school daze

Prolific Prostitute/Teacher’s Students Surprisingly Not Good at Googling

This morning, the Post blares across its cover that it has an exclusive: SEXXX ED: Bronx teacher was a stripper — and a hooker. The article tells the tale of 30-year-old Melissa Petro, who is an elementary-school teacher at P.S. 70, and her life of working as a stripper in Mexico and as an adult-services provider on Craiglist. Zoinks! Great scoop, right? Except that, from the size of Petro’s Internet footprint, it looks like she’s been trying to get exposed (sorry). She’s been trying pretty hard, actually, over and over. (Sorrier.) There’s this story from years ago, about how stripping led to more illegal activities. There’s this blog post from over the summer about how some of her colleagues are beginning to Google her. And finally, in case you might think there is another Melissa Petro who is just tarnishing an innocent schoolteacher’s name, there’s the video here where she talks about how being a sex worker is like being a teacher, and then goes on to read a story about being a stripper in Mexico and then almost becoming the lesbian lover of another stripper.

Finally, as though it hadn’t been clear enough, Petro made her final bid for attention with a Huffington Post blog. The entry opened with: “From October 2006 to January 2007 I accepted money in exchange for sexual services I provided to men I met online in what was then called the ‘erotic services’ section of Craigslist.org.” Got it?

It’s not quite an “exclusive” if the subject of your story has already told the story herself, over and over. But still, the Post makes an interesting point in uncovering this story: If parents were only learning about this now, from the tabloid reporters calling around, does that mean that their children didn’t know? As in, none of them Googled their teacher to read about her sexploits?

Or does it just mean that they did Google her, and they all know about it, and they were just being chill? Knowing kids and the Internet, it’s probably the latter.

SEXXX ED [NYP]

Prolific Prostitute/Teacher’s Students Surprisingly Not Good at Googling