Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption New York prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn last month, though he still faces a civil suit 
 
 Dominique Strauss-Kahn has described his liaison with a hotel maid in New York, over which he was charged with attempted rape, as "inappropriate". Still, he maintained the encounter with the maid, Nafissatou Diallo, was consensual and that she "lied" in accusing him of attacking her after she came into his room at New York's Sofitel hotel to clean. In his first interview since his May 14 arrest over accusations of sexual assault, Strauss-Kahn told France's TF1 television channel "what happened was more than an inappropriate relation. "But all my life was consecrated to being useful to the public good," he said, adding "we will see." Asked whether he had any intention of returning to politics, Strauss-Kahn said he would "take time to reflect" and rest first.  Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, maintained Sunday his sexual encounter with a New York hotel maid did not involve violence, constraint or aggression but still constituted a moral failing on his part. Strauss-Kahn also dismissed as "imaginary" separate claims by a French writer that he tried to rape her during a 2003 interview, again insisting "no act of aggression, no violence" had taken place between the two.
– Making his first public appearance since his arrest on rape charges in New York four months ago, Dominique Strauss-Kahn admitted today to a moral failing: "What happened was more than an inappropriate relation. It was an error," the former IMF chief said on French television. "I regret it infinitely." But he insisted that his sexual encounter with a maid in a New York hotel was consensual and that she had "lied" about it, the AP reports. Strauss-Kahn also shrugged off a French writer's rape accusation as "imaginary," saying "no act of aggression, no violence" occurred between him and Tristane Banon. A police investigation into that claim is ongoing. Asked about his political ambitions, Strauss-Kahn said he would "take time to reflect" and rest. "But all my life was consecrated to being useful to the public good," so "we will see." Strauss-Kahn saved his strongest words for America's justice system, the BBC reports: "I was afraid, very afraid," he said, "and I was humiliated, trampled before I could even utter a word."