Spitzer Sex not Victimless: The High Price of Prostitution

The Eliot Spitzer sex scandal of 2008 brought to the forefront an astonishing fact: prostitution is not a victimless crime. Women involved in prostitution pay a much higher price than all of the money earned in the world’s oldest profession.

Little girls never dream of one day becoming a prostitute. A doctor, yes. A lawyer, yes. A whore, no. Demand produces supply. It’s not the other way around. Ashley Dupre, as many have argued, did not bring down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. She’s just one of many women lured into the business of sex for pay because of economic hardship. Had Dupre not been available, Spitzer would have settled for someone else on the fateful night of February 13, 2008 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C.

Having interviewed several high-class “working girls” here’s what I discovered.

Many women in the industry have been sexually abused or molested as children. Many women become drug addicts or alcoholics in order to work. One woman whose name I won’t use told me: “I was raped, became pregnant, and had nowhere to go. A woman told me this was a quick way for me to get money. It was terrifying. I’d never had a drink in my life, but on that first day, right after my morning coffee I downed a small bottle of vodka. I needed something to help get me there.”

A woman who had been a successful Las Vegas showgirl shared, “When my boyfriend saw our baby girl for the first time – she was born with multiple birth defects – that was the end of my life as I knew it. He picked me up at the hospital and dropped me and the baby off at a friend’s place. Turns out his friend was a madam. My boyfriend told me this is where I would earn what I needed to take care of my crippled kid. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. That was 14 years ago.” “I never wanted to be a human garbage receptacle,” a woman clearly high on something told me. “But this game, it’s a catch 22. I used to take drugs to get myself to work. Now I can’t stop working because I need the money to buy drugs. I don’t know how to get out. It’s like once in, never out.”

Another added, “It took all I had to drag myself out of that life. I worked hard at getting my self-esteem back. Then out of nowhere, months and months later, one of my wealthy johns tracked me down. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. The guy was seriously obsessed. Here was a married man, much like Eliot Spitzer with two little girls and he wouldn’t let me go. I had a fight with my boyfriend one day and went off to Central Park and there he was. I now know he was stalking me. Anyway, that day I became his mistress. And, you know, it wasn’t much different than having been a whore. Then I just stopped sleeping. I’ve been an insomniac ever since. He was always a reminder of a time in my life I wanted to forget.”

Sex sells.

On Monday, March 10, 2008, when the New York Times broke the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal online, their servers crashed. Revenue for the paper went up an astonishing 60% with the salacious details driving up demand. Since then papers across the board have been selling, bloggers have been blogging, and tongues have been wagging. No other sexual scandal has received this kind of all-consuming frenzy -- not even the Clinton-Lewinski scandal of 1998.

Everyone, it seems, wants the sordid details. Everyone, it seems, wants in on the cash.

The math.

Here it is folks, the real numbers behind Spitzer’s $1,000/hr encounter with a high- priced call girl.

Time in the boudoir: 2 hours, 15 minutes = $2,225

Ashley Dupre’s cut = half or $1,112.50

Time it took to get from New York to Washington, DC = approximately 3 hours

Time it took to get back to New York from Washington, DC = approximately 3 hours

Time it took to get ready for “date” = approximately 1 hour

Travel time to and from train station(s) = approximately 45 minutes

Total of hours put in by Ashley Dupre = 10 hours

Amount of money made by Dupre on a per hourly rate = $112.50

Dollar value of a lifetime of emotional scars = ______ (you enter number here)

Sex does sell, but who wins? Not the prostitutes. There is a generalization that prostitution has no victims and is considered to be sex among consenting adults. Come on now, would a 22-year-old really have slept with 48-year-old George Fox, Spitzer’s alias because she wanted to?

Whatever else Ashley Dupre accomplishes in her life, it will always be foreshadowed by the fact she was Eliot Spitzer’s call girl. Even if she discovers a cure for the common cold any mention of her will bring back all the sordid details. Here’s the whore, have a look-see, the hawkers will hawk. The victim has been and always will be the prostitute herself.