The sex scandal that erupted around former Rep. Matt Gaetz before his exit from Congress centered on a 17-year-old high schooler who was homeless and wanting cash to pay for braces, court records reveal.
The girl at the center of the scandal is now an adult, but back in 2017 when she met the then-congressman, she was a high school junior living in Florida and offering to have sex with men for money, according to court documents made public last month and first reported by The New York Times.
The woman’s attorney, Laura Wolf, told the Times that she and her client want the public to know some of the background involved in the Gaetz scandal.
“The vulnerable circumstances most crime victims face are rarely known to the public,” Wolf told the Times. “Although my client’s circumstances were revealed outside of her control, I hope it helps for the public to see a fuller and more human picture of her than the press has reported on to date.”
Gaetz has denied a core detail surrounding the scandal, that he had sex with the then 17-year-old girl.
“I never had sex with this person,” the former congressman told the Times in a text message. “This person threatened me with a lawsuit if I didn’t pay her $2.3 million dollars. … She never sued me because her story is fiction.”
Before she met Gaetz, the girl and her siblings split time living with each of her divorced parents. One of her parents was homeless and stayed in a shelter off and on. When the girl and her siblings stayed with that parent, they all stayed together at the shelter, according to Wolf.
The girl worked at McDonald’s to make money, according to a report by the House Ethics Committee on Gaetz. In an effort to make extra cash, the girl signed up on a website that offered to set up older men with younger women ages 18 and above for a “sugar dating” relationship.
Through the website, the girl first met Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector and friend of Gaetz. Greenberg paid the girl for sex multiple times before taking her to a July 15, 2017, party at the home of Chris Dorworth, then a lobbyist for Ballard Partners. Gaetz also attended the party and, according to the girl’s testimony to the Ethics Committee, had sex with the girl twice. One of those times allegedly took place on a “pool table or … air hockey table.”
In 2022, Greenberg was sentenced to over a decade in prison after pleading guilty to underage sex trafficking, wire fraud, stalking, and a host of other crimes. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Gaetz.
