The daughter of a merchant form the Peule tribe (40% of the population in a country of 10.3 million), she is from the Labé region in Guinea, and followed her husband, a Guinea merchant, to the USA in 1998. There, she divorced him and has been raising her 15 year old daughter alone in the Bronx. She has some family in Harlem, including her sister, who is married to a Guinean business man working in the import-export trade.
Nafissatou Diallo holds a green card, and has been working as a maid in the Sofitel Hotel for three years. She has a reputation as a serious girl.
“She is as hard a worker as her sister,” said a cousin of hers on the phone. Diallo’s family has not been able to see her yet. Like everyone else, they read the papers, but they hope the sexual assault is “less severe” that what is reported.
Mamadou Chérif Diallo, from the victim’s family, and a 35 year old Guinean who is working for a New York City agency, who is tasked with representing the family, said this:
She’s a good Muslim. She is really pretty, as are a lot of Peule women, but in our culture, we do not accept this kind of behavior. Seriously, Dominique Strauss-Kahn attacked the wrong person. It’s a scandal! It’s really sad, this accident! Under police protection
The family explained that Nafissatou Diallo is in hiding with NYPD protection to protect her from the media. She presently has a lawyer. The attorney general’s office in Manhattan, contacted by SlateAfrique, refused to confirm the identity of Nafissatou Diallo, a common measure to protect sexual assault victims in the US.
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