Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Wife Anne Sinclair: 'Leave Your Husband If You Want, That's Your Problem'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Anne Sinclair, the wife of fallen International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has blasted feminists who criticised her for standing by her philandering spouse, saying: "Leave your husband if you want, that's your problem."

A poll published in September published by Elle magazine found that 54 per cent of women approved Miss Sinclair's decision to stand by Mr Strauss-Kahn during allegations of rape and despite revelations of his serial use of prostitutes.

But the same poll found that 74 per cent would have left him, if faced with the same situation.
"Well then, leave your husband if you want to want to leave him. That's your problem," she said in a long interview in Elle.

Once tipped to become the next French president, Mr Strauss-Kahn's career has been in tatters since his arrest last May over the alleged rape of a New York hotel maid. Criminal charges were dropped but a civil case is pending.

Mr Strauss-Kahn's name has also been linked to a prostitution ring operating out of a luxury hotel in Lille. He is expected to be questioned over the so-called "Hotel Carlton affair" in the coming weeks.

But his wife, a one-time star political TV journalist and millionaire heiress to an art fortune, dismissed as "unacceptable" claims that she was condoning violence towards women by offering her husband staunch moral and financial support.

"It's unacceptable because there was no violence. If there had been, the prosecutors would have pressed charges. They didn't. Violence horrifies me – verbal violence too To be a feminist is to fight that, not to meddle in the private life of other women to decide in their place what seems moral or not." "I am neither a saint, nor a victim," she added. "I am a free woman." » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Thursday, January 19, 2012

Democrats Urge Weiner to Resign, New Photos Emerge
REUTERS: New lewd photos emerged of Representative Anthony Weiner on Sunday as Democratic party leaders renewed calls for him to resign over an Internet sex scandal that prompted him to seek a leave and treatment.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said party leaders including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi decided to make a coordinated push for Weiner to step down once it was clear he did not intend to do so.

"At the end of the day a member of Congress makes their own decision and that's certainly going to be up to Anthony Weiner," Wasserman Schultz said on NBC's "Meet the Press".

"But we have made clear that he needs to resign, he needs to focus on getting his own personal issues in order, focus on his family and do the right thing for his constituents." » | Deborah Charles | WASHINGTON | Sunday, June 12, 2011

Rep. Weiner Seeks Treatment; Leave of Absence
June 11 - U.S. lawmaker Weiner seeks treatment and leave of absence after sex scandal. Deborah Lutterbeck reports

French Ex-cabinet Minister 'Travelled to Morocco for Orgy with Little Boys'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A French former minister went to Morocco for an orgy with "little boys", according to an ex-minister, who claims the country's strict privacy laws led to a cover-up.

Luc Ferry, a French philosopher who was in government from 2002 to 2004, told a TV chat show that an unnamed minister had been "caught" taking part in "an orgy with little boys" in the tourist town of Marrakesh.

"All of us here probably all know who I'm talking about," he told Le Grand Journal on channel Canal Plus on Monday night. Asked if he had any proof, he said: "Of course not. But I have testimony from cabinet members at the highest level, state authorities at the highest level."

He said he received the information from top government sources, "particularly from the prime minister", suggesting that reporting of the affair never reached the public due to strict libel and privacy laws.

Mr Ferry declined to name the former minister, implying that he feared France's notoriously strict libel laws. "If I let his name out now, it's me who will be charged and doubtlessly convicted, even if I know that the story is true."

His comments came amid an emotive national debate over whether journalists had failed to lift the lid on cases of sexual harassment because politicians' private lives have long been deemed off limits. » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Swedish King Denies Improprieties as Scandal Grows

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf on Monday gave a rare interview in an attempt to quash a swelling scandal, flatly rejecting media reports he had visited strip clubs and even had indirect contact with organised crime.

In a long interview with the TT news agency published late on Monday, Sweden's head of state denied recent reported claims from a former mafia member, Mille Markovic, that he had pictures in his possession showing the king in a sex club in the same shot as two naked women.

"No, it is impossible that they exist," the king insisted, stressing that "it is also difficult to comment on something one has not seen and no one else has seen either."

The royal court has demanded that public broadcaster TV4, which in a report two weeks ago about the alleged pictures said a journalist had seen them, show the shots to prove there is any substance to the claims.

The TV4 report and a new book about another shady figure from Sweden's underworld alleged friends of the king had been willing to pay large sums of money to block the publication of pictures of the monarch in compromising situations.

One of the king's childhood friends, Ander Lettstroem, admitted in a statement last week he had contacted people involved with organised crime, but insisted it was purely his own initiative and had nothing to do with Carl XVI Gustaf. » | Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Turkey Sex Scandal
Six senior members of Turkey's far-right opposition have resigned over a sex video scandal, shortly before national elections.

The National Action Party is accusing the government of engaging in political blackmail.

Al Jazeera's Iain Bruce reports.

Bosses at Scandal-hit Stafford Hospital Escape Scot-free
THE TELEGRAPH: The senior managers who presided over one of Britain’s worst hospital scandals, in which up to 1,200 patients died, have all escaped being disciplined, it has emerged.

Photo: The Telegraph
No one on the board at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has faced censure and all of them were either paid off, walked into another job or allowed to remain in post. The man who ran the hospital trust received a large pay-off despite his part in the scandal.

Martin Yeates, the former chief executive, left the trust “by mutual agreement” with a pay-off of £400,000 and a pension worth £1.27 million, it has been alleged.

The lack of disciplinary action emerged after the publication of a damning report into the treatment of patients between 2005 and 2008.

An independent report commissioned by the Government found that patients were abused and neglected by hostile staff and were left in humiliating and undignified conditions. The impact on them was “unimaginable”, the report said.

Patients, most of whom were treated at the trust’s main hospital in Stafford, were “robbed of their dignity”, left in soiled bedclothes, unwashed and in states of undress in full view of others, it found.

Families of patients had to clean lavatories and public areas themselves, while food and drinks were left out of reach and, it was alleged, patients drank out of vases.

Attitudes of staff were at times “uncaring”. Managers were “in denial” about the problems and were concentrating on cutting costs and hitting targets to achieve foundation trust status, the report said.

There was said to be a culture of fear and bullying with staff concerned they would lose their jobs if targets were not hit. >>> Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor | Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Saves Sex Tourist Minister Frédéric Mitterrand
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The influence of France’s first lady has halted the sacking of a minister – but for how long

The reluctance of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to sack a gay minister with a past as a “sex tourist” in Thailand will certainly please Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, his wife.

She had suggested appointing Frédéric Mitterrand, a friend, as culture minister and the government’s support for him, despite his confession to having paid boys for sex, is partly a sign of Sarkozy’s eagerness not to offend his first lady.

“She has great power and influence,” said Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam, a senator in Sarkozy’s centre-right party, referring to the Italian-born singer and former model. “It’s obvious she is defending Mitterrand. But it puts the president in a difficult situation. He is offending many of his supporters.”

L’affaire Mitterrand began when the nephew of the last Socialist president flew to the defence of Roman Polanski, the Polish film director, over child sex charges, only to face such accusations himself in connection with a memoir published in 2005.

Yesterday it emerged that he had also offered to help rehabilitate two teenage brothers convicted earlier this year of raping a 16-year-old girl on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion. One was the son of his make-up artist when he worked as a television presenter. He may bitterly regret having written “I got into the habit of paying for boys” in his book, The Bad Life. >>> Matthew Campbell in Paris | Sunday, October 11, 2009

MPs' Expenses: We, the People, Are in Revolt
THE TELEGRAPH: Voters have been treated like peasants by our so-called betters for long enough, as the MPs' expenses scandal illustrates. Now it is time for a change, argues Robert Colvile.

Spirit of revolution: the fires are not yet burning, but the public is indeed angry. Photo courtesy of The Telegraph
When Sir Peter Viggers next encounters the citizens of Gosport, there are bound to be a few colourful suggestions made about what precisely he can do with the 28 tons of manure included in his expense claims. But even if he tries to argue that the purchase of the fertiliser – or, indeed, of a £1,600 floating habitat for his ducks – was “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred” in the performance of his Parliamentary duties, the electors will almost certainly be in no mood to listen.

Across the country, the public is out for blood. The opinion polls, the thousands of letters sent to this newspaper, the savaging of politicians on Question Time, a simple sampling of saloon-bar conversation: all reveal the strength of feeling. Macaulay might have claimed that there is “no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality” – but that was before the politicians’ fit of venality, before the reputation of Parliament collapsed under the weight of duck islands, patio heaters and tins of dog food.

Yet, outraged as the public are, it is still possible – if not, as MPs must be hoping, probable – that this passion will subside. Yes, there will be a “kick the bums out” movement at the next election, with a few bad apples forced out by their parties or constituency associations, and a few independent anti-sleaze campaigners entering the House of Commons.

There will be new rules for MPs’ behaviour, perhaps even those proposed this week by Gordon Brown; there will be an election for Speaker, in which the candidates compete to sell themselves as the toughest of the tough and cleanest of the clean. But in a few years’ time things will be back to normal: the public will lose interest in politicians’ behaviour, and it will be noses back into a (markedly smaller) trough.

There is, however, an alternative argument – that the disgust over MPs’ behaviour is part of a wider refusal to be taken for a ride any longer.

What enrages us about this scandal is not so much that Douglas Hogg had his moat cleaned, as that he used our money – that the MPs’ ginger biscuits and packets of Maltesers and mock-Tudor beams were bought at the taxpayer’s expense. Especially galling is that although the claims were mostly made in the boom years, they have been revealed in a recession, just as we are all being urged to tighten our own belts and prepare for higher taxes and lower public spending. >>> By Robert Colvile | Thursday, May 21, 2009

Scandal at the Top in Washington
TIMESONLINE: An alleged madam accused of running a prostitution ring for the power elite of Washington vowed yesterday to reveal dozens of high-profile names in what is shaping up to be the biggest sex scandal in the US capital for more than a decade.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who handed the telephone numbers of up to 15,000 clients to a US television network last week, said that she would identify as many well-known figures as possible to subpoena them as defence witnesses.

Ms Palfrey’s list of telephone numbers, that weighs in at 46lb (21kg) and has landed like a bombshell in political Washington, has already cost one deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, his job and thrust another official — the Pentagon adviser who coined the term “shock and awe” — to the heart of the scandal. ’Madam’ threatens to name and shame (Read on)

Mark Alexander