September 5th, 2009

NEW YORK – The ladies of New York have hit back at high-priced Eliot Spitzer escort Ashley Dupre’s claim that the average NY woman is no better than a prostitute as she strives to marry a wealthy man.

Ashley Dupre

Dupre, 24, had posted an online diatribe on September 2 on rap impresario Russell Simmons’ Global Grind Web site, stating that she has seen a lot of women toy with men, go on dates to get good food, beg for clothes and ask for rent money. “I don’t agree with what she said-I would totally never do anything like that,” the New York Post quoted a disgusted Justyna Cichon, 29, of Long Island City as saying.

“She did it, [and] she thinks that every woman is like that.

“When she says that all women are that way, I’m included. So I think that’s offensive,” she stated.

Another lady, who was outraged by Dupre’s statement, was Lena Herdoon, a 21-year-old student from SoHo.

“What she said about all women isn’t true. I think it’s offensive. In today’s society, you shouldn’t have to put yourself out there to get ahead,” Herdoon said.

“It’s disheartening she feels this way about women. When she says that women have to do that to get ahead, I completely disagree. As a woman, you have to have self-respect,” she added.

But while some city women were incensed, others agreed that there are some women who go about doing exactly what Dupre said.

“I agree. There are a lot of women like her. It’s expensive to live here,” Jasmin, a 20-year-old Queens woman, said.

Kristen, 24, of Manhattan, who asked her last name not be used, said she was on the same page as Dupre.

“It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man, so why would you go with the poor guy?” she said.

“This city is filled with very wealthy men, and it’s not difficult to do. It’s a certain type of girl who will do that. There are girls who will play that game. [That's why] you’ve got those services like Sugardaddy.com,” she added.

Autumn, 29, a Manhattan woman who also asked to remain anonymous, said Dupre exposed one of the city’s ugly truths.

“It’s reality in New York. It’s true. I’d like to say it’s not, but it is,” she said.

“There is many a story: When you move to the city, you meet rich, 40-year-old guys who buy you drinks and offer to put you up in a hotel room.

“They are not giving you direct cash, but you’re getting things for sleeping with them. You’re getting something you want, and he is getting someone he wants,” she added.

Meanwhile, Dupre spoke out on September 4 on Twitter thanking supporters and saying that she was only speaking the “ugly truth”.

“I am only fighting to be who I really am,” she tweeted. (ANI)

Posted: 12/2/2008 12:31:54 PM by Jaymo

Reports surfaced last week via The New York Post that 50 Cent’s manager, Chris Lighty, would be handling the singing career of former hooker Ashley Dupre.

Dupre was the woman at the center of the prostitution scandal that lead to the resignation of former New York Mayor Eliot Spitzer. The mayor used to shell $1,000-an-hour to get serviced by Dupre and other girls.

Lighty and his Violator management released a statement today (December 2) denying the reports saying: “Despite media reports, Chris Lighty and Violator Management do not represent Ashley Dupre. Lighty helped negotiate an interview for Dupre with Diane Sawyer, and has no further involvement in Dupre’s career.”

November 18, 2008
Call girl to Spitzer’s wife: ‘I’m sorry’
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this image released by ABC, former call girl Ashley Dupre, whose tryst with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, led to his resignation, is seen in New York. (AP/ABC, Heidi Gutman)

NEW YORK — The prostitute at the centre of the scandal that brought down former New York governor Eliot Spitzer has apologized to his wife.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre tells People magazine that the FBI informed her in early March that it was investigating one of her clients. A few days later, she found out which client when she recognized Spitzer on TV — resigning.

That was March 12, after revelations Spitzer had used Emperors Club VIP, where Dupre worked.

She says she was stricken by the pained expression on Silda Wall Spitzer’s face.

“I try not to revisit that place too often, but when I think about his speech, I think of her face, her eyes, the hurt,” Dupre said.

Her message to Silda Wall Spitzer: “I’m sorry for your pain.”

Dupre, 23, said Spitzer was polite and businesslike when they met. “Some guys, they want to have conversations and really get to know each other. With him, it clearly was not like that,” she said. “It was more of a transaction. Strictly business.”

Dupre, who was known then as Kristen, said she practiced safe sex with all her clients, including Spitzer. On her lawyer’s advice, she would not elaborate on their liaison, or say whether Spitzer visited her more than once. She did say that he dressed casually and she did not see his security detail.

Dupre also sat down with Diane Sawyer for an ABC “20/20“ segment to be aired Friday. In that interview, ABC said, she describes how an “upper middle-class, girl next door got into the profession and the psychological journey she continues to experience.”

Four people have pleaded guilty to running the prostitution operation. Last week, federal prosecutors said they wouldn’t bring criminal charges against Spitzer.

Dupre, 23, envisions a future for herself in music, fashion and “writing books” — but not prostitution. “Never again.”

Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/11122008/gossip/pagesix/tangled_web_of_hooker_links_138212.htm#comments

November 12, 2008 –

NATALIE McLennan – the $2,000-an- hour call girl who worked for the notorious New York Confidential escort service – blew the whistle on former Gov. Spitzer’s hooker, Ashley Dupre, in a bid to save her own skin as authorities mulled prostitution charges against her, a mysterious new Web site claims.

The site, which we’re not going to name, says it obtained diaries, little black books, notes and explicit nude photos of “Natalia” (McLennan’s hooker name) that were left in a storage space. For $5.99, anyone can log on and view the materials.

The Web site, whose owner is not identified, claims McLennan – who made the cover of New York magazine in 2005 as “NY’s No. 1 escort” – began recording phone conversations with a hooker named “Victoria,” who was actually Dupre, at the behest of authorities investigating the hooker ring.

The site asks: “Ashley, if you’re reading this, do you recall getting several phone calls from Natalia in Nov ‘06? . . . At the time, [the] DA was showing no mercy and I think he knew Natalia knew a lot more than she was saying . . . They want[ed] her to record and get some information from a former co-hooker named Victoria . . . [Natalia] was very nervous because some crazy Russian . . . dangled [New York Confidential boss] Jason [Itzler] off a roof at one time and she feared that Jason would find out that she was recording Victoria . . . Is [that] the length that a coward will go to avoid jail?”

When we tipped McLennan off to the Web site, she looked at it and exclaimed: “Oh, my God, this is scary! This is crazy! I have no idea where this came from. Let me call my lawyer and I’ll call you back.”

Dupre’s lawyer, Don Buchwald, asked about the claim that McLennan ratted out Dupre, told us, “I haven’t heard anything about this.

By Maya Dollarhide

(LifeWire) — Eight years ago, Natalie McLennan, a leggy brunette, moved to New York City from Montreal to pursue an acting career. At a cocktail party, she met Jason Itzler, the self-proclaimed “‘king of all pimps” and owner of the now-defunct New York Confidential escort agency. When Itzler suggested McLennan, then 28, work for him, she decided “dating” guys beat waiting tables while she continued looking for acting gigs.

By 2004, McLennan was earning around $2,000 an hour, sometimes more, seeing “two to three clients a day for at least two to three hours each.”

When it came to catering to the needs of her well-heeled customers, “I was always on call.”

Natalie — known as Natalia — had hit it big; in July 2005, she was profiled for a New York magazine cover story. Three months after the interview hit the newsstands, the agency was shut down. McLennan was arrested for prostitution, spending 26 days in jail.

Thirty-year-old “Celeste,” who didn’t want her real name used, says she started turning tricks in Minnesota at 15. For her, prostitution was a job, not a path to a celebrity lifestyle. In a good year, the young wife and mother saw up to four clients a day, men she describes as “just guys, like the ones you see at the supermarket or fixing something in your house” and earned up to $300 for 30 minutes of her services. She found her customers through online personals, chat rooms and telephone talk lines for singles.

“I needed that money. I had debt, credit card debt. Then later, when I had a child, I needed the money to pay for food and things for my baby,” she says. In May of this year, Celeste says, she decided to quit for good after a client, a doctor, hurt her during sex. “I figured he of all people would know the limitations of a person’s body, but he didn’t and I thought I was going to die.”

McLennan and Celeste represent two sides of an industry that perennially generates headlines and pop culture buzz. Tabloid tales of high-priced call girls and politicians — like former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer — have heightened interest in TV fare such as Showtime’s “The Secret Diary of a Call Girl.” There are also reports of a new series being developed for HBO based on the novel “Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl” and a proposed MTV reality series starring Spitzer’s favorite paid date, Ashley Dupre.

While these moments in the sun tend to glamorize prostitution, women in the sex industry and those who study them say a prostitute’s real life can also be difficult and dangerous. What’s harder to get agreement on is whether the sex industry victimizes women.

Risks and rewards

When Celeste met her first pimp at a gas station hang-out, she was vulnerable and alone. Her family had neglected her, she says, and she was often the target of psychological abuse. She “didn’t have enough self-esteem” to say no when her new boyfriend suggested she work for him. “He was very handsome and smooth,” she says. “I wanted him to like me and be my boyfriend. I was living on my own, mainly, and he took care of me.”

McLennan, on the other hand, felt more in control and says she enjoyed aspects of her former job, especially the money and the opportunity to “party with rock stars.”

“I never felt that I was a victim, as opposed to the girls on the street,” says McLennan. “There was definitely anxiety at the beginning, but it got easier almost immediately because the agency’s clientele mainly consisted of successful, well-mannered business men. We were marketed as princesses and the men who hired us treated us as such.”

Celeste was not so lucky. “I was always afraid, every single time,” she recalls. “I did this for 15 years and I never stopped being afraid. The job isn’t like in the movies.”

Victims or not?

McLennan and Celeste both say working for a high-end escort agency or as a call girl is preferable to working in the streets because the money is better and it’s less risky than walking the streets. Researchers, meanwhile, are divided over whether the sex industry victimizes the women.

“Prostitution causes deep psychological harm,” says Melissa Farley, Ph.D., a research and clinical psychologist and founder and executive director of the nonprofit group Prostitution Research and Education in San Francisco. “The words that are said to these women on the job, the names they are called by their [customers] and pimps hurt them emotionally. They are frequently abused physically. Not to mention that the shelf life of women in prostitution is short — if women manage to stay alive in it, they don’t last a long time.”

Farley, who spent two years investigating eight legalized brothels says, “Nevada brothels are scary, scary places.” Her research, which was supported by a U.S. State Department grant, found that 81 percent of the women in brothels don’t want to be there.

Other researchers disagree with Farley’s findings and contend that by legalizing prostitution in the form of brothels, women in the sex industry can gain a modicum of legitimacy.

Brothels, a legal solution

Sociologist Barb Brents of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has spent the last 10 years researching the legal brothel industry in Nevada. She disagrees with Farley’s position that all women working as prostitutes — even legally in brothels — are victims.

Most women working in brothels, Brents says, are doing it for the money, like any other job. “You have women coming in from low-paying service jobs… who decide to work in a brothel because they need more money to make ends meet,” she says. “Then you have former prostitutes, women who want to get away from stress of working illegally. Then you have the ‘professionals,’ women from the legal porn industry or former dancers who see their work as a profession or a calling.”

While Brents agrees that abuse and violence can and does occur in the sex industry, it rarely happens in legalized brothels, she says. “These women can leave their jobs. They can walk out the door and quit. They are not prisoners there. And most of them stay because the money is good.”

Fifty-year-old Marisol, who asked that her real name not be used, works at Donna’s Ranch, a legal brothel in northeastern Nevada. At Donna’s, sex workers have access to medical care, are regularly tested for HIV, and have the option of refusing a client. For Marisol, however, it’s the money that makes being a sex worker appealing.

“It’s a job. I am a single mother and this job allowed me to pay for my daughters’ education, our mortgage and our car. I could not do that working at Wal-Mart.”

Getting out, or trying to

Still, the women interviewed for this article agree that even under the best circumstances, being a sex worker isn’t a job that they want to pursue forever. Retirement seems like a good idea to ex-call girl McLennan, who says she is happy to be done with that part of her life, in part because her short prison time was an eye-opener to the risks of her profession. Still, her experiences provided for her: She is writing a memoir, “The Price” (Phoenix Books), due out in November.

She’s also planning to set up blog “where I can offer other girls advice and guidance. I have made a lot of bold choices in my life but I think many of them have been misguided.”

Celeste wants to volunteer to baby-sit at the non-profit where she once received counseling and comfort. “A lot of women there have babies or young children and they need someone to watch them while they get help,” she says. “I want to be able to give back to the organization someday.”

For now, Celeste is concentrating on raising her daughter. But despite the harm and fear her last client caused her, she still hasn’t changed her phone number — the one that keeps her attached to her former clients. Without that number, she’s officially out of business.

“I keep meaning to change it,” she says, “but then I think, what if I need to earn some money fast? It’s hard to let go.”

By TheImproper.com

Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is dodging prosecution in the much heralded sex scandal with call girl Ashey Dupre that ruined his political career and forced him to resign from office in disgrace.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said today (Nov. 6) there was no evidence Spitzer used public money to pay for his liaisons with Dupre, which reportedly cost up to $4,800 an hour. Dupre also has escaped charges, but those who ran the prostitution ring weren’t so lucky.

Garcia said Spitzer’s public humiliation and the loss of his political career were punishment enough. The former governor comes from a wealthy New York family and he has returned to work in the family real estate business. His wife is still by his side.

“We have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter,” Garcia said.

The news removes a huge legal cloud surrounding Spitzer, who was forced from office in March after it was revealed that he paid for high-priced call girls, according to the AP. A conviction would have likely cost Spitzer his license to practice law, although he could face sanctions for inappropriate behavior by the state bar association.

While the move effectively ends the case for Spitzer, the man accused of running the escort service that hooked (no pun intended) up Ashley with the former New York governor and led to one of the biggest sex scandals in New York History was forced to plead guilty in court. Others involved in the escort service have also pleaded guilty to various charges.

Mark Brener, 62, Ashley’s “Emperors Club V.I.P.” pimp, pled guilty in June in federal court in Manhattan as part of a plea deal. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t cut him much slack. He reportedly looking at up to 30 months in jail on money-laundering and prostitution-conspiracy charges.

Cecil “Katie” Suwal, 23, who was Brener’s girlfriend and worked as his call-girl booker, pleaded guilty a week before Brener in a deal that includes a 21- to 27-month jail sentence. Brener ran the call girl ring with Suwal out of his New Jersey apartment. Suwal had no prior criminal record. In that regard, the sentence is considered stiff.

Hooker bookers Tanya Hollander, andTemeka Rachelle Lewis have also pleaded guilty. Lewis was reportedly the booker who arranged the date between “Kristen, “the name Dupre used, and a man identified in court papers as “Client-9,” who later turned out to be Spitzer. The Feds tracked Spitzer to Washington where he met up with Dupre on Feb. 13. Spitzer resigned in March.

Dupre reportedly cooperated with prosecutors from the start. The evidence in the case is said to have included phone records and taped conversations. The feds were particularly interested in determining where Spitzer got the money to pay for his trysts.

Dupre is the smallest fish in the bunch has disappeared from sight since she was seen cavorting with a married New Jersey neighbor in a Bridge and Tunnel romance in Manhattan. But the end of the case likely means she is free to pursue possible opportunities and generally get on with her life.

(AP) Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that they will not bring criminal charges against Eliot Spitzer for his role in a prostitution scandal, removing a legal cloud that has surrounded the former governor since his epic downfall eight months ago.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said that investigators found no evidence that Spitzer or his office misused public or campaign funds for prostitution. Federal prosecutors typically do not prosecute clients of prostitution rings.

“In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this Office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.”

A remorseful Spitzer issued a statement in which he expressed relief that he will not face charges.

“I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed. I resigned my position as Governor because I recognized that conduct was unworthy of an elected official. I once again apologize for my actions,” Spitzer said.
Spitzer was out of town and unavailable for further comment.
Spitzer resigned March 12 after it was disclosed he was referred to in court papers as “Client-9,” a man who met a prostitute known in a Washington, D.C., hotel. Garcia said that Spitzer later revealed to investigators that on multiple occasions he arranged for women to travel from one state to another state to engage in prostitution.

The scandal ruined a promising political career for Spitzer, who won a landslide election in 2006 with a vow to clean up corruption.

By JAMIE SCHRAM

Click for photo gallery

Kristin Davis

Last updated: 8:52 pm
October 22, 2008
Posted: 8:39 pm
October 22, 2008

The former head of a high-end Manhattan call girl ring finally confirmed today that disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer was a client.

Davis Gallery

Kristin Davis, whose Wicked Models had more than 2,000 johns paying $900-an-hour, was linked to the pervy pol in March, after Spitzer admitted to patronizing a different escort service.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to set the record straight. While it is true that Spitzer, as well as many other celebrities, patronized women employed by my former agencies, what is not accurate are the rumors that I personally serviced Spitzer or acted as his ‘personal Madam Butterfly,’” Davis said in a statement released tonight.

Davis, 32, pleaded guilty last week to promoting prostitution for running the service. She was sentenced to three months time served and will have to forfeit $476,000 at her Dec. 4 sentencing.

“The past 8 months have been long and very difficult for me,” she said in the statement. “By changing my plea to guilty and accepting the plea deal presented to me, I am finally able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and am ready to move on to several exciting new projects I have been working on.”