Outed Dominatrix Resigns From Her N.Y. Assistant Attorney General Job

Alisha Smith, a now-former assistant New York State Attorney General who allegedly donned latex and assumed the identity of dominatrix Alisha Spark, stepped down from her day job after being suspended because of the scandal that her after-hours line of work generated. But, says Smith's lawyer, Gloria Allred, her private pursuits are nobody's business but her own--and what's more, the services she offered as Ms. Lash were carried out on a pro bono basis.

"She's dominant in her intimate life," Allred told reporters at a media conference on Oct. 18, the day after Smith resigned. "I know it is rather shocking that a woman may assert that she does in fact have a strong and a dominant personality," the high-profile lawyer continued.

Shocking, but not nearly as outr� as some might think. Indeed, the fashion sensibilities of Smith's alleged alter ego are not so very far outside the mainstream, Allred suggested.

"It's very fashionable for young women to wear latex," the lawyer noted. "Marc Jacobs has shown latex on the runway for fall and winter 2011. Katy Perry also wore it."

Calling Lash the dominatrix a "feared" presence on a certain scene, Andrea Peyser, in her column for tabloid newspaper the New York Post, summarized the scandal.

"Famous in the S&M world for her skillful spandex-clad spankings, Smith, while not denying her freaky ways, says she did not make money trolling the dungeons while working for the state's top law-enforcement official, a job she's held since 2002," Peyser wrote.

Before her suspension and resignation, Smith held a "$78,825-a-year job battling securities fraud" with the State AG's office, Peyser noted. "A standing executive order prohibits AG's office employees from taking in $1,000 from any other source," Peyser went on to report.

But while Smith did not deny that, come nightfall, she takes on the persona and wardrobe of the dominatrix--indeed, she even presented two photos of herself in latex--she flatly rejected any suggestion that she's been paid for her somewhat more specialized vocation.

"All of [the AG's] actions towards me have been extremely disturbing because I have never accepted any money or payment from any outside source for anything while I have been employed by the New York Attorney General's Office," Smith told the press.

"The office of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was looking into Smith's alleged party dough, and potential use of government resources, when she resigned" on Oct. 17, Peyser wrote. "The resignation was accepted."

Allred slammed the way the AG's office handled the situation.

"Very quickly, and without checking with Ms. Smith to determine if the story about to run was true or false, and without providing any hearing to Ms. Smith, the New York Attorney General's Office suspended her without pay," the lawyer stated.

"The AG began an extremely intrusive investigation of Ms. Smith," Allred added. "They called her in and asked her numerous questions about her private sexual activities, inquiring about whether or not she only brought boyfriends into her bedroom and what she did with them."

But Smith's purported activities in the dominatrix role could simply be seen as an extension of the same personal traits that serve her in a court of law, Allred suggested.

The issue of whether she does have a dominant personality, she feels it makes her successful as a lawyer," Allred stated.

RT.com reported on the story on Oct. 18, and made note of Smith's professional success.

"Smith, 36, was praised back in 2009 by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for her involvement in securing a $5 billion settlement against Bank of America," the RT.com article read. "No whips were involved."

Though Allred says her client "contends [that it] is a totally false allegation that she received payment to be a dominatrix," one source told the New York Post otherwise.

"They pay her to go to the [S&M] events," the source said. "She dominates people, restrains them and whips them."

It may be one thing to inflict restrains and even physical punishment on unwilling individuals in the name of serving justice, but, Peyser implied, it's quite another to exercise those same modes of discipline and control on a volunteer looking to get a charge from them. Peyser wrote about "the bruising the kinky one inflicted on the reputation of the state," and suggested that it was a welcome development that Smith had stepped down.

Various media sources reported that Smith is mulling whether or not to take legal action against the New York Attorney General's office.