Step 2 Part 2 Fact Sheet 14: #MeToo

#MeToo

In a 2007 television interview, French journalist Tristane Banon announced that she was sexually harassed by Dominique Strauss Kahn in 2002. She did report the incident to the police. She and her lawyer were told to keep quiet. 

It was a common reaction among the elite: everybody knew about the sexual harassment that was going on, but nobody protested. It was just ‘one of those things’, you know. It was better not talk about it. Men were covering up for each other.

A year after the foundation of Me Too, Banon was one of the first women in France to expose male misconduct out into the open.

Dominique Strauss Kahn was later prosecuted for the sexual harassment of Nafissatou Diallo, a 33-year-old former housekeeper at a hotel in Manhattan. She says Strauss-Kahn attacked her on 14 May 2011 as she attempted to clean his room. Diallo alleges that Strauss-Kahn ran at her naked, molested her and forced her to have sex. The claims led to a criminal investigation against the IMF boss that same year, and to his house arrest in Manhattan.

Both cases are examples of the types of sexual harassment that the #MeToo movement tries to fight.