Miss Delaware Teen USA resigns amid sex video claims: Miss Delaware Teen USA Melissa King resigned her crown today after facing questions about participating in an online sex video. (2/26/13)
Miss Delaware Teen USA, Melissa King, has resigned her crown after facing questions about an online sex video that claims to star her.
“The Miss Delaware Teen USA pageant has received a resignation letter from Miss King’s attorney,” pageant spokeswoman Dara Busch said in an e-mail Tuesday.
That was the day after a porn website posted a sex video featuring a woman it identified as Miss Delaware Teen USA. The woman looks and sounds like King, 18, of Bethany Beach.
In a phone interview with The News Journal on Monday, King said she was aware of the video, but denied appearing in it.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “It is not.”
Of the porn site’s claim, she said: “There are comments saying this; however, it’s not comments that are true.”
Asked if the woman in the video is just someone who closely resembles her, King said, “Um, I’d rather not be talking right now, but yeah.”
King said she had an attorney but would not name him, explaining, “Because you’re going to publish something and I’ll, I’ll give you a call back another day.”
Pageant officials said King is being represented by J. Gregory Hannigan of Hagerstown, Md.
“A statement will be issued, but not today,” Hannigan said in an email Tuesday evening. “Thank you for your interest in Ms. King’s well-being.”
An email sent Monday night seeking comment from the website distributing the video was not answered.
Busch, executive vice president and managing director with Rubenstein Public Relations, said the runner-up will replace King.
According to the Miss Delaware Teen USA website, that is Hailey Lawler of the Newark area.
Lawler, 17, is a captain of the Padua Academy soccer team and a senior at the all-girls Catholic high school in Wilmington.
Because Lawler had not officially been declared Miss Delaware Teen USA on Tuesday evening, her mother, Suzanne, did not want to comment, including on the controversy surrounding King.
Miss Delaware Teen USA is run by the New York-based Miss Universe Organization. This is not the first time issues have arisen within the organization involving a Delaware contestant.
In 2005, Sheena Benton was allowed to remain Miss Delaware USA and compete in the nationally televised pageant after it surfaced that she had pleaded guilty for drunken driving in 2004.
Also, this is not the first time there has been a sex scandal involving a pageant contestant. In 1984, Vanessa Williams gave up her Miss America title after nude photos of her surfaced.
Miss America is not associated with the Miss Universe Organization.
The video at issue, which runs about five minutes, is advertised on the site as “Miss Teen Delaware does porn” and pairs a photo of the woman in the video with a shot of King when she was crowned.
It starts with an interview on what appears to be a hotel bed.
The woman does not give her name. But when a man, who is not shown or identified, asks her when she turned 18, the woman says “about three months ago. March.”
King’s birthday is in March, according to the Miss Delaware Teen USA website.
The interviewer then asks her what made her want to do her first adult video.
“I thought it would be fun and I needed the money,” the woman says. “So I just decided to do it.”
The interviewer asked more questions, including if she had a boyfriend, when was the last time she had sex and at what age did she first have sex. The woman laughs a little as she answers.
Later, the interviewer asks her about being a “Miss. A Miss Teen?”
When the woman acts reluctant to talk about it, he says, “I’m not going to say the state or anything. ... You did beauty pageants?”
“I’ve done them, yes,” she responds.
At the time the video was shot, King was the reigning Miss Teen Delaware International 2012. She won the Miss Delaware Teen USA title in November.
The interviewer then asks if she has told anyone about doing the video, to which the woman replies: “It’s not a big secret. But I didn’t tell anybody specifically what I was doing.”
Following the interview, the woman and a man, whose face is never seen, perform several different sex acts.
Word of the video’s existence was making the rounds Monday on Reddit, a social news and entertainment site. By Tuesday morning, most related content had been removed.
Erik Martin, the website’s general manager, said the moderator removed some of the comments, but did not know why.
“I am not sure, to be honest,” Martin said. “The moderator definitely removed some comments in the thread due to personal info, but I can’t speak to the thread. Could be personal info, or they could have just removed it because they didn’t feel it was appropriate in their subreddit.”
The local moderator declined to comment, but Reddit has a policy against disclosing personal information.
On Sunday, King had posted on her Facebook and Twitter pages that “a year ago almost , I turned 18. I’m about to turn 19 and so much has changed for the better in my life.”
By Tuesday, her Facebook was no longer publicly visible.
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