Donna Rice Hughes
Born
Donna Rice

(1958-01-07) January 7, 1958 (age 66)
New Orleans, Louisiana[1]
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
EducationBachelor of Science, Biology
Alma materUniversity of South Carolina (1980)
Known forPolitical Bimbo
Internet safety expert and advocate; President and CEO, Enough Is Enough (EIE)
SpouseJack Hughes

Donna Rice Hughes (born January 7, 1958) is president and CEO of Enough Is Enough (EIE). In her work with Enough is Enough, Hughes has appeared on a variety of outlets as an Internet safety expert and advocate for children and families.[2][3] She first became known as a key figure in a widely publicized 1987 political scandal that contributed to end the second campaign of former Senator Gary Hart for the Democratic Party nomination for President.

Early life

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, she is the daughter of a highway engineer and a secretary, Donna Rice spent her childhood in Florida, Georgia (in Atlanta), and South Carolina. She began a modeling and acting career at age 13 and did her first television commercial in ninth grade for Pizza Hut.[1] She maintained a high grade point average in high school while also attending church services and working part-time as a clothing store sales clerk. She graduated from Irmo High School, South Carolina in 1976.[1]

Rice graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa from the University of South Carolina in 1980 as a biology major, where she was both an honors student and cheerleader.[3]

Career

After she graduated from the university, she entered the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant and won. She went to New York to compete nationally.[4] Returning to South Carolina after the pageant, she decided to move to New York City to pursue an acting and modeling career.[1] Rice later moved to Miami, where she worked as a marketing representative for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Laboratories in South Florida. She also worked as a television commercial actress and appeared in a 1986 episode of the TV series Miami Vice.[4][5]

Gary Hart scandal

In March 1987, she met former Senator Gary Hart at a Miami fundraiser. Rice stated that she was "very interested in getting into fund raising".[6] Soon after meeting Rice, Hart announced that he would run for nomination as the Democratic candidate for President. Having enjoyed a surprisingly strong campaign in 1984 against the eventual nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale, he was widely perceived as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1988. Shortly thereafter rumors began circulating about him having an extra-marital affair, leading the candidate to challenge the media to surveil him, and to also claim that anybody who did so would "be very bored."

Reporters for the Miami Herald, in a controversial move, staked out Hart's townhouse following a phone call from someone trying to sell pictures from the trip.[7] There, the Herald's Jim McGee saw Hart and Donna Rice return to Hart's townhouse.[8] The Herald then reported that Rice had spent the night at Hart's residence,[9] but later conceded that they had not watched the back door.[8]

Their story was published on the same day that his challenge appeared in The New York Times Magazine. The ensuing report sent the media into frenzy.[10] While Hart contended that the reporters could have no knowledge of exactly when Rice arrived or why she was there.[11] The ensuing report sent the media into frenzy.[10] Rice declared the association had been innocent, and denied that she had slept at Hart's house, or that the relationship was sexual.[8] Hart also denied the accuracy of the story.[9][12]

Hart's popular appeal nevertheless suffered, and polls taken almost immediately afterward found him to be 10 points behind Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire.[13] Both Rice and Hart have consistently denied that their relationship had been sexual.[6] On the cover of its June 2, 1987 edition,[14] the celebrity tabloid National Enquirer published a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap on the yacht "Monkey Business" that was used by Hart for a trip to Bimini prior to announcing his campaign for President of the United States in 1987.[15] The photo was published alongside the headline "Gary Hart Asked Me to Marry Him".[14]

Within a few days of the publication of the photograph and hedline by the National Enquirer, Hart had decided to drop out of the Democratic Presidential nomination race.[13][16]

Aftermath of the scandal

The enormous publicity generated by the Hart scandal resulted in numerous lucrative offers, and while Rice refused most – including one for an interview with Playboy magazine, an ABC movie of the week, book and magazine offers – she did appear in 1987 as the No Excuses jeans girl in commercials and advertisements for No Excuses jeans.[17] According to Rice: "I also had to work through the violation of my date rape, my unhealthy relationships with men, my anger toward the people involved in the scandal, and those who exploited me afterwards."[1] "A month after the scandal broke, I tried to go back to work at the pharmaceutical company after a leave of absence. But because of all the publicity and resulting pressure and stress, I finally resigned."[1][18] A month after the scandal broke, she began reconnecting with her Christian faith and then disappeared from the public eye for seven years.[19] Rice lived in the Los Angeles area briefly, then moved to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area of Northern Virginia in the early 1990s. There Rice married Jack Hughes, a buinessman in May, 1994.[20][21]

Advocacy

Since 1994, when she became communications director and spokesperson for Enough Is Enough (EIE), an American secular nonpartisan non-profit organization whose mission is to make the Internet safer for families and children. Hughes has been an advocate and speaker on the issue of protecting children online. In 2002, Hughes began her tenure as President and CEO championing the organization's mission to make the Internet safer for children and families. The organization has produced an Internet Safety 101SM program with the Department of Justice and other partners. She is the executive producer, host and instructor of the Internet Safety 101 DVD series, which ran as a TV series on PBS, garnering Hughes an Emmy nomination in 2012 and the series an Emmy Award in 2013.[22][23][24]

Hughes has appeared as an Internet safety expert on numerous national broadcasts including Dateline, The Today Show, The O’Reilly Factor, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and 20/20.[25]

Hughes has testified before multiple congressional hearings on protecting children online. With Hughes playing a key role, Enough Is Enough supported Congress’ first attempt at extending to the Internet the same legal protections safeguarding minor children from pornography and sexual predators in the physical realm, the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, and others such as the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA).[26][27] She was appointed by Senator Trent Lott to serve on the COPA Commission and served as co-chair of the COPA Hearings on filtering/ratings/labeling technologies. She also serves on various Internet safety advisory boards and task forces including the 2006 Virginia Attorney General’s Youth Internet Safety Task Force and the 2008 Internet Safety Technical Task Force, formed with MySpace and the U.S. Attorneys General. Beyond addressing the dangers of Internet pornography, Hughes has also spoken into the issue of privacy online, teen suicide and the impact of cyberbullying.[28] She has received numerous awards including the National Law Center for Children and Families Annual Appreciation Award, and the "Protector of Children Award" and Media Impact Award from the National Abstinence Clearinghouse.[23] Most recently, Hughes received the 2013 Women in Technology Leadership Award for "Social Impact."[29]

Writing

She co-wrote the story for the May 2000 season finale episode of Touched by an Angel that brought the message of Internet dangers and online safety to prime time television and won the Nielsen ratings for its time slot during the May sweeps period.[23] She authored the book, Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace and website ProtectKids.com.[30]

Personal life

Donna Rice is married to Jack Hughes and has two grown step-children, Sean and Mindy, and three grandchildren.[23] Rice has openly said she was a victim of date-rape "on the way to New York by an older man who was involved with the pageant system, and lost my virginity at that time". She says the rape was "the turning point in my life, the catalyst that propelled me further into an unhealthy lifestyle".[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Facts about Donna Rice
  2. ^ Edmund L. Andrews (27 November 1995). "Once Touched by Notoriety, Donna Rice Is Now in Limelight FightingSmut". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  3. ^ a b Jon Swartz (9 November 1998). "Donna Rice Says No Excuses for Net Porn / Gary Hart's ex-paramour has reinvented herself". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 5 July 2012.
  4. ^ a b c Marcia Segelstein (12 March 2012). "When Enough was Enough: The Story of Donna Rice Hughes". Salvo Magazine. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  5. ^ Donna Rice entry at IMDB
  6. ^ a b Alan Richman, Donna Rice: 'The Woman in Question, People Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 20, May 18, 1987)
  7. ^ Cramer, Richard Ben (1992). What It Takes. New York: Radom House. pp. 432–433. ISBN 0-394-56260-7.
  8. ^ a b c Cramer, Richard Ben (1992). What It Takes. New York: Radom House. p. 452. ISBN 0-394-56260-7.
  9. ^ a b James R. Dickenson, and Paul Taylor (May 4, 1987). "Newspaper Stakeout Infuriates Hart". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
  10. ^ a b Cramer, Richard Ben (1992). What It Takes. New York: Radom House. p. 455. ISBN 0-394-56260-7.
  11. ^ E.J. Dionne Jr. (9 May 1987). "Courting Danger: The Fall of Gary Hart". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  12. ^ Cramer, Richard Ben (1992). What It Takes. New York: Radom House. p. 458. ISBN 0-394-56260-7.
  13. ^ a b Richard Zoglin (18 May 1987). "Stakeouts And Shouted Questions". Time. Cite error: The named reference "Time1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  14. ^ a b [http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-01/news/mn-5369_1_gary-hart Hart Photo Said to Cost $25,000, The Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1987]
  15. ^ Cramer, Richard Ben (1992). What It Takes. New York: Radom House. pp. 436–437. ISBN 0-394-56260-7.
  16. ^ "Fall from Grace", By Walter Shapiro, May 18, 1987, Time Magazine
  17. ^ "Rice Loses Her Job - Correction Appended". The New York Times. 16 December 1987.
  18. ^ Amy Debra Feldman (September 12, 2000). "Donna Rice Hughes says Enough is Enough". Salon Magazine.
  19. ^ Goff, Keli (9 May 2014). "Donna Rice: 'My Heart Really Goes Out to Monica Lewinsky'". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  20. ^ Whatever Happened To ... the woman on the senator's lap, The Washington Post, July 4 2010
  21. ^ Donna Rice: ‘My Heart Really Goes Out to Monica Lewinsky’, The Daily Beast, May 9, 2014
  22. ^ Ryan, Kiki. "Donna Rice Hughes: Internet Maven". Politico Click. Politico. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
  23. ^ a b c d "Donna Rice Hughes, President & CEO, Enough Is Enough". InternetSafety101.org: Spokespersons. Enough Is Enough.
  24. ^ Kathleen Hom (4 July 2010). "Whatever Happened To ... the woman on the senator's lap". Washington Post. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  25. ^ "EIE President Donna Rice Hughes joins the Today Show June 2004". YouTube. June 2004. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  26. ^ Janofsky, Michael (2 December 2002). "What Would Dewey Do? Libraries Grapple With Internet". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
  27. ^ Hudson, Jr., David L. "Donna Rice Hughes makes it her mission to fight cyberporn". firstamendmentcenter.org. First Amendment News. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  28. ^ Hampson, Rick; Leinwand, Donna; Brophy Marcus, Mary (4 October 2010). "Suicide shows need for civility, privacy online". USA Today. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
  29. ^ "2013 WIT Leadership Awards Winners Announced". womenintechnology.org. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  30. ^ Donna Rice Hughes (August 1998). Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace. Fleming H. Revell. p. 269. ISBN 978-0800756727.

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