By now if we say that Dominique Strauss-Kahn got off again, you’re not quite sure which way we mean, are you?

Well, just to save you any wonder, the attempted case brought against DSK by Tristane Banon will not be prosecuted. The New York Times say a French prosecutor acknowledges that “there was evidence from Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s own testimony of sexual assault in a 2003 encounter with a French writer and novelist, Tristane Banon— but given a three-year statute of limitations on that charge, no case would be brought.

“Facts that could be qualified as sexual assault have been acknowledged,” the statement said. It did not offer any further details. One of DSK’s lawyers said that his client made a pass at and kissed Banon without her consent but “no violence was acknowledged,” the Times quotes him as saying.

Charges of attempted rape against DSK were dropped in New York in August because the credibility of his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel housekeeper, was in doubt. Banon’s lawyer, David Koubbi, called DSK an “untried sexual aggressor,” and said the decision “will allow him to escape criminal conviction, but not a legitimate suspicion about his behavior towards women.”

DSK, once thought likely to become the president of France, has seen his political career “derailed,” by the cases, the Times says: “His political career has been badly damaged by the charges, and the French seem almost bored now with him and the case.”