North Carolina – from www.charlotteobserver.com – The woman who went to prison for running a high-priced prostitution ring is out of jail and says she is a reformed woman.

Sallie Saxon served two years behind bars and remains under supervised release. She was interviewed this week by the Observer’s news partner, WCNC-TV, at First Baptist Church, which she says has become a home for her.

“I always wanted other people to respect me. That doesn’t matter to me anymore,” Saxon said.

For the last five months, Saxon has been in a halfway house in Charlotte. She was released last week.

Saxon ran Hush Hush, an Internet escort service with a clientele list that stretched from the Carolinas to Washington.

She said she never thought she would be arrested. “I thought I was above that. I thought all I had to do was pick up the telephone and it would be handled for me and I would never go anywhere,” Saxon said.

But in November 2007, FBI agents knocked on her door and arrested her for running a multimillion-dollar prostitution ring.

“I knew it was real when they put the shackles on,” she said. “That’s very humiliating.”

That’s when she said she decided to become a Christian.

Now, her goal is to minister to others who might need help – “offer encouragement, hope that it doesn’t matter what you have done or how bad you have been. There is hope.”