ITV Monica Lewinsky is still haunted by her past

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It has been 20 years since president Bill Clinton uttered the immortal lie: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” On January 26, 1998, his fist clenched and his voice shaking, Clinton addressed the nation on television, insisting: “These allegations are false.” But secret taped confessions and the world’s most infamous stained blue dress ultimately led Clinton seven months later to shamefully admit an “improper physical relationship” with 24-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The tawdry affair, with revelations of oral sex in the Oval Office, engulfed the president in lurid impeachment proceedings, almost destroyed his presidency and forever tarnished his legacy.

I was branded a tramp, a tart, a slut, a bimbo Monica Lewinsky

Against all odds, however, Clinton survived to remain in power. But whatever happened to Lewinsky? Two decades later the scandal haunts her still. “Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake and I regret my mistake very deeply,” she said. A self-confessed “romantic at heart” she admitted that getting married and having children are “the most important things to me” yet at the age of 44 she still has neither. “I watched my friends’ lives move forward,” she lamented.

“Marriages. Kids. Degrees.” The sex scandal unleashed an avalanche of opprobrium. “I was branded a tramp, a tart, a slut, a bimbo, a floozy and of course ‘that woman’,” she said. Lewinsky had the misfortune to hit the front pages just as social media became a force on the nascent internet. “Millions of people can stab you with their words and that’s a lot of pain,” she said. “I was arguably the most humiliated person in the world.” Lewinsky was a sexy, voluptuously plump 22-year-old when she became a White House intern in 1995, batting her eyelashes and flirting outrageously when meeting the then 49-year-old Clinton.

NC Lewinsky wishing Bill Clinton a happy birthday in 1998

They exchanged gifts: she gave him a tie, he gave her a hat pin, which she wore in her beret when photographed with him. Phone sex sessions followed before the pair moved to the Oval Office for their sexual encounters. Lewinsky confided in close friend, civil servant Linda Tripp, about her trysts. Tripp secretly began recording her confessions and blew the lid off the affair when she turned her evidence over to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. The couple’s red-hot phone sex conversations were also intercepted by British, Russian and Israeli spy agencies, posing a threat to the US’s national security. Lewinsky testified before a grand jury but otherwise hid from the world. Disconsolate, she spent months wiping away tears and considered ending her pain for ever. “I have never attempted suicide but I had strong suicidal temptations,” she admits. “My parents feared I would be humiliated to death, literally.”

Her oncologist father and author mother had divorced when Lewinsky was 14, growing up in Beverly Hills. When the scandal exploded she was comforted by her mother. Depressed, she also sought psychological counselling. Moving to New York in 1999 to seek a fresh start, she launched a handbag line under the name The Real Monica – ironic, considering how much emotional baggage she carried around. In a bid to exorcise her demons, that same year she told her story to Princess Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton in a bestseller earning her £360,000. Having always struggled with her weight, in 2000 Lewinsky traded on her notoriety to become a spokeswoman for diet giant Jenny Craig. But the company soon found her too controversial, her ads were pulled and Lewinsky received only a third of her £700,000 fee. Yet still she could not move on. When Clinton’s biography My Life was published four years later Lewinsky was outraged that he had failed to be honest. “He could have made it right but he hasn’t,” she said.

GETTY The infamous stained dress

“He has lied.” Attempts at TV celebrity fizzled out with underwhelming appearances as a guest on American chat shows and in the UK with Graham Norton. Answering audience questions for an HBO TV documentary left her deeply wounded. Fleeing further afield, Lewinsky wound up her handbag business, packed her own bags and decamped to Britain, pursuing a masters degree in social psychology at the London School of Economics in 2005. “I moved to England to study, to challenge myself, to escape scrutiny, and to reimagine my identity,” she wrote in Vanity Fair magazine. “I had more anonymity in London perhaps due to the fact that I spent most of my waking hours in class or buried in the library.” She hoped that her degree would be “a gateway to a more normal life”. It was not to be. Returning to the US after graduating in 2006 she found that her history hounded her still.

REUTERS As a White House intern with the President in 1995

Job interviews became painful exercises in reliving her humiliation. She moved between Los Angeles, New York and Portland in Oregon, pursuing a career in marketing, branding and communications. “I was never ‘quite right’ for the position,” she said. Companies worried that her past would damage their brand. Some feared retribution if Hillary Clinton won her bid for the White House. Lewinsky survived, “barely, at times”, by creating her own shortterm projects, “or with loans from friends and family”. Reluctant to exploit her reputation, she rejected offers of naked magazine shoots and requests to promote dubious brands, though faked naked photos and Lewinsky lookalike porn videos inevitably appeared. “I turned down offers that would have earned me more than $10million because they didn’t feel like the right thing to do,” she said.

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When Hillary ran for the White House in 2008 Lewinsky admits becoming “virtually reclusive”. Yet she grew frustrated that Bill Clinton was reassimilated into global politics and high society, while she remained a social pariah. In 2014 she stepped forward as an advocate against cyberbullying, calling herself “patient zero”. “Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame-game,” she said, becoming an ambassador for anti-bullying group Bystander Revolution in 2015. “Do I wish my past was different? Absolutely. But given all things not changing I have had demonstrations where surviving what I have has resonated for someone else.” But she has struggled to enjoy a romantic life. How does any boyfriend bring her home to meet his parents? She admits finding too many men “interested in me for the wrong reason”.

GETTY A failed handbag venture

And she still grapples with trust issues. “Monica was betrayed by her best friend Linda Tripp and by her lover Bill Clinton,” said a friend. “How does she ever trust anybody again after that? Not having a husband, not having children – that is the price she is still paying.” And insiders believe that Lewinsky cannot move forward because she still cares for Clinton. “Monica still carries a torch for him,” said a friend. “She has dated some guys since the White House mess. But she has never been able to get Bill out of her head.”

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