Dominique Strauss-Kahn is front-page news once more. Your immediate reaction, and one can understand it, is likely to be: “Oh him again! Didn’t I read enough about his sexual escapades in this very column on Nov. 4 last year!”

And you are absolutely right. His previous adventures had to do with his getting handcuffed in New York and jailed for many days on Rikers Island on the charge of sexually abusing a hotel’s chamber maid, then facing the French judges on return to Paris on similar accusations from a woman journalist.

The scandals had cost DSK his job as the head of the International Monetary Fund and the opportunity of getting elected as President of France, not to speak of his family life blowing to smithereens. But the latest disclosures bring shivers even to his most ardent defenders.

A team of court investigators is currently working on what was promptly baptised by the French media the ‘Carlton Affair.’ It has to do with organised soirées and sex orgies with DSK as their main locomotive at Hotel Carlton in the northern town of Lille.

A full-page story in the daily Le Figaro reveals that DSK has been questioned a number of times by law authorities who are now in the process of giving finishing touches to the prosecution based on his answers.

DSK doesn’t deny attending the parties but says he always thought the young women in the Carlton were dinner guests. The investigators say there never are dinners anywhere in the world where the invitees are exclusively young and beautiful women; a series of interviews with the ladies in question has also identified them all as belonging to the profession of pleasure.

The probe has further exposed that no parties were organised at the Carlton when DSK was travelling out of the country as head of the IMF and even later; another proof, say the investigators, that he had been the key figure, most likely the mastermind, behind these revelries though he was careful enough to use other people’s names to organise the events.

When questioned, many of DSK’s ‘invitees’ disclosed they were often beaten or tortured during the orgies that followed drinks and drugs; they all admitted they were paid well for their performances.

This inevitably brings to mind the Marquis de Sade.

Donatien Alphonse François of Sade was born in an aristocratic family in 1740. He had wealth, power and influence enough to live a luxurious lifestyle; but his mind was set, from a very young age, exclusively on sexual pleasure that included causing physical pain to his partners, both male and female; hence the words “sadism” and “sadist” that exist in all the European languages today and can be called his veritable cultural legacy.

With a family background like his, Sade could have easily indulged in his fantasies, no matter how bizarre, had he opted for a discrete behaviour; but his practices were so excessively outrageous that even his powerful and wealthy relatives and friends were unable to deter the police from arresting him time and again. On most occasions his incarceration followed complaints of torture and violence.

The Marquis de Sade lived to be 74, a figure that stands out uneasily and disproportionately when you think that 32 of these years were spent in various prisons of France, including 10 in the fort of Bastille in Paris that was reserved for the most dangerous enemies of the State and was later demolished by the revolutionary crowd as the symbol of tyranny.

During these three decades behind bars Sade wrote more than 15 books —novels, plays, poetry and essays; brilliant oeuvres if you take into consideration their literary merit, but pure horrors when you go into the gory details of sexual pleasure through physical torment; his essays were mainly vociferous diatribes against monarchy and religion.

His family was successful only once in saving him from prison by obtaining a doctor’s certificate that declared him mentally unstable. But complaints of torture by prostitutes, including death of one by poisonous drugs, followed quickly and Sade’s liberty proved short-lived. His second chance came in 1790 following the Revolution when he was compensated for his vituperations against the king and the church and even made an honorary member of the National Convention.

Sade had been able to save his manuscripts penned in the prisons; he now started publishing them anonymously. His freedom this time would last 11 years and in 1801 he would be arrested for the last time on the charge of writing pornography. He died in jail in 1814, still writing. To come back to DSK, he risks a long prison term should the new accusations against him be proven during the trial that is likely to begin early next year.

Keep your laptop handy, DSK!

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

(ZafMasud@gmail.com)