‘Room 2806: The Accusation’: The New Shocking Netflix Docuseries

Netflix
NFLX
has released a new docuseries Room 2806: The Accusation on the 2011 sexual assault case involving French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn. This is a complex and finely-constructed four-part series that explains effectively to an international audience all the details around this high-profile crime case that preceded the #MeToo movement.

Opinions expressed by some of the French politicians appearing in the series may shock viewers, as most reactions on Twitter suggest, in the way that they normalize sexual assault. One Twitter user says they are “repulsed by the victim blaming” while another found the views of those interviewed “absolutely nauseating.”

If you somehow have never heard of the Sofitel scandal of May 2011, here is in a nutshell what happened. French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn (also referred to as DSK), head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was accused of having sexually assaulted a Sofitel maid, Nafissatou Diallo. It was the Sofitel hotel who called the police after Diallo told her manager of the incident. The police arrested DSK just as his flight was about to take off. A high-profile trial ensued.

Created by French director Jalil Lespert, Room 2806: The Accusation is a tightly-woven and suspenseful docuseries, with each episode ending with a cliffhanging new information that conduces to binging the whole four episodes. If you know about the case, this documentary does not provide any new information, but it does shed a very comprehensive light on the way sexual assault cases are approached.

Room 2806: The Accusation begins by explaining exactly who this French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn is and was before 2011, and why he was such an important figure in France. In 2011, he was the managing director at the IMF. In France, he was foreseen as the most likely winner of the next French presidential elections, as the unpopularity of the then-French President Nicholas Sarkozy was growing. As the documentary shows, the case threw DSK out of the presidential race.

By contrast, the series lets Nafissatou Diallo introduce herself, telling the audience her background as an immigrant from Guinea who moved to New York with her daughter and then started working as a maid at the Sofitel hotel. Diallo, facing the camera, details her version of events in the presidential suite of the Sofitel hotel in New York on May 14, 2011. A counter detailed description of the incident is never given, with DSK and his lawyers only suggesting that it was all consensual.

The series shows how Diallo’s testimony was discredited, and explains the different conspiracy theories that circulated at the time, especially in France. Namely, that it was Sarkozy and the French secret service that were behind all this, in order to remove DSK from the presidential race. There is no evidence to prove this.

We will never know for certain what really happened that day in the presidential suite of the Sofitel hotel. However, the series ultimately shows how the justice system, and society at large, have treated a black woman who accused a rich and powerful white man of sexually assaulting her. As the documentary shows, she was not even afforded a trial, but was outright dismissed, and discredited as unreliable. The way Nafissatou Diallo is treated by the prosecutors seems systemic in a society that places victims of sexual assault on the accusation bench.

What is most telling, and which the documentary reveals so clearly, is the discourse surrounding sexual assault, which viewers on Twitter have called out as “disgusting.” Many of those interviewed, who were close friends or acquaintances to Strauss-Kahn minimize his attitude toward women, with one in particular excusing his behavior by calling it “French.” Numerous French politicians (both male and female) interviewed also appear to be confusing seduction and sexual assault, calling DSK a “sensual man.”

The series suggests that this is an ingrained attitude in French culture, exemplified later on, when a French TV presenter, Thierry Ardisson, and his male guests on his show laugh at Tristane Banon’s story of assault and the presenter exclaims “I love it!” (“J’adore”). He may explain afterwards that he didn’t mean that he loves rape, his reaction was and remains nonetheless shocking. Saying that France is the culture of “libertinage” does not excuse sexual assault nor rape.

Jalil Lespert’s docuseries sheds an important light on the very issues the #MeToo movement have been about. The series does not reveal anything new to the case, but it does describe it in minute details and objectively. There are, however, no personal testimonies from the accused man in the documentary. Three days before the release of the series on Netflix though, Strauss-Kahn announced via Twitter that he was working on a documentary project that will give “his” version of events.

Room 2806: The Accusation is on Netflix since December 7.