Spitzer call girl revealed as singer (22)

Ashley Alexandra Dupre as she appears on MySpace. The prostitute (22) was described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with New York governor Eliot Spitzer
Photograph: Reuters

US: THE "WOMAN who rocked New York", as the prostitute at the centre of the state governor's sex scandal has been described, was revealed yesterday as a 22-year-old aspiring singer.

The call girl, "Kristen", whose assignation at a Washington hotel last month brought down Eliot Spitzer on Tuesday, was identified as New Jersey-born Ashley Alexandra Dupre. She now lives in New York's Flatiron district, and images from her MySpace page showed the brunette in a white bikini in St Tropez and elsewhere.

"I just don't want to be thought of as a monster," Ms Dupre told the New York Times . "This has been a very difficult time."

The New York Post called her "The gal who laid gov low".

On her MySpace page, Ms Dupre, who is just four years older than the eldest of Mr Spitzer's three daughters, said she left "a broken family" at 17 and had used drugs, "been broke and homeless". "But I made it," she wrote. "I'm still here and I love who I am."

Ms Dupre, described by the Emperors' Club VIP prostitution ring as "an American, petite, very pretty brunette, 5ft 5ins and 105 lbs", travelled by train from New York to Washington to meet Mr Spitzer the night before Valentine's Day.

Mr Spitzer, referred to as "Client 9" by the FBI in court documents, gave her $4,300 (€2,760) at the end of the two-hour session, which she said "went very well".

The New York Post reported that he had asked her to perform a sex act on him without a condom but she had insisted on protection.

In her profile, she wrote: "I am all about my music, and my music is all about me . . . It flows from what I've been through, what I've seen and how I feel."

She went on: "I can sit here now, and knowingly tell you that life's hard sometimes. But, I made it. I'm still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliche, yes, but I know it's true.

She said her latest track, What We Want, was "really about trust, something my past has made very difficult for me to feel".

© 2008 AP

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times