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

Nov. 21, 2008— -- Ashley Dupré, the former escort involved in the scandal surrounding New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, says that she's made many mistakes, and that many other young women could have ended up in a similar situation.

"You don't mean to make those choices, but you're put in a situation and, you know, you have an opportunity to do it," she told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in an interview airing tonight on "20/20."

Dupré's father left when she was small, and her mother remarried an oral surgeon. When she was 12, her 17-year-old brother ran away and got arrested for dealing drugs.

Dupré said she felt lost at that point, and that, as a teenager, she was confused about her relationship with men.

"I think by not having my father and my brother around, I really ... I felt like I missed something," she said. "To have a certain level of respect for yourself, how to carry yourself. Have that father that, you know, if I'm dating a guy and he can't stand him, you know, stick up for me and say, 'What are you doing?' The unconditional love feeling ... I just couldn't find it.

"I didn't have that emotional connection," she continued. "I think I was confused. I didn't know what sex was."

But Dupré doesn't blame her father or brother for the mistakes she acknowledges making.

"I've made so many mistakes," she said. "It's trial and error. I feel like I've raised myself. I left home at 17, you know."

Dupré left her home in New Jersey and went to live with her biological father, but she said she couldn't adjust to the new school, and dropped out junior year.

"I called my dad, I said, 'I can't do this. I'm dropping out,'" she said. "And he said, 'Well, don't come home.'"

Dupré wanted to prove she could make it on her own.

Dupré said she started by sleeping on the couches of friends and also wandered into a drunken topless shoot that surfaced on "Girls Gone Wild." She worked as a cocktail waitress at a strip club, and said she "got involved with the wrong crowd" and with drugs, using "cocaine, ecstasy, pot and vodka [and] alcohol" on a regular basis.