Strauss-Kahn trial: Women tell of shame of prostitution ring

If she hadn’t been paid to have sex with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “Jade” would not have been on the witness stand in a courtroom in Lille yesterday. Like most of the women who ended up in the former International Monetary Fund director’s orgies, Jade first serviced the libidinous burghers of Lille.

“When I saw my real name in the newspapers this morning, I thought, ‘My children will find out,’” Jade said, weeping. “I haven’t worked as a prostitute since 2010. I’ve rebuilt my life and you’re forcing me to appear in front of you.”

Jade, who is Belgian, became a prostitute in 2007. “I was alone with two small children and I couldn’t afford daycare. One doesn’t choose this profession . . . One day I opened the fridge and it was almost empty and I knew I had to do it. I answered an advertisement. I was scared to death. I worked at night while the children slept, then spent the day with them.”

Belgian pimp

Jade said she met René Kojfer, now 74, a former police informant who was then head of public relations for the Carlton and Tours hotels in Lille, while working in a bar belonging to Kojfer’s friend, the Belgian pimp “Dodo la Saumure”.

“Working in Dodo’s bar was like being locked in a cellar,” Jade said. “When René asked me and other girls to go to Lille, it was like a break. At Dodo’s, you never knew if you’d be chosen; when we were sent to Lille, we knew we’d get paid.”

Several times in late 2007 and early 2008, Jade said she drove herself and other prostitutes from Dodo’s to an apartment that Hervé Franchois, the owner of the Carlton and Tours hotels, had purchased adjacent to the Carlton.

"When we got there, there was food and champagne on the table." Franchois, now 75, was clearly the boss, Jade said. "The others fussed over him, saying 'vous' this and 'vous' that. He got first choice of the girls, and he always chose the youngest."

Franchois, she said, asked Kojfer to "bring three young women to cheer up our lunch". He and Francis Henrion (49), the director of the hotels, got the bedroom and living room. Kojfer had sex with Jade in the bathroom, she said. "We were supposed to get €200 each," Jade said. "The last time, René gave us €120 and a white peignoir. He said times were hard."

The court session was slow because Franchois and Kojfer are both hard of hearing. Cardiac problems ended Franchois’s frenetic sex life. Kojfer suffered a malaise later in the afternoon, when the fire department was called to take him to hospital.

Jade said she has no hard feelings towards her former Lille patrons, despite having been shortchanged by Kojfer. Compared to the “butchery” of the Strauss-Kahn orgies, the lunches at the Carlton apartment were “classy – sexual relations between a woman and a man, but each with their partner. One didn’t feel degraded.”

Jade said she felt betrayed by Fabrice Paszkowski and David Roquet, the businessmen from Lille who were the link between Kofjer and Strauss-Kahn. "They knew they were introducing me to a public figure," Jade said angrily.

The “Carlton trial” has shown how often businesses use prostitutes for entertaining. Jade said she was one of several call-girls taken by Kojfer to a company party at an Italian restaurant outside Lille. “One girl was around age 19,” she said. “She kept throwing back the champagne, saying it would help her forget. I told her to be careful.” Jade cried again.

Toilet floor

“She ended up dead drunk on the floor of the toilet. A waiter brought a box of condoms. I don’t know how many men went on top her. I couldn’t help her.”

Judge Bernard Lemaire began questioning Kofjer about other young women he introduced to his friends: Dalia, Emmanuelle, Estelle and Mounia, who also ended up with Strauss-Kahn.

Another witness arrived late, her face hidden by her coat and scarf. She sat next to Jade, who put an arm around her. When “Sonia” took the stand, she was crying so hard her words were unintelligible. She demanded that a camera relaying sound and image to an adjacent press room was disconnected. “Please, please make sure my name doesn’t appear, not my last name, not my first name,” Sonia pleaded. “It’s been four years since I restarted my life.”

Sonia worked for Kofjer for one week in 2011, when he was 70 and she was 25. She had sex with him once, to thank him for introducing her to clients. When he demanded sex a second time, she said he’d have to pay. A wire tap recorded Kofjer telling a friend that “the stupid bitch wants €150 now”. He then denounced Sonia to the vice squad.