National Politics
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3/13/2008Meet the "ho-fessional" that rocked New York
 Meet Ashley Alexandra Dupre, better known as playing the role of high-priced call-girl "Kristen" to Eliot Spitzer's "Client #9": She left a broken home on the Jersey Shore at 17 and came to New York City to work the nightclubs as a rhythm and blues singer. Now, at 22, she is the unwitting, and as yet unseen, star of the seamy drama that is the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York.
Kristen, the high-priced prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having a Feb. 13 rendezvous with Mr. Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her ninth-floor rental in an upscale apartment building in the Flatiron district. On Monday, she made a brief appearance in federal court as a witness in the case against four people charged with operating the prostitution ring, Emperor's Club V.I.P. In a series of telephone interviews on Tuesday night, she said she had slept very little over the past week due to the stress from the case.
"I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," the woman said as she told the tiniest tidbits of her story. Born Ashley Youmans but now known as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, she spoke softly and with good humor as she added with significant understatement: "This has been a very difficult time. It is complicated." The New York Post digs a little deeper into the salacious details, as the Post is wont to do: How Dupre fell into the world of high-end prostitution is not entirely clear, but friends from Wall HS in Belmar, NJ, said she had always had a thing for older men.
"She never dated anyone in our school," said a woman who would only gave her first name, Stephanie.
This 22-year-old, who was a year behind Dupre, said, "She was never slutty. She would date older guys, but it wasn't like she was running around sleeping with everyone." I'm not sure if this is standard fare for all high-dollar prostitutes, but she has a MySpace page - which has since been stripped clean - that once offered samples of her musical prowess and a first person narrative of her life: "My path has not been easy. When I was 17, I left home," she wrote. "It was my decision and I've never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again.
"Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone . . . I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own." Is there any doubt she has a made-for-TV movie and book deal in the offing?
Filed Under: National Politics
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