Jesse Jackson's Ex-Mistress Has No Regrets

Aug. 17 -- In her first television interview, a woman who had a four-year affair with the Rev. Jesse Jackson calls their daughter her "miracle baby" and expresses no regrets over her relationship with the civil rights leader.

"I'm convinced she is supposed to be here, and I am supposed to be her mom," Karin Stanford says of her daughter, Ashley. "And I'm very proud of that."

Stanford tells ABCNEWS' Connie Chung that since the affair became public, her relationship with Jackson has been strained. He has only seen Ashley once in the last seven months, she says.

Recently, Stanford, a former Jackson aide, went to court to formalize the $4,000-a-month child support payments the former presidential candidate was already paying her. Jackson then asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement, she says. She refused.

"I was shocked," says Stanford, 39. "I had basically kept the details of our relationship confidential. … So then to be hit with the confidentiality agreement was highly insulting to me."

Jackson declined to comment on the interview except to say: "I offer no response because any response further exposes the child in ways I feel to be harmful. She deserves support, a guaranteed college education, dignity, and privacy."

Mixing Business and Pleasure

Stanford first met Jackson when she was completing her doctoral dissertation on his foreign policy record. From the beginning, Jackson impressed her.

"I was very inspired, and I walked away from that meeting believing that this guy is a true believer," Stanford tells Chung. "I was won over."

Their paths crossed again in the mid-1990s, when Stanford was a professor at the University of Georgia and turning her dissertation into a book. After an all-day meeting, Jackson offered her a position on his staff.

For Stanford, it was a dream job. But before long her relationship with Jackson — who was married with five children — became personal.

She says they were in love with one another but accepted that their circumstances precluded a conventional relationship.