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titanic struggle looming for the woman who accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her.
There is an awkward feeling about the accusation in the tight-knit Guinean community, where women who become the victims of sexual assault often are shunned as damaged goods.

There is also pride however, that a woman of humble origins can seek justice against one of the world’s most powerful men, and have a hope of prevailing.
“Whoever you are – and everyone knows who Strauss-Kahn is – you face the law like everyone else,” said Boubacar Diallo, a community leader here.

Strauss-Kahn has denied the sex assault charges against him, and media reports say private investigators he has employed already are digging into the woman’s history in New York and her native Guinea.
Prosecutors have said however, that they are building a “strong” case against him.

The 32-year-old employee at the Sofitel hotel normally spends her time among exiles from her West African nation, in streets near the mosque at the corner of Third Avenue and 166th Street. It is an enclave of African Muslims in a mainly Latino district. Some 100 ethnic Peul men from Guinea listened to an old man reading verses from the Koran as they sat in the red brick mosque – a converted factory with no minaret.

Here to attend a wedding on the second floor of the Islamic centre, they pull out dollar bills as a gift for the couple, while their women tend to the children downstairs.
Although her identity has been kept secret in the United States, everyone at the centre knows the woman who told police she was attacked by Strauss-Kahn in the Sofitel suite where she was tidying up.

The woman told police he forced her to perform oral sex and tried to rip off her clothes.
Members of the Guinean community here in the Bronx suggest she is not the sort of woman to lodge a frivolous claim. – AFP.