Monica Lewinsky breaks silence on Clinton affair

Infamous Monica Lewinsky finally opened up about her affair with former American President Bill Clinton, after years of silence. She states that she wants to set the record straight on the incident, hinting at how her sex scandal could affect “other people’s futures”.

Lewinsky was the 22-year-old who grabbed global media attention in 1998 with her sexual escapades in the oval office with the then President Clinton.

Now a 40-year-old, Lewinsky penned an essay for Vanity Fair titled “Shame and Survival”, in which she seeks to clear the air surrounding the affair which most speculate had been hushed up after she was paid a sizeable amount by Clinton's administration.

She says she has chosen to come forward about her experience because of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old who committed suicide after a video of him kissing another man was broadcasted on the internet. She writes the incident moved her to tears, but made her mother even more distraught. “She was reliving 1998, when she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She was replaying those weeks when she stayed by my bed, night after night, because I, too, was suicidal.” She hopes that by sharing her story, she can help other people in their “darkest moments of humiliation”.

Lewinsky also chooses to write on her inability to find a job after the scandal was publicized by the media, because she was “never ‘quite right’ for the position”. She goes on to cite incidents when she was “right for all the wrong reasons”, as in jobs which required her to attend social events where the media would be in attendance.

She even comments on Hilary Clinton going on record and lashed out at her, saying that she finds her “impulse to blame the Woman – not only me, but herself – troubling.”

She also writes that she “deeply regrets what happened” between herself and President Clinton. She absolves all claims that Clinton harassed her stating firmly that the relationship she had with him was completely consensual, though admitting, “My boss took advantage of me”.

“Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath,” she writes, “when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.” She blamed “Clinton’s administration, the prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle and the media” who ruined her reputations.

She says, “It’s time to burn the beret and burn the blue dress.”

The article will be available digitally on May 8th and on newsstands on May 13th.