[May 07, 2014]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Monica
Lewinsky, the onetime White House intern whose 1990s affair with Bill
Clinton nearly brought down his presidency, broke a long silence on
Tuesday, saying she regretted what happened.
Writing in Vanity Fair magazine, Lewinsky, 40, said it was time to
stop "tiptoeing around my past -- and other people's futures. I am
determined to have a different ending to my story."
Her affair with Clinton was one between consenting adults and the
public humiliation she suffered altered the direction of her life,
she wrote.
"Any ‘abuse' came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in
order to protect his powerful position," she said in excerpts of the
article published on the magazine's website.
Lewinsky added, "I, myself, deeply regret what happened between me
and President Clinton. Let me say it again: I. Myself. Deeply.
Regret. What. Happened."
The affair led to Clinton's being impeached by the House of
Representatives in 1999. The Senate acquitted him and Clinton
completed his second term in 2001.
Lewinsky dropped from sight after the scandal. She got a master's
degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics and
has lived in Los Angeles, New York and Portland, Oregon.
"I turned down offers that would have earned me more than $10
million, because they didn't feel like the right thing to do," she
said.
Lewinsky said she was strongly tempted to kill herself several times
during the investigations and in one or two periods after.
Her
name resurfaced in U.S. political discourse in February, when former
first lady and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton
was quoted as calling her "a narcissistic loony toon" in an article
based on the papers of a Clinton friend.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a likely Republican presidential
contender, accused Democrats of "hypocrisy" for claiming to back
women's rights while giving Bill Clinton a pass for his "predatory"
behavior towards Lewinsky.
Spokesmen for the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation in New York
had no immediate comment on the article.
Lewinsky said she was motivated to speak out by the 2010 suicide of
a Rutgers University student who killed himself after a video of him
kissing a man was streamed online.
"I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was
driven by the Internet," Lewinsky wrote.
Her goal "is to get involved with efforts on behalf of victims of
online humiliation and harassment and to start speaking on this
topic in public forums."
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Leslie Adler)
