Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned from his post as  head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after being charged with  attempting to rape a hotel maid.  He has now been released on bail with a condition of residence - basically house arrest.

One thing I don't understand - in England people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. I thought this was the same in USA, and yet he has already been treated like a criminal. Am I missing something?

You might find the following of interest:

Strauss-Kahn – Exerpt from BBC News 18 May

But many commentators, both in France and the US, continue to see the Strauss-Kahn case through the prism of the Polanski saga.

"Prosecutors say, plausibly, that Strauss-Kahn could easily hop on a plane to France and never be extradited and be a whole new… Polanski, over there," wrote Hamilton Nolan on the Gawker website.

Jim Dyer in the New York Times noted French anger at the television footage of the IMF managing director handcuffed in court - and compared it to Polanski's appearances as a free man at the Cannes film festival.

"Year after year, the director Roman Polanski strolled the red carpet, smiling for the cameras, apparently unworried - and rightly so - that the French authorities would notice that he was a fugitive from justice in Los Angeles, where he had drugged, raped and sodomised a 13-year-old girl," he wrote.

He went on: "Mr Polanski… lowered the odds that Mr Strauss-Kahn... will get bail in New York any time soon."

French gloom

Roman Polanski won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2002 for The Pianist

In the same newspaper, Stephen Clarke, author of a book, 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, speculated that if Mr Strauss-Kahn were convicted he would "someday return to France, publish his autobiography (which will, of course, be adapted for the big screen by Mr Polanski) and eventually be made a government minister. Minister of gender equality perhaps?"