NEWARK, NJ — Just when former call girl and underage Girls Gone Wild flasher Ashley Dupre thought her high profile personal, professional, and legal worlds might be settling down, along comes Amber Arpaio. Arpaio is none too happy with Dupre – whom she claims used her identity in order to appear in front of the very Girls Gone Wild cameras that she later claimed filmed her illegally.
According to Robert E. Dunn, who filed suit in U.S. District Court in Newark for Arpaio last week, his client had known of Dupre vaguely years ago, but the two have never met. Nonetheless, when some of Dupre’s hotly contested Girls Gone Wild footage hit the internet, the 26-year-old medical office worker suddenly found herself more closely associated with the ex-prostitute than she’d ever imagined possible.
“Friends of hers said, ‘You’d never guess what’s on the internet,” Dunn told the Associated Press. “She was shocked. Absolutely shocked.”
What she found when she went online and searched for her own name were copious references to porn sites – because Dupre had identified herself on camera as “Amber Arpaio.” She had then backed up the contention with a New Jersey driver’s license sporting the same name, a photo, and a birth date placing her in her 20s.
“My client had a very private life before this came along,” Dunn explained. “Now people are calling her at home.”
Worse than that, given that there is only one Amber Arpaio listed in the entire country, there’s no escaping the connection between herself and Dupre’s expanding list of indiscretions.
“One of the things that really disturbs her,” Dunn observed, “is if she plugs her name into the internet, all that comes up is porn sites. It’s a very upsetting thing. She’s worried this will affect her for the rest of her life. Let’s say she goes for a job or an apartment, and she doesn’t get it. It could be this. She’ll have to explain it every time.”
Arpaio is seeking unspecified damages from not only Dupre, but also the Girls Gone Wild producers and others whom she believes knew that Dupre was using fake ID. In addition to identity theft charges, Arpaio’s complaint also lists invasion of privacy and defamation. Dunn believes that damages will exceed $10 million, the amount Dupre initially attempted to sue Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis for.
“How do you undo something like this,” Dunn asked. “It’s impossible. Forever she’ll be linked to this.”
Dupre spent a week with the Girls Gone Wild film crew and eventually appeared in seven full-length videos. She later insisted that she was not of legal age to perform in the videos or to sign a contract, and that she had been plied with alcohol. In the video segment in which she claims to be Amber Arpaio, Dupre wears a towel and assured an off-camera interviewer that she is 18 and that footage of her could be used by the company in its infamous series.
