Lawyer: Strauss-Kahn Maid Devastated, Has No Agenda

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged attack on a hotel maid has had a "cataclysmic effect" on the 32-year-old immigrant's life, her lawyer tells the AP, and she's now in hiding from the media. And signs point to a life that hadn't been easy before she crossed paths with Strauss-Kahn: The woman was raising a 15-year-old daughter alone after the girl's father died; mother and daughter had received political asylum from the United States when they emigrated from Guinea under "very difficult circumstances" in 2004. Further, the New York Post is reporting exclusively that the woman lives in a building that is reserved for adults with HIV/AIDS.

Lawyer Jeffrey Shapiro rejects the suggestion of Strauss-Kahn's defense team that the encounter was consensual. "There is no way in which there is any aspect of this event which could be construed consensual in any manner. This is nothing other than a physical, sexual assault by this man on this young woman," says Shapiro, who was put in touch with the woman by a mutual acquaintance and is advising her for free. "It's not just my opinion that this woman is honest," he says, noting that she had no idea Strauss-Kahn was the chief of a powerful world body. "The New York City Police Department reached the same conclusion. This is a woman with no agenda." (More sexual assault stories.)