DNA Belonging to Dominique Strauss-Kahn Found on Hotel Maid's Clothing

Alleged evidence could bolster maid's claim of sexual assault by Strauss-Kahn.

ByABC News
May 23, 2011, 5:05 PM

May 13, 2011— -- DNA belonging to Dominique Strauss-Kahn was found on the uniform worn by the hotel chamber maid who has accused the former head of the IMF of sexually assaulting her in his Manhattan hotel suite, investigators said today.

Soon after the 32-year-old maid reported the alleged assault on May 14, police took her uniform into evidence and searched the room for traces of Strauss-Kahn's DNA. Investigators ripped up a swath of carpet where the maid spit after she was allegedly forced to perform oral sex. They also used a black light to search of traces of biological evidence iin a bathroom sink.

Strauss-Kahn's attorney Benjamin Brafman has previously suggested that DNA evidence would prove the encounter that allegedly took place in Strauss-Kahn's $3,000-a-night suite at the Sofitel Hotel was consensual.

"The forensic evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter," Brafman said.

Investigators did not reveal the type of DNA that was found on the maid's uniform and whether it was Strauss-Kahn's sperm.

Strauss-Kahn Friday was released from jail on $1 million bail and remanded to house arrest in an apartment owned by the private security firm Stroz Friedberg. Under the conditions of his bail, the firm will keep the French politician and economist under 24-hour surveillance.

Last Wednesday, Strauss-Khan resigned his post as chief of the International Monetary Fund, the body that oversees international monetary markets.

"I deny in the strongest possible terms the allegations which I now face; I am confident that the truth will come out and I will be exonerated," Strauss-Kahn wrote in an email to his former colleagues, which was confirmed authentic by ABC News.com.