The Sofitel Hotel housekeeper who accused former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her on May 14 has sued the New York Post for a series of articles it ran between Saturday and Monday, reporting that she was working as a prostitute, with the male guests of the hotel as her clients. The lawsuit says the Post reported the false news "in an apparent desperate attempt to bolster its rapidly plunging sales." Here are the facts, according to Reuters:

The Post reported on Saturday that the Sofitel housekeeper "was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests." An article the following day reported that the housekeeper "continued to work as a prostitute in a Brooklyn hotel where she was stashed by prosecutors."

"All of these statements are false, have subjected the plaintiff to humiliation, scorn and ridicule throughout the world by falsely portraying her as a prostitute or as a woman who trades her body for money and they constitute defamation and libel per se," the suit said.

The two stories are still up on the Post's Web site, and the paper hasn't offered any response to the libel charge so far.

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Adam Martin