A-OK: Dominique Strauss-Kahn was “more passionate than violent’ during their 1997 liaison, says an ex-lover. (ANDREW KELLY)
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The lawyer for a maid accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault called one of his ex-mistresses and asked if he ever got violent during the affair and if she was forced to have an abortion, the woman revealed in an extensive interview.
“The questions were truly salacious, surgical. He proposed that I meet his client. I refused,” DSK’s ex-lover, identified as Marie-Victorine M., told the Swiss magazine L’illustré.
Ken Thompson, who represents DSK accuser Nafissatou Diallo, spoke to the woman for 45 minutes with her lawyer, Gloria Allred, on the line.
Thompson asked if he showed a violent side during their nine-month fling, but the attractive California legal consultant said their secret 1997 liaison was “more passionate than violent.”
“What is violence? A man who pushes you against a wall and who hugs you, is that violent?” she told the magazine. “For me, this is not violent. He was not [violent] with me. Neither physically nor verbally.”
Thompson wanted to know if the married DSK ever forced his then-23-year-old lover to get an abortion, but she replied: “He forced me to do nothing at all.”
Marie-Victorine said she’d testify in the New York case against Strauss Kahn — but that it probably wouldn’t help Diallo’s case.
“I think that undoubtedly it would serve more for the defense than the prosecution,” she said.
“I think that there was a relationship between them, a forced relationship,” she added. “I don’t know if he raped her . . . Dominique took me sometimes in a very brusque manner, but for me it was about passion, not about brutality.”
She said DSK never used force with her.
“Dominique is not the kind of man who needs to force himself . . . He uses charm, definitely, but not force.”
Marie-Victorine told the Swiss magazine she broke up with Strauss-Kahn in October 1997 — when he became finance minister in France — after an “intense physical relationship.”
She described DSK as “a man who loves sex, who has a huge sexual appetite.”
“I didn’t see myself as a mistress in life,” she said. “We were both stupefied by this intensity, this chemistry between us.”
Shortly after the breakup, the woman attempted suicide in her father’s house in Sarcelles, France — where she met DSK when he was mayor.
“I took some pills . . .” she said. “It wasn’t because of the love affair, but I was hurt. It [the breakup] was really bad for me. But these are the things that happen with all couples.”
Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested May 14 for the alleged sexual attack on Diallo at the Sofitel hotel in Midtown.
The case against the former banking big has begun to crumble amid revelations from Diallo’s past, including lies on an asylum application and a fabricated child for tax benefits.
He’s due back in court Aug. 23.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA’s Office and Allred declined to comment. Thompson didn’t return a request for comment. Ben Brafman, a lawyer for DSK, didn’t immediately comment.
Marie-Victorine said she kept a diary of the romance, ticking off the extraordinary measures the pair took to keep the affair quiet. DSK married his current wife, Anne Sinclair, in 1991.
“We would avoid all signs of affection in public,” she said. “He was attentive and restrained with me and was always successful in getting rid of his bodyguards.”
She said they’d meet in an apartment of DSK’s friend, “a spectacular place, very big, furnished with antiques.”
“We saw each other during the day or at night, frequently at the beginning,” she said. “After, we also called each other frequently and exchanged text messages.”
But the affair ended in anger.
“We were both nervous and had a fight in front of the apartment building,” she recalled. “I was in a sorry state, sad and very upset. Then I noticed that my sweater was ripped and that I had hurt my hand during our dispute . . . I no longer remember the words that we exchanged that night, but when my friend saw me arrive, she found me in a pitiful condition.”
DSK, she confessed, “can be very manipulative.”
“He never forced me to do anything,” she said. “But manipulation on his part is not something that surprises me.”