game of poker. Not justice. DSK played his cards close to his chest and Vance failed to call his bluff. The prosecutor should not have thrown in his hand but let the cards speak for themselves.

It made no difference to the judge, Justice Michael J. Obus, whether the case was won or lost. He had no reason to accept just one side of the story. He should have ordered the protagonists to play on. His decision rendered the revelation of the truth impossible.

A fallout from all this is a disturbing piece of information which came to light during the DNA analysis of a section of the floor carpet in DSK's hotel suite. There were traces not only of DSK's semen but of three other, unidentified, men as well. How about that for hygiene in a $US 3 000 a night luxury suite in a four star hotel in midtown Manhattan?