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| BACKGROUND | IMPEACHMENT | PLAYERS | TIMELINE |
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Profile: Paula Jones
Born into a poor, religious family in Lonoke, Ark., Jones, now 31, worked as a department store saleswoman, rental car clerk and secretary before landing a job with the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission.
In a federal court suit filed in 1994, Jones said Clinton exposed himself to her, and then obliquely warned her to keep quiet about the incident when she rejected his advance. Jones' lawsuit gained momentum when the Supreme Court ruled it could proceed during Clinton's presidency, and religious conservatives took up her cause and funded her legal expenses. It was unclear at times whether Jones or her media-savvy advisers were directing the lawsuit. Her demands as a litigant wavered from a simple apology, to $700,000 and an apology to undefined compensation. The case peaked in January when Clinton, trailed by an army of reporters, took the presidential motorcade to his lawyer's office to give a lengthy deposition in her case. Her attorneys, tipped off about Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, trapped him into denying the affair, setting off independent counsel Kenneth Starr's perjury probe that now threatens to engulf Clinton. In April, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright threw out the Jones' lawsuit, ruling that her allegations did not meet the definition of sexual harassment as she claimed. Less than a week later, Jones' husband, Stephen, lost his job with an airline, leaving the couple and their two sons, now living in a one-bedroom apartment in Long Beach, Calif., with no apparent means of support. Now Jones is trying to revive her lawsuit. |
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