As Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, spent his first full day on Rikers Island, the hotel housekeeper who accused him of sexual assault was struggling with what her lawyer said was a life upended by the case.
The woman, 32, a widowed immigrant from Guinea who was granted asylum seven years ago, has not been publicly identified and has made no public statements about what prosecutors have charged was an attack by Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a 62-year-old Frenchman, as she prepared to clean his hotel room on Saturday.
But her lawyer said she had been unable to return to her job at the Sofitel New York or to her home, as both had attracted swarms of international news media.
And as she remained in seclusion, there were suggestions that Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a powerful, wealthy politician who was widely regarded as a strong candidate to run against the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, next year, would put forward a defense that any sex had been consensual.
During a hearing on Monday in Criminal Court in Manhattan, a lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, Benjamin Brafman, told a judge he believed the “forensic evidence” was “not consistent with forcible encounter.”
Mr. Brafman did not disclose what forensic evidence he was referring to, or even if he had been apprised about what forensic evidence the prosecution had collected. Even so, that statement seemed to suggest the defense may acknowledge that a sexual encounter had occurred.
Indeed, on Tuesday, a person briefed on the case said the defense believed that any sex act may have been consensual.
That elicited an angry response from a lawyer for the woman. He dismissed any suggestion that the housekeeper, whom he described as “a very proper, dignified young woman,” had agreed to have sex with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.
“There is no question this was not consensual — she was assaulted and she had to escape from him, which is why when she finally got out of the room, she reported it to security immediately,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey J. Shapiro. “It doesn’t matter what Mr. Brafman says, and it doesn’t matter what the defendant says. Her story is her story, which she has told to everyone who asked her, and she is telling the truth. She has no agenda.”
Mr. Shapiro said his client “did not even know who this guy was” until she saw news accounts, adding, “She is a simple housekeeper who was going into a room to clean a room.”
A man who said he was the housekeeper’s brother said his sister did not know Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s identity when she reported the events to the hotel and, later, to police. The man, who manages a restaurant in Harlem, said she did not learn of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s status until pictures of him appeared in the news.
He said he had called his sister several times on Saturday afternoon, but she did not answer the phone. She eventually called him back from a police station, he said.
“She just told me that something really bad had happened and that she was with the police and the doctors,” he said.
The woman, who does not have a formal education, emigrated from Guinea with her daughter, leaving that country under what Mr. Shapiro said he understood were “difficult circumstances.” The lawyer said she sought and was granted asylum in the United States, although he said he was unsure of her immigration status.
The woman, who speaks French and some English, is a widow, though the lawyer said he was unaware of the timing or the circumstances of her husband’s death.
Mr. Shapiro said his client was very proud of her job, which she had held for three years, and the ability it gave her to support herself and her 15-year-old daughter.
“She would have done nothing to jeopardize this job,” he said. “She needs this job; this job was her lifeline. She is not a woman of resources; she is not a woman of pretense. She is just a simple woman who is grateful to have a job where she can provide food and shelter for herself and her daughter.”
His client, he said, has enormous pride, and is unsure what her life will be like going forward.
“The fact of the matter is this is a situation that she didn’t choose,” the lawyer said. “She’s been victimized not only by what happened in that hotel room but by the fact that her life has been taken away from her for who knows how long.”
No lawsuit, he said, had been considered or discussed.
The case, Mr. Shapiro added, has turned the woman’s life upside down; she has been isolated from her life and her routines.
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