When former prostitute Wendy Yow Ellis claimed that she and Louisiana Congressman David Vitter had had a sexual relationship lasting several months, he accused her of lying. Vitter’s name had already been disclosed as part of the client list of the now-famous “DC Madam,” and the also now-famous “Canal Street Madam” had named him as one of her establishment’s clients, also. At the time that she named Vitter, she said he liked to visit a prostitute named Wendy; however, Ellis claims that she had nothing to do with the Canal Street operation, that her negotiations with Vitter took place in a French Quarter apartment via the New Orleans Escort Service, and she was paid $300 an hour through a pimp named Jonathan.
It is not known whether there was actually another Wendy who worked at the Canal Street establishment (as implied by Canal Street Madam Jeanette Maier) who had sex with Vitter. So far, only Wendy Yow Ellis, sometimes known as Wendy Cortez, has come forward. This rather confusing scenario involving Wendys is complicated even more by the fact that Vitter’s wife is named Wendy, also.
At any rate, publisher Larry Flynt paid for Wendy Yow Ellis to take a lie detector test, which she passed, and which Vitter’s press secretary has refused to comment on. Flynt has also paid Ellis for details about her sessions with Vitter, which he is publishing in a future issue of Hustler.
Vitter, of course, ran for office with a promise of “protecting the sanctity of marriage.” Ellis, who describes Vitter as “a very clean man,” says she took the polygraph because people who heard Vitter’s denial of their relationship might see her as “a two-bit whore when I’m the one telling the truth.”
