It turns out that the Duke University undergraduate who decided to fund her over $50,000/year tuition by making pornographic movies is a military kid. Porn star "Belle Knox," who attends Duke under her real name Miriam Weeks, has been a media sensation over the last week after one of her fellow Duke students outed her after he recognized his classmate as the same woman from one of his private browsing sessions.
Miriam is the daughter of Army doctor Kevin Weeks, who works at the Mann Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, WA and (according to a long piece in the UK's Daily Mail) just returned from serving a tour in Afghanistan. Ms. Weeks defended her decision about how to fund her education at the XOJane.com website. When she appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan Live last week, she also backed off on claims that she turned to porn after her parents declined to fund her education. Since then, she's fired back at the Daily Mail, insisting that her devout Catholic parents are "not heartbroken" in a new interview with the New York Daily News.
This is a story that probably isn't going away anytime soon. Duke is one of the most prestigious (and expensive) colleges in the country and it's a major accomplishment that she got admitted. The Weeks family has three kids around college age and keeping their daughter in a school like Duke is a huge financial burden. Add in sex and a military service angle and the national media has a perfect storm of a story, one that combines several hot topics guaranteed to generate ratings.