She later provided graphic details of their encounters in a video interview with Hustler to promote a photo spread of her in the magazine. By then, he had gone into seclusion. There, he apologized and said he had sought forgiveness from God and his wife, but did not admit to consorting with the D. Madam, nor with any other prostitute. Wendy Vitter, who had been standing next to her husband, told the media that he indeed had her steadfast support.
Critics pounced because Vitter has always cast himself as a man of honor, upholding family values, morality and ethics in a political milieu that he often portrays as corrupt. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. In the end, he did not have to testify. Palfrey was convicted of prostitution, and two weeks later, she hung herself.
His challenger, then-U. But the fullest airing of the issue occurred during nearly four minutes of a statewide televised debate between the candidates, and there, Vitter showed off the stubborn, disciplined unwillingness to address the topic that he has demonstrated ever since he spoke to the press at the Sheraton.
But Vitter would not do so. Instead, he repeated his comments that he had received forgiveness from his wife and God and said he had received an outpouring of prayers and support from constituents afterward. Vitter said he had spoken directly on the issue to voters in Meriwether tried again, asking Vitter to give a yes or no answer on whether he had violated the law. But Dardenne insisted he wasn't responsible for the question being asked. I never plant questions," Dardenne said in an interview after the forum.
Still, with a smile on his face, Dardenne implied it was unlikely that Vitter, who taught at Tulane University's law school, wouldn't know what was included in Title It's the criminal code. Any lawyer would know that," Dardenne said in an interview. Though he responded to the question, Vitter never admitted to violating Title 14 or breaking the law.
He also didn't mention prostitution directly or even use the phrase "serious sin" again. At the end of the forum, he rushed out of the room with a staff member, though he continued to take questions from a reporter.
Vitter's prostitution scandal has come up indirectly at several other candidate's forums. In many ways it became the centerpiece of the attacks on Vitter, who at first sought to ignore it altogether. But even when he addressed the issue, he was never able to put it behind him. An added, and certainly unwelcome, complication for Vitter was Jindal, who had spent almost his entire second term as governor operating an ultimately futile presidential campaign.
But perhaps even more than his unpopularity, Vitter was hurt in the closing days of the election by Jindal himself. Longtime rivals, Jindal seemed to wage a last minute campaign of his own to sabotage Vitter. Hey do you want to call her? He chose the questions. He decided to pull the trigger.
On Saturday, local television station WDSU published a follow-up to the Zombie allegation that included a letter Ellis had written to a judge in asking for leniency. In the letter, Ellis told the judge that she had never been a prostitute, only a dancer, and explained that she had been receiving chemotherapy for seven months starting in January —a substantial chunk of the three-year period in which she alleged Vitter was paying her for sex.
In , in Hustler , she alleged her relationship with Vitter lasted at least four months. She told Berry it lasted three years. And the Hustler story never mentioned anything about an abortion.
But Berry never talked to anyone at Hustler about that, nor did he send the magazine specific questions. A Hustler spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but a Times-Picayune reporter who also investigated the Ellis story told The Gambit in a follow-up piece published Thursday that she had never complained about her portrayal in the paper. Are you kidding? And so here we are, one day before the election, with an unsubstantiated allegation about a senator and a love child hanging in the air.
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