Escort Client Numbers Could Have a Taker, but Might Not Add Up to Much
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Guess what.
Change of plans.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey's client phone numbers aren't up for auction anymore -- at least according to her lawyer.
The alleged Washington call-girl madam, recently indicted on federal racketeering charges, has decided she wouldn't feel right doing business with some gossipy media outfit that pays for sleaze, her attorney said yesterday.
So it is possible that the nation's capital will not become embroiled in a raging sex scandal after all. Not right away, anyhow.
Sorry.
Oh, she had offers, said the lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley. Big-money bids. But it turned out that her conscience wouldn't allow her to truck with journalistic bottom-feeders, Sibley said. Instead, he said, Palfrey will give up her 46 pounds of records for free -- about 10,000 phone numbers dating to 1993 -- for "judicious use" by "a responsible news entity."
The recipient: "One of the most reputable and respected investigative news organizations in the country," Palfrey told WTOP radio in an e-mail Monday.
She didn't say who. It wasn't The Washington Post. (Rats!)
Palfrey's goal, Sibley said, is to track down as many men as she can who used her "legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" and ask them to testify on her behalf -- to rebut the prostitution allegations, to say that they merely indulged in pricey sexual game-playing with Palfrey's female employees, not actual sex.
Yet just last week, after a court appearance in the District, Palfrey, 50, reiterated a threat she had been making for months. To defray her legal expenses, she said, she planned to peddle the phone numbers of her well-to-do former clients to the highest bidder. She envisioned selling them to a scandal-mongering outfit, one that would research the numbers, find out who they belonged to and publicize the names.
Although Palfrey "does have a particular recollection of some individuals," Sibley said, her records are mainly just the numbers. And she "lacks the resources" to "thoroughly mine the records" to connect those numbers to names, he said. That's where the "reputable and respected investigative news" outlet comes in.
Follow along now.
Palfrey, who employed college-educated women, mostly in their mid-20s, says that as far she knew, her employees and clients engaged in legal sex play -- at $275 per 90-minute session -- in the men's homes or hotel rooms. Her firm, Pamela Martin & Associates, was in business from 1993 until last year. If the women performed sex acts for the money, Palfrey says, they are to blame, not her.
She wants to find men who will testify that when they called Palfrey's firm to arrange dates, there was no discussion of prostitution, Sibley said.
In return for the phone numbers, Sibley said, the unidentified reputable media organization has agreed to supply Palfrey with any names it comes up with. And it has agreed to be selective about publicizing them, to refrain from publicly disclosing the names in an indiscriminate, wholesale fashion.
What about the sex scandal that Palfrey kept promising?
"I believe that if this news organization identifies people of significance who used the escort service and it decides to make judicious use of those names," Sibley said, "then there may be some social ramifications."
So that's a yes on the scandal?
"If you want to call it a scandal, you can. But I think potentially it speaks more to the hypocrisy of the Beltway community."
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