Ashley Dupré: 'I've Made So Many Mistakes'

Ashley Dupré, the 23-year-old former escort who was the target of intense media scrutiny in the days after Gov. Eliot Spitzer's resignation from public office, speaks out to ABC News' Diane Sawyer.

(Heidi Gutman/ABC News)
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Dupré on Escort Work

At 19, Dupré moved to New York, hoping for a new life. "I was working three jobs," she said. "I never had my house. ... I wanted my home to be my home, because I never had a home."

While Dupré worked as a cocktail waitress, a customer gave her a business card for an escort service. She saved the card but said the prospect of working as an escort "wasn't about the money. It was really a place that I could emotionally disconnect myself, rather than be in a relationship and get hurt and be vulnerable."

A few weeks later, she said she called the company and started working that night.

"I knew the line of business," she said. "I already had it in my mind what it was, and I made that decision. ... I knew exactly what I was walking into. ... I was so naive then. I think I was 19, and I was so careless."

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The Underground World of Commercial Sex

Dupré said she never did the work steadily, and that no one knew what she was doing. She'd make cash for three months at a time, then take six months off, going to work at a real estate agency or waitressing, only to go back to escort again.

Dupré uses the word escort to describe the business, which, for her, carries a different meaning than "prostitute."

"I think that prostitution is only about sex," she said. "Whereas an escort is more -- It's time spent ... And, you know, most of the time you go in and you're just someone to talk to."

When it comes to the sex, she said, "You had to be emotionally disconnected -- like from your heart to your head."

Last December, after being left by a boyfriend, she said she felt she had one choice: to start working as an escort again, in a kind of depression and defeat.

Dupré wrote in her journal, "Today was my first night back at the agency. It was really difficult for me. I don't remember it being this hard. It used to be easy for me. I never really thought about what it was I was doing."

That's how she came to be the girl at the escort service when a powerful but anonymous client called in. It was four weeks after she returned to work when she traveled to Washington.