Being accused of rape turned Dominique Strauss-Kahn – already one of the world’s most famous men – into one of the most notorious. But to this day his accuser remains barely known.

The media profiles of the two protagonists in the sensational case could not contrast more starkly: one of them daily tabloid fodder, while the other is a cipher, a woman without a name or recognisable face, or even an address.

Today, a frenzied barrage of cameras will greet the former head of the International Monetary Fund when he appears in a New York court to answer charges that he tried to rape his room maid in a luxury hotel May 14.

The alleged victim, though, will keep to the shadows, hidden from the press pack as she waits possibly for months to testify in the trial.

A full three weeks after Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, all officials will say about the alleged victim is that she is 32, immigrated from west Africa and worked for three years at a Sofitel in Times Square. Prosecutors are barred by law from saying who she is. Journalists have uncovered her name, but most big media outlets prohibit publication, limiting exposure to French media, which have different rules.

And although reporters have visited her former Harlem apartment building – and even her extended family’s house in a remote part of Guinea – almost nothing about the maid’s personal life is known.

Attorneys say that prosecutors from the DA’s Office might even be helping to hide the maid. According to Toni Messina, another defence attorney, the maid’s two lawyers could also be shielding her, both from the media and from attempts by Mr Strauss-Kahn’s team to interview her ahead of the trial.