How, one wonders, could Dominique Strauss-Kahn have thought that he might be able to get away with rape—if that’s in fact what he did? Jonathan Tobin points to the differing norms regarding sexual conduct by politicians in Europe as opposed to the U.S. Also worth mentioning is the culture of impunity which for too long has prevailed in international institutions like the IMF and UN toward misconduct within their own ranks.

The United Nations, for instance, has been embarrassed by its mishandling of sexual harassment cases. The Wall Street Journal reported a couple of years ago: “Many U.N. workers who have made or faced accusations of sexual harassment say the current system for handling complaints is arbitrary, unfair and mired in bureaucracy. One employee’s complaint that she was sexually harassed for years by her supervisor in Gaza, for example, was investigated by one of her boss’s colleagues, who cleared him.”

Even worse has been the fact that UN has not done nearly enough to end the plague of rape and child abuse which apparently has been perpetrated by its peacekeepers in Africa. A typical report a few years ago noted that “Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers. . . . A 13-year-old girl, ‘Elizabeth’ described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home.”

That such crimes can occur with scant hope of punishment is no surprise because international institutions are often shielded by diplomatic immunity and not adequately supervised by any law enforcement agency or judicial body. That must change; working for an international organization is a privilege that should not be abused, as it too often is. If the Strauss-Kahn case focuses attention on the need for reform, then some good will have come out of this mess.