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4.2.12
WC: 191694

This corroborative evidence includes the location of the DNA in the room and on her
undergarments; the shoulder pain she reported to the doctors; the time sequence; the
absence of evidence that she knew who DSK was at the time of the encounter; and a
comparison between the two participants, in terms of their ages, appearances, status and
what each had to gain or lose by a consensual sexual encounter in that room.

When you consider the totality of the evidence and arguments offered in this case, I am
confident that you will have no reasonable doubt that the oral sex in this case was not
consensual.

After hearing this “mock” argument, many of the students concluded that the D.A. acted harshly
in dismissing the case. Most believed that this was a case in which both the woman and the man
had lied, but that the man’s lies were far more relevant than the woman’s on the issue of consent.

By any objective standard, the case against DSK was far stronger than the case against Mike
Tyson, since there was far more corroborative evidence in the former than in the latter.
Moreover, Tyson’s alleged victim was caught in a series of lies that directly related to her account
of the alleged rape and her motive for bringing the charge.

Yet Tyson was convicted and the case against DSK was dropped. Such are the vagaries of rape
prosecutions in which objective truth can rarely be established because when it comes to sex both
men and women often distort reality.

Male “Victims” Lie Too

Early in my career, I learned that men also lie, both as defendants and as alleged victims in rape
cases. One such case took place in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A young woman who was
related to an associate of one of my legal colleagues was engaged to a man and they were
vacationing together in Provincetown. The man went out for a stroll and came back several hours
later upset and disheveled. His fiancé asked him what happened and he told her that he was
invited to go on a boat ride with a group of guys and one of them proceeded to rape him while the
others did nothing to stop him. He described the rapist as a black man wearing a shark tooth
around his neck. He reported the alleged rape to the police who immediately issued an all points
bulletin describing the alleged rapist.

The police interrogated the alleged victim, who persisted in his description of the sexual
encounter as rape. His fiancé called my colleague and asked her to advise him. She sought my
assistance. We went to the police station where we observed the police interrogation of the
young man. As experienced defense attorneys, we soon became suspicious of his story, but we
couldn’t be sure.

My colleague asked to be alone with her client and questioned him about the circumstances of the
encounter. Eventually the young man broke down and admitted that he had consented to the
sexual encounter. He confided in her that he was uncertain about his sexuality, that he was about
to be married, and that he wanted to test his attraction to men. He was ashamed of what he had
done and didn’t want his fiancé to find out, because he was afraid it would end their engagement.

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