My suicide bid after secret affair with DSK

Dominique Strauss-Kahn had a secret nine-month affair with a 23-year-old lawyer before dumping her and driving her to attempt suicide, she claimed today.

The woman named only as Marie-Victorine M, now 38, said the former IMF chief enjoyed "forceful love-making" during their clandestine trysts in Paris.

In an interview with a Swiss news magazine, she claimed that the affair took place in 1997, with Strauss-Kahn married at the time to current wife Anne Sinclair.

The half-Spanish, half-Congolese legal consultant is the latest of at least six women who have claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the fallen banker since he was accused of the attempted rape of New York hotel chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo, 32, in May.

Marie-Victorine described Strauss-Kahn, 62, as having a "huge sexual appetite" and being a "serial manipulator of women". But she said that she was always a willing partner and he never forced her to have sex.

In the interview with L'Illustre magazine she told how she met Strauss-Kahn at a Socialist Party event in Sarcelles, near Paris, 14 years ago, and ended up in bed with him later the same day.

She said: "I was 23 and he was 47. I couldn't believe what had happened. He asked me for my number and we met later in a hotel bar in Paris. We both knew exactly what was going to happen.

"We carried on meeting in a lavish apartment in Paris that he said belonged to a friend. During this time, he was made a minister in the French government.

"The relationship was physically intense, but not violent. Is a man violent if he pushes you against a wall to kiss you?"

She revealed how nine months later Strauss-Kahn dumped her in the street after a furious row, adding: "He just got in a taxi and left.

"I took the whole thing very badly. I was very hurt and took a load of pills. I don't remember that episode very clearly." Marie-Victorine said she had been interviewed by Ms Diallo's lawyer Kenneth Thompson, but told him that she was not sure whether Strauss-Kahn was guilty or not.

Strauss-Kahn, currently on bail in New York,
denies both rafts of allegations against him in the US and France, and has launched legal action against Tristane Banon in Paris for defamation.

She has claimed that he attempted to rape her almost 10 years ago when she was a trainee journalist and had promised an interview.