Adams: Rape, history and DSK vs. Diallo

Janus Adams is an author, historian and social commentator.

The accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case now has a face and a name: Nafissatou "Nafi" Diallo.

The forensic evidence -- semen on the walls, floor and her uniform; vaginal bruising; the brevity of the incident -- is consistent with a violent sexual attack; the defense says the sex was "consensual."

Yet, despite this, despite accounts of attacks by Strauss-Kahn on other women, non-forensic evidence of "inconsistencies" is being used to attack Diallo's credibility -- not his.

How this case plays out will have little to do with facts and everything to do with societal views of rape: who we are willing to see as rapist and who we are willing to believe as victim.

In the court of public opinion, reaction is mixed. In the court system where the interpretation of law is based on precedence, things look worse. Before the women's movement established rape as violence, women were portrayed as seducers of innocent men; rape in the United States was predominantly seen as a racial crime -- the rape of a white woman by a black man.

The "black man as rapist" myth fueled the lynching of hundreds of black men per year from the late 1800s into the 1950s. Though in truth, black men were more often lynched for violating the doctrine of white supremacy than for harming white women.

This country has a history of giving legal cover to the rape of black women by white men, permitting those men to enrich their balance sheets and raise their social status by owning as slaves their own children, born to the enslaved mothers they raped.

In 1850, Robert Newsom, a 70-year-old white slaveholder, bought 14-year-old Celia at auction. He raped her repeatedly for five years until, pregnant by him for the third time, she killed him in self-defense. Missouri law made it illegal for a man to force sex on "any woman." But since she was a slave, the court ruled that Celia did not warrant legal protection. Found guilty of first-degree murder, she was hanged.

The practice of criminalizing black women for defending themselves against their white attackers goes on well into the late 20th century. And as Wayne State University assistant professor of history Danielle L. McGuire documents in her book "At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance," cases of white men being found guilty of raping a black woman have been rare in the United States.

That's the historical precedent behind the current attacks on Nafi Diallo. That's the baggage weighing on the ability of the district attorney's office to bring about a conviction against Strauss-Kahn in this case.

To break the curse -- to break with precedent -- Diallo has to be above reproach in every way. And she is not.

Some have gone so far as to call her a whore; but even a prostitute can be raped. And a prostitute would be unlikely to show such open revulsion for her client as to risk future work by spitting out his semen on the walls and floor of his suite -- a job that she, as a maid, might then be tasked with cleaning up.

She reportedly lied about being raped on her immigration application, lied to the New York City housing authorities, and lied to the IRS. She may be a pathological liar when it comes to her attempts to stay in the United States, but the forensics don't lie.

Something happened on May 14, 2011, in Suite 2806 of the Sofitel, and it may have been something terrible. It is just as wrong to exonerate a man because he is powerful and privileged as it is to deny justice to a woman because she is not.

Most important, what does denying this one woman say to victims everywhere, in a country where a woman is raped every six minutes?