Our experiment this year with the Right to be Forgotten brings us a most unusual request, from the woman long identified as a Las Vegas prostitute who was provided as a bribe to disgraced former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora.
Searching for her name on Google turns up stories labeling her a prostitute in the Dimora criminal case, which blocks her from getting jobs, as a bartender or anything else, she says. Her request is futile under our right-to-be-forgotten policy, which gives people a chance to remove their names from dated, embarrassing stories on our site.
Her potential employers would continue to find out about her role in the Dimora case. The bigger problem is this: She says she was never a prostitute, never had sex with Dimora and never took money to have sex with him. She says the descriptions of her in the Dimora case effectively destroyed her identity as a woman in control of her body, her situation and her story. Suzzanne Michaels worked for more than a decade as a professional dominatrix.
She has worked as an exotic dancer and fetish model. Her stage names included Ms. SM, Tiger and Goddess Syn. She has trademarked the brand Pleasure Addict. What Michaels never did, she says, is have sex for money. So, we are going to do something unusual in our right-to-be-forgotten experiment. Suzzanne Michaels grew up outside Chicago with plans on being an actress. Those plans developed as she made ends meet first as an exotic dancer. Courtesy of Suzzanne Michaels.
Michaels, now 51, grew up outside Chicago. After high school she was living in the city trying to make ends meet as a bartender when she learned how much more she could earn as a topless bartender. The journey from topless bartender to exotic dancer was short, and Michaels quickly found she was pretty good at it.
