Former pal of Edwards' mistress says she is being demonized

New York, Aug.13 : A former friend of Edwards' mistress Rielle Hunter has claimed that she is being demonized.

Fox News quoted the former close friend of the aspiring actress-turned-videographer as saying that media characterizations of Hunter as an impetuous philanderer who may be using Edwards as a meal ticket were completely false.

"She doesn't have it in her soul. She can't be bought. She said he was in love with her and she was in love with him," Pidgeon O'Brien told Fox News.

During the affair, O'Brien said she and Hunter, who knew each other from their New York partying days, would "spend hours and hours" on the phone talking about the relationship, she in the Midwest, and Hunter in New York and Colorado.

Hunter, who by then had become a devotee of New Age spiritualism, described her relationship with Edwards as "solid" and they would regularly take trips to see each other, O'Brien said.

O'Brien said she is concerned that Edwards, who last week admitted to a relationship with Hunter, is not being truthful about the affair.

Although O'Brien hasn't talked to Hunter in months, she said she is in constant communication with mutual friends who are talking with Hunter and is concerned her former friend got involved in something bigger than she realized.

O'Brien said the two had lost touch for several years but became close again in early 2000 when Hunter asked her to help design a New Age Web site called "Being Is Free."

Even from her New York City party days in the mid 1980s, Hunter was "manically insistent on integrity," O'Brien said.

"She is very into honesty and trust. She doesn't put up with bulls---," although O'Brien couldn't explain why Hunter became involved in an affair with a married man running for president or reportedly took cash payments from a close Edwards ally.

ANI