As to the question of whether DSK could be violent, M was philosophical. “What’s violence?” she asked rhetorically. “A man who pins you against the wall and kisses you, is that violent? There’s violence and there’s violence. To me, he wasn’t violent.” She said she couldn’t tell how he would have reacted if she’d resisted, since she never did.

But when M first heard of DSK’s arrest, some of the maid’s account published in the press sounded familiar to her. “Yes, it’s incredible,” she says she told confidantes, “but at the same time he is who he is.”

“When I read the first articles in the American press containing for example the detail that he was supposed to have taken his presumed victim from behind, that encouraged me to believe this woman,” M said.