Clinton affair was 'abuse of power'

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky says she has been reexamining her affair with president Bill Clinton through the "new lens" of the #MeToo movement and has concluded it constituted a "gross abuse of power."

Lewinsky, 44, in an essay published in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine, also recounted a recent chance meeting with Ken Starr, the special prosecutor whose investigation led to the revelation of her sexual relationship with Clinton and his subsequent impeachment nearly 20 years ago.

Lewinsky said she was diagnosed several years ago with post-traumatic stress disorder, "mainly from the ordeal of having been publicly outed and ostracised."

Lewinsky said she had received a message recently from "one of the brave women leading the #MeToo movement" saying "I'm so sorry you were so alone."

"Those seven words undid me," Lewinsky wrote. "They landed in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears."

Lewinsky said there are "many more women and men whose voices and stories need to be heard before mine.

"There are even some people who feel my White House experiences don't have a place in this movement, as what transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power," she said.

She credited the #MeToo movement and the "new lens it has provided" for the change in her thinking.

"Now, at 44, I'm beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern," she said. "I'm beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.

"He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet," Lewinsky wrote.

"But it's also complicated. Very, very complicated," she said, acknowledging that she had been looking for "intimacy" and was not seeking now to make excuses for "my responsibility for what happened."