When young Kiwi teacher Rachel Whitwell decided to pose nude for Australian Penthouse she wasn’t thinking of the fame or the fortune.
She just wanted to annoy her boyfriend.
But the ploy has backfired badly, with saucy pics of Whitwell frolicking in a spa splashed across New Zealand papers, leaving both her career and her relationship in tatters.
This messy scenario can be explained by the fact that her boyfriend is New Zealand’s notorious porn industry king, Steve Crow, producer and distributer of X-rated movies.
The pair had been dating for nearly two years and planned to marry.
That was until Whitwell, 27, decided to test the 52-year-old’s commitment by sending him a series of raunchy anonymous texts and Facebook messages.
‘I wanted to prove to everyone who thinks he’s a sleaze that they were wrong about him,’ she told New Zealand’s Woman’s Day.
The problem was he fell for it, flicking back enthusiastic messages and organising a rendezvous.
A distraught Whitwell confronted him and moved out of the couple’s Auckland home, and sent her sexy photographs to the Aussie mag as a form of payback.
‘Posting my pictures on the web was only meant to annoy Steve, because he always says he’s not interested in going out with a nude model,’ the mother-of-one told the magazine.
‘Nothing good has come out of it, because all it’s done is leave me unsure and bitter.’
Crow – who happily describes himself as a ‘bald, fat pornographer’ – admits what he did was ‘monumentally stupid’ but he said he was wholly unimpressed with Whitwell’s attempt to trick him.
‘I think the whole concept of the ‘honey trap’ is despicable and I’ve said to (Whitwell): ‘If you throw the right bait at any fish, you’ll catch it’,’ Crow told the magazine.
He said their relationship was ‘probably irreparable’ and the damage done to Whitwell’s career may be the same.
The New Zealand Teachers Council has taken serious issue with the photos, which include two nude and four topless shots.
They are investigating her foray into nude modelling with a view to striking her off the teaching register, a move she claims is ‘totally unnecessary’.
‘People will vouch I’m a really good teacher,’ she told a newspaper recently.
‘My ability to teach and have good relationships with students is not affected.’
Additional coverage of the ongoing Rachel Whitwell saga: http://alindenauer.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/teacher-in-trouble-over-naked-pictures/
