Prof Worked for "D.C. Madam"

Professor for Hire (Inside Higher Ed), by Andy Guess:

Readers of The Washington Post were treated on Thursday to the latest salacious details of the “D.C. Madam” trial, a federal racketeering case in which prosecutors are attempting to prove that Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s escort service was really an illegal, high-class prostitution ring. The proceedings, and the mythical list of clients she’s dangled in front of the press, have already ensnared politicians and others far outside Washington’s orbit. Now it’s higher education’s turn to get roped in.

In Wednesday’s testimony, a former academic and university department chair took the stand and admitted to earning some extra income on the side: $250 per sexual encounter as an employee of Pamela Martin & Associates.

Until it became clear that she would have to testify in the case, Rhona Reiss, 63, had been the graduate program director of the Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions’ transitional occupational therapy degree program. ...   [She worked] as an escort for Palfrey’s service, from about February 2001 to April 2002, while she [was earning] an adjunct faculty salary [which] was far from enough to live on. “I did what I had to do, and you know, I grew up in an era when sex ... was recreation. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s and I didn’t think it was such a horrible thing. I came from the era of free love, and I needed money, and that’s what I did,” she said.