The accuser of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF head who has been devastated by her sensational rape charge, now admits that parts of her original account of the incident and an earlier accusation of rape she made to seek asylum in the U.S. were false.

The Altantic’s Megan McArdle sums up the Ethics Train Wreck thusly:

“There are two possibilities here, neither of them good:

1) A woman with an unsavory past, who has done desperate things to get out of terrible economic conditions, was raped by a prominent figure, and he’s going to get away with it because of her history.
2) A serial cad had consensual sex with a chambermaid, and she attempted to destroy him with a false rape allegation for personal gain. And because of the presumption that women don’t lie about rape, she has succeeded in destroying him . . . though not so much in the personal gain part. To quote Ray Donovan, ‘Where do I go to get my reputation back?'”

There are some other possibilities as well: for example, he may have used his status to pressure her into consenting to sex, and in resentment and anger, she represented the incident as rape. But there is no way, in a disputed encounter witnessed by only two people, that either party can now be found guilty—her of lying about the rape, he of the sexual assault—beyond a reasonable doubt. Both of McArdle’s scenarios are gross injustices and personal tragedies. And both, to some extent, were earned.

For Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the incident uncovered a long past of harassing conduct, including at least one other alleged sexual assault.  ( McArdle’s description of “cad” is far too forgiving.) If he had a reputation that did not include his history of serial harassment and pressuring women over whom he had power for sex, maybe the application of Donovan’s lament, “Where do I go to get my reputation back?” would have more traction. As it is, he appears to be more akin to the hapless boyfriend in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” (the Lana Turner- John Garfield film noir classic and the James Cain novel it was based on) who escapes conviction for a murder he committed, but is ultimately executed for another murder that was really an accident. Strauss-Kahn’s reputation before the rape charge should have disqualified him for a high office of trust. Thanks to the false accusation, if it is false, the truth came out. The postman rang twice: he was properly punished but for the wrong reason.

As for the maid, she is an excellent lesson in how lying, even carefully rationalized lying, properly destroys an individual’s credibility. “It is clear that this woman made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a rape victim, protested her lawyer. No it doesn’t. Liars can still be raped, but liars are not likely to be believed sufficiently in court to meet the standard of compelling conviction by a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. When one applies the utilitarian balancing process to justify a lie as significant as a false accusation of rape, one must remember to factor in this probable consequence. The postman rang twice for her, too.

She is a serial liar; he is a habitual sexual predator. Widespread public knowledge that these things are true may be the most significant consequences to the two principals in this sordid scandal. In the case of at least one of them, it may not be enough, but it is still something.  They may be victims, but their own unethical conduct made it possible for them to be victims.

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UPDATE: The rough balance between victims is collapsing: recent reports say that the “rape victim’ doubled a prostitute, offering “a special turn-down service.” Isn’t it about time that her name was made public?