After I was fired, I couldn’t pay my rent. (Even now, freelance writing and the seminars I teach barely pay the bills.) Because of the negative publicity, I lost the part-time jobs that subsidized my teaching salary. And it would only get worse: When I surrendered my fight for my job, the Department of Education contested my unemployment, even though my resignation agreement had stipulated that they wouldn’t; this was the only reason I didn’t go to trial. I moved back in with an ex-boyfriend, falling back into an emotionally abusive relationship. I was four years in recovery for alcohol and sex addiction and 31 years old. Selling sex was out of the question, even though this option haunted me more then than it had in years.
“I don’t want to be thought of as a monster” Ashley said. Spitzer — a.k.a. Client 9 — seems to have cleared that hurdle, with 48 percent of the NYC voting public now supporting him for the second-highest elected job in the city. At the same time, and even more surprisingly, Anthony Weiner has been topping those same Quinnipiac polls in his run for New York’s mayor less than three years after being caught with his pants down.
Read More | "We Pardon Spitzer, But Still Judge Former Sex Workers (Like Me)" | Melissa Petro | ?New York