A former publicist at Ashley Madison claimed she was asked to set up ‘fake profiles’ to entice men looking for mistresses.
Sarah Symonds, from Newport, South Wales, has spoken out about her time working for the company after Netflix‘s explosive docuseries Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies, And Scandal about the controversial cheating website.
Sarah, 54, who allegedly had an affair with chef Gordon Ramsay from 2001 to 2008, claimed she was asked to date men herself when she starting working for the controversial cheating website.
In 2007, the author was approached by chief executive Noel Biderman to join the company after he spotted her on US talk shows promoting her book Having An Affair?: A Handbook for the Other Woman.
Speaking to The Sun, she said: ‘I was shocked that Noel wanted me to go on dates under fake names with married men. I was confused because i was meant to be spokeswoman for the company, not in this murky area.
Sarah Symonds, from Newport, South Wales, who was a former publicist at Ashley Madison, claimed she was asked to set up ‘fake profiles’ to entice men looking for mistresses
‘He wanted me to set up bogus profiles, although I refused. I found the whole thing sleazy and tawdry.’
She joined the company which was rapidly growing across the US and the UK at the time, eventually it grew to 37 million users across 40 countries.
At the time she thought the company was ‘sleek and daring’ however when she arrived in Toronto to start work she claimed it was ‘disappointing’ saying it was very male orientated.
In 2008, the company started to expand and Sarah was able to move back to the UK, where 700,000 British men were on the site and just 31 UK women.
While in the UK Sarah met with disgraced publicist Max Clifford, who was jailed for eight years in 2014 for sex offences and died in 2017.
The author claimed she was ‘persuaded to be intimate’ with Clifford in a toilet while she was visiting his London office.
Sarah was fired from Ashley Madison after her seven-year affair with Gordon Ramsay came to light in 2008.
Sarah, who is now looking after her elderly parents in Newport, claimed the three-part Netflix docuseries about the site has ‘opened up old sores’.
In 2007, the author was approached by chief executive Noel Biderman to join the company after he spotted her on US talk shows promoting her book Having An Affair?: A Handbook for the Other Woman
In 2015, someone hacked the controversial dating site and shared the name of every member online in a shocking leak, a group who called themselves The Impact Team took matters into their own hands and claimed responsibility for hacking the affair site.
The website, which was launched in 2001, promoted itself as an anonymous place for spouses looking to be unfaithful offering the chance to connect those wanting to cheat on their respective partners together.
But when the Impact Team came around, they demanded that the site be taken down – and, when it wasn’t, the hackers released all the 37 million records of data from site onto the web for anyone to see.
After a trove of data purporting to belong to the users was shared on the dark web, both police and Ashley Madison executives scrambled to find the tech wizards behind the Impact Team.
The data dump exposed everyone from the man next door to TLC’s Josh Duggar – who tainted his family’s empire after it was revealed that he was arrested for possessing and receiving child pornography.
Because of the leak, marriages were destroyed and the world as many knew it was ruined, with some of the adulterers even ending their life after their misdemeanors became apparent.
Sarah, 54, claimed she had an affair with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay from 2001 to 2008
The state attorney in Florida was forced to resign and a pastor in New Orleans committed suicide.
Netflix recently unearthed the scandal as it announced that it would be releasing a docuseries about those who got caught up in Ashley Madison’s tagline, ‘Life is short, have an affair.’
In 2012, Sarah established Wife School, an online advice forum, after the success of her Canadian show The Mistress, which followed her on her mission to rescue women caught in the despair of an extra marital affair.
Sarah then appeared on hit U.S. show Dr Phil and took five mistresses on the show with her to discuss their livelihood; the show proved to get the best ratings of the entire series.
After her success over the pond, she moved back to Wales and set up Wife School, a non-profit making organisation (‘you can’t ask women in despair for money’), after hearing from so many wives asking for her advice.
She now receives a constant flow of emails from wives in despair who worry that their husband is cheating and are desperately seeking tips on how to stop it happening.
Speaking to the Mail Online in 2013, she said: ‘Wife School found me. I was working on my show The Mistress over in Canada which highlighted the topic and I had so many wives contacting me for advice.
‘The school is geared towards making today’s marriages more successful and to ultimately lessen the divorce rates, and the subsequent demise to our society’s structure.
‘Any marriage or committed relationship needs daily maintenance and nurturing – people just don’t seem to realise that.
‘Marriage should be likened to a high powered job, once you land that job you know you need to show up daily, put a huge amount of effort into your role in order to keep it – and prosper within it – otherwise there is always the risk that someone may come along and take it from you.
‘Therefore, if more people treated their marriage as they do their job, more marriages would last the lifetime they are supposed to.’