Police officer rebuilds after phone sex scandal

AFTER PHILADELPHIA police officer Terra Barrow made the front page of the Daily News a year ago when it was revealed that she used to run a phone-sex operation, she thought life as she knew it had ended.

The whole city was buzzing about the story with the headline that blared, "Off the Hook: Cop's Other Calling was a Phone Sex Gig & It Violated No Rules." Overnight, Barrow, then a 15-year veteran, went from being anonymous to being one of the most notorious officers in the history of the force.

The shame alone would have been enough to break a lot of us.

Not Barrow.

"This hit the city, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' I stood tall and I made it through," she said.

Instead of going into hiding, she accepted requests to be interviewed on local and national radio and TV. She hired a publicist and appeared on the now-canceled "Bethenny" and on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show."

Barrow went on to start a women-oriented blog called TheCutieChronicles.com, and she sells sexy lingerie at a website called cutieoffduty.com. A pair of heart-shaped, gold handcuffs adorns the site's home page, which features beautiful models dressed in sexy lingerie. Barrow, who's still on the force, also has enrolled in community college, with plans of forging a career in crisis communications.

"Basically, my decision was to make the best out of what happened and use it as a platform for other women who go through things, especially for women who work in a male-dominated field," she said. "The purpose of the Cutie brand is, basically, to embrace yourself as being a woman. It's OK to be beautiful, and it's OK to be sexy and in touch with that part of yourself, even though you work in a male-dominated field."

She and I had coffee last week, nearly a year to the day after the Daily News shared her secret off-duty activities with the world. As she chatted in that distinctive, sweet-sounding voice, I was surprised to see that the South Philly resident wasn't bitter about being outed, but instead was reflective about what her brief moment in the white-hot spotlight had taught her.

"People who I thought were friends revealed their true colors," Barrow recalled. "The people that I thought were friends didn't pick up the phone to call. . . . They focused on the bad part. . . . They don't mention that I'm a decorated officer."

Barrow, now 36, was never punished for running a handful of websites and phone lines at the time, because her activities were not specifically forbidden. She told the Daily News in 2014 that she had quit the phone-sex business well before that first article about her was written because she was afraid that it would interfere with her police work.

These days, she works as an intelligence officer in the Civil Affairs Unit, rising early to get to her job at 6 a.m. She's enrolled in five classes - women's studies, creative writing and public speaking, among others - spread out between Community College of Philadelphia and Delaware County Community College. She also fulfills orders at CutieoffDuty.com, which lately hasn't been doing all that well.

She doesn't sweat the paltry sales, though.

Barrow's all about moving forward. People still occasionally recognize her from the photo on Page One of the Daily News.

Her motto is: "Don't be embarrassed by your story. It might be able to inspire somebody," she said. "Somebody is always going to have something to say.

"I can't worry about it," Barrow added. "I'm not laying down with you at night. I'm not waking up next to you in the morning and we're not sitting down at the same table to share a meal. I have to think about myself, my family and my brand that I'm starting to build."

Blog: ph.ly/HeyJen

Email: armstrj@phillynews.com