Femen members charged with sexual exhibition for Strauss-Kahn topless protest
The three topless feminist protesters are to face trial for “sexual exhibition” after throwing themselves at former IMF chief Domininque Strauss-Kahn’s car as he arrived for his trial for “aggravated pimping” on Tuesday.
Issued on:
With slogans daubed on their naked torsos, the three members of the Paris-based Femen movement rushed Strauss-Kahn’s car, shouting “Pimps, clients, found guilty!” and one managed to climb onto the bonnet as it entered the courthouse’s underground
carpark.
Police dragged them off and on Wednesday announced that they are to appear in court on 15 December, charged with “sexual exhibition”.
Two other Femen members, one of whom has left the movement, have been found guilty of sexual exhibition – one for baring her breasts and stabbing a model of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a waxworks, the other for a topless anti-abortion protest in a Paris church.
Although the movement has been active in France since 2011, public prosecutors used other charges against its members before 2013, although the Catholic fundamentalist movement Civitas declared that it would file a complaint for sexual exhibition against Femen members who disrupted a demonstration against gay marriage it organised in November 2012.
Former prostitute Jade took the stand in Strauss-Kahn's trial on Wednesday.
She accused the former IMF boss of having "brutal" sexual relations with her without seeking her consent, leading her to believe that, despite his denials, he knew she was a prostitute.
"If I had been a libertine he would asked me," she told the court. "To have inflicted that on me he could not have had any respect for me."
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning
Subscribe