Pad under name of AIDS group
By JENNIFER BAIN and BOB FREDERICKSLast Updated: 11:24 AM, May 18, 2011
Posted: 3:13 AM, May 18, 2011
EXCLUSIVE
Dominique Strauss-Kahn may have more to worry about than a possible prison sentence.
The IMF chief's alleged sex-assault victim lives in a Bronx apartment rented exclusively for adults with HIV or AIDS, The Post has learned.
The hotel maid, a West African immigrant, has occupied the fourth-floor High Bridge pad with her 15-year-old daughter since January -- and before that, lived in another Bronx apartment set aside by Harlem Community AIDS United strictly for adults with the virus and their families.
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The Post has not been able to ascertain whether the maid, 32, has HIV/AIDS because of medical confidentiality laws.
But the agency rents apartments only for adults with the disease. A Harlem United worker said at least one adult in the household has to be HIV-positive or have AIDS to qualify for one of their units. A healthy adult with a child with HIV or AIDS is not eligible.
"The [current] apartment isn't rented under her name. Harlem [Community AIDS] United places their tenants in our building," explained an employee of the apartment building's property manager, Chaim Gross, of Brooklyn.
The maid had previously lived in another High Bridge apartment rented by Harlem United, a source said. She had moved there with her child in 2008.
According to the agency, it is not uncommon for people with HIV/AIDS to move around.
Her lawyer, Jeffrey Shapiro, and a close family friend said the chambermaid is a widow who lives alone with her daughter. Public records list her as the only adult in the current apartment and the only adult having lived in her previous apartment.
Neighbors also say it was just her and the child in both places.
The Harlem United workers who talked to The Post were not specifically addressing the maid's living situation, only their agency's housing policies. Officials at Harlem United declined to comment because of confidentiality.
The woman has accused France's leading presidential contender of forcing her to perform oral sex on him twice and then trying to rape her as she tried to clean his Sofitel hotel room in Times Square on Saturday.
She told cops that after he sodomized her, she spit out his semen on the floor, a law-enforcement source said. Investigators are running DNA tests on the sample.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control: "It is possible for either partner to become infected with HIV through performing or receiving oral sex."
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers declined comment last night.
The humiliated, 62-year-old suspect was ordered held without bail Monday and placed under suicide watch at Rikers Island -- reduced to wearing shoes without laces and a medical device to make sure he's breathing.
"He did not attempt to commit suicide. He went through an evaluation by a shrink, and they put him on watch," a Correction source said of the multimillionaire politico, who has an entire jail wing to himself.
The suspect's defense team has suggested that the pair was involved in a consensual romp.
The alleged victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, remained in the protective custody of the Manhattan DA's Office.
The woman was under extreme security -- with investigators even intercepting her phone calls to keep her away from possible attempts by Strauss-Kahn cronies to get her to stop cooperating, sources told The Post.
One high-powered lawyer, who was among those trying to reach her to offer to rep her, said, "She could make $6 million, maybe more, just by shutting her mouth."
The maid's close family friend said he received a frantic call from the woman about an hour after her alleged attack, as detectives brought her to the emergency room at St. Luke's Hospital.
"She rang me, and she said, 'Somebody has done something really bad to me. I've been attacked,' " he told the Daily Mail. "She was crying all the time."
Shapiro said his client learned Strauss-Kahn's name only a "day or two" after the alleged attack.
The lawyer added, "There is no civil litigation pending or contemplated at this point.
"She was reunited with her daughter last night," he added.
The developments came as law-enforcement sources said hotel staffers failed to alert cops to the incident for up to three hours -- as Strauss-Kahn fled his room.
Hotel video cameras show the maid running from his room after the alleged attack, which occurred after noon, and into the maid service area on the floor, one source said. There, she called her boss, who arrived 10 to 15 minutes later, and then called another supervisor.
It took 10 to 15 minutes more for that boss to arrive, the source said. Hotel security was then called. About 10 to 15 minutes later, another security worker arrived and called his boss. Meanwhile, Strauss-Kahn apparently fled his room even before the first boss even arrived. It's not clear when cops were finally called. One source said it was after about 3:30 p.m., when Strauss-Kahn called the hotel looking for his cellphone; another said around 2:30 p.m. He was nabbed on a plane just about to depart JFK Airport for France at 4:40 p.m.
A Sofitel rep could not immediately be reached.
Meanwhile, a female reporter for a European paper told the Times of London that last November Strauss-Kahn offered her an exclusive interview, "but I had to go and spend the weekend with him in Paris or somewhere."
"He was incredibly insistent . . . He made it almost explicit that I had to sleep with him for the interview."
Additional reporting by Jeane MacIntosh, Douglas Montero, Larry Celona, Laura Italiano, Lachlan Cartwright, Lisa Riordan Seville and Kate Sheehy
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