World

Woman paid for sex in Secret Service scandal insists she’s an escort, not a prostitute

Vince Coglianese Editorial Director
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One of the sex workers in the Secret Service prostitution scandal isn’t pleased with the whole “prostitute” label. She’s an “escort,” she insists.

“An escort is someone who a man can take out to dinner,” the woman said in an interview with The New York Times. “She can dress nicely, wear nice makeup, speak and act like a lady. That’s me.”

“She was dismayed,” wrote Times reporter William Neuman, “that the news reports have described her as a prostitute as she walked the streets picking up just anyone.”

The woman from Catagena, Colombia explained that it’s not exactly the same thing as being an escort.

“It’s like when you buy a fine rum or a BlackBerry or an iPhone,” she said. “They have a different price.”

No matter what kind of phone she is, the agent she stayed with overnight wasn’t paying her service charge.

The man had agreed to an $800 fee for the whole night, the woman told the Times. By morning, he reneged, said he had been drunk and offered her $30.

That set off a back-and-forth that resulted in the local police being summoned, the agents attempting to deflate the commotion and an eventual payment of $225 to the woman.

The particulars of the argument were enough to land the story in the local news, and from there, the scandal took off into an international firestorm.

It wasn’t until that local news report, explained the woman, that she discovered the men were U.S. Secret Service agents.

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