Monica Lewinsky makes heartbreaking admission about Bill Clinton scandal in rare confession
It was the affair scandal that shocked the world, and this week, Monica Lewinsky has made a series of tragic statements whilst looking back on her relationship with former US president Bill Clinton.
Launching her very own self-fronted podcast, the White House intern-turned-activist reflected on that time of her life, claiming the decisions she made while romantically involved with Clinton have ceaselessly come back to bite her.
Summarising the affair, Lewinsky, 51, began her debut episode by disclosing: "I fell in love with D.C. and the White House and the job and the environment, and then, very unfortunately, I fell in love with my boss who was married and also the most powerful man in the world.
"What followed was an inappropriate relationship that lasted for two years."
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In 1998, Lewinsky hit headlines across the world after a workplace relationship with Bill Clinton was exposed to the public.
The pair had become embroiled in an affair in the early-mid 90s, after a family friend helped Lewinsky bag an initially-unpaid job in 1995 as one of Clinton's interns, under Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.
At the time, Clinton was 49 - and had been married to wife Hillary since 1975 - whilst Lewinsky was just 22.
The president was impeached by the House of Representatives, before being acquitted of all charges in 1999, remaining in his position until the end of his second presidential term in 2001.
Looking back on her podcast this week, Lewinsky admitted she suffered a colossal blow to her mental health when the affair was initially exposed, leading her, at one point, to feel there was nowhere she could turn.
"I think what surprised me almost the most was that some of the hardest times and the times I came closest to not wanting to be here anymore were in the aftermath because I didn’t realise how much I had lost," she confessed.
"When I came to realise how much I had lost, when I came into my anger, when I came into this period of my life where I could not move forward."
Lewinsky - who has since started a career as an activist, with a particular focus on cyberbullying - says the scandal left her unable to take on any professional endeavours.
Claiming that, at her lowest, she 'couldn't see a future', she added that she'd often spend evenings crying in bed, not wanting 'to wake up'.
At the time, Clinton denied accusations of sexual relations between the pair under oath, after Lewinsky alleged that she'd had 10 encounters with the politician in the Oval Office over an 18-month period.
In 2004, Lewinsky publicly responded to the release of Clinton's autobiography, in which he spoke briefly of the affair.
Speaking to the Mail at the time, she said of the memoir: "He could have made it right with the book, but he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history.
"He has lied. I really didn't expect him to go into detail about our relationship. But if he had and he'd done it honestly, I wouldn't have minded."
Lewinsky added at the time: "I did, though, at least expect him to correct the false statements he made when he was trying to protect the Presidency. Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking.
"I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through.
"I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character."
Despite her initial rage, in her podcast, Lewinsky also vowed not to let the scandal dictate the course that the rest of her life would take.
"What I thought was happening in those two years in D.C. and what I thought this relationship was, I’ve come to understand it in different ways," she explained.
"I think that it was something where there were real emotions involved, but I think I believed that there was a future.
"I think I believed that I mattered a lot more than I did."
Rhianna Benson