By Nicole Bode
DNAinfo Senior Editor
MANHATTAN — A politician is seeking to introduce a new bill to defend hotel cleaning staff in the aftermath of an alleged sex assault by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on a maid who was trying to clean his Midtown hotel room.
State Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) is expected to propose a bill Monday that would require hotels to provide "panic alert" devices to any staff entering a guest's room in case of emergency, NY1 reported.
"We send hotel workers, housekeepers, into rooms alone … without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman told reporters Sunday, "We need to do everything we can to protect them."
Strauss-Kahn allegedly tried to rape and force oral sex on a maid at his room in the upscale West 44th Street Sofitel hotel May 7 before heading to have lunch with his daughter, Camille, 26, a student at Columbia University's graduate school. He was arrested at JFK on a Paris-bound plane minutes before takeoff.
The disgraced contender for French president was released Friday on $1 million bail and $5 million bond, and is currently under house arrest at 71 Broadway until another residence can be found. Earlier plans to move into Bristol Plaza on the Upper East Side were scrapped after neighbors expressed dismay.
His wife Anne Sinclair was reportedly seen leaving the location Sunday. Her finances are reportedly the only reason Strauss-Kahn has been able to afford his bond and the $200,000-per-month price of 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week security guards required to watch him during his house arrest.
