This rich white man sexually assaulted a hotel maid and got away with it.
Who is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, you say.
Yes, but, sadly in this case, no.
John Joseph Boswell is the CEO of Independent Stave Company, makes $600,000 a month, and lives in a 14,000-square-foot compound very near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.
He is a conservative who liked Ben Carson or Marco Rubio for president, and then, when their bids failed, threw his support behind Donald Trump. He’s donated $125,000 to Republicans and to conservative causes over the last 25 years, and when his man won the presidency, Boswell just had to be there.
He booked a room at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.
While he was in the room on January 19, he heard a knock on the door: it was a pair of maids, come to clean the room.
One went into the bathroom; the other, an African immigrant whose name has been withheld, went to make the bed. According to a police report obtained by The Washington Post, as she did so, Boswell came up behind her and began to rub her buttocks, murmuring, “This is very nice stuff. I like that!”
Flustered and scared, the maid reportedly froze, saying, “Sorry sir. Sorry sir!”
Only when her fellow maid finished in the bathroom and came to help her colleague with the bed, did Boswell move away.
Shaking, the sexually abused maid ran from the room as soon as her attacker moved. The police report states that Boswell then approached the second maid, and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. She shouted at him to sit down, which he did.
Boswell thought he’d gotten away with it all. Neither maid reported the incident to their superiors; however, a fellow maid who they confided in did, and on January 20, at 6:20 pm, Boswell heard another knock at his door.
This time it was the police.
They handcuffed him, and took him into custody; when he was released on bail the next day, the crowd initially cheered, mistaking him for a freed protester.
When they realized who he was really, however, they came to their senses, and threw garbage at him, while hurling insults. Boswell got off easy, being hit only with an orange slice. “Well, that wasn’t very nice,” he said.
Neither is sexual assault, Boswell.
When it was time for his court date, Boswell showed up.
His legal team unspooled their story. In his interview with the Post, Boswell claimed he was innocent, “I patted her on the lower back. It was just a friendly gesture.”
He did not explain why he thought putting his hands on a stranger was okay.
Vivian Kim, an assistant U.S. attorney, fought the good fight — Boswell was sentenced to ten days in prison and six months probation.
Except not really — his jail time was suspended, and he was given the green light to take trips to the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. He did have to pay $50 into a victim’s compensation fund, which is roughly 0.0083% of his monthly salary.
So basically, nothing happened to him.
Of the woman he sexually assaulted, however? Her co-worker, who Boswell grabbed by the shoulder, says the woman had to move out of fear of being located, and that she can’t talk about the incident.
“Whenever she would talk about it,” the second maid said, “She would cry.”