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Dr. Victoria Nika Zdrok (born March 3, 1973 in Kiev, Soviet Union) is a Playboy Playmate, Penthouse Pet of the Year, a star of elaborate adult videos, an attorney, a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and former goodwill ambassador. Victoria Zdrok is currently a columnist for Penthouse Magazine with her Ask Dr Z monthly column being one of the most popular in the magazine. In addition she’s hosting the Sirius Satellite show The Sex Connection and is appearing regularly on FOX News and Geraldo At Large. She has a new book coming out in January 2008 entitled Dr Z on Scoring: How to Pick Up, Seduce and Hook Up with Hot Women.

As a child in the former Soviet Union, Victoria listened to Voice of America on her father's clandestine radio and diligently studied English with the hope of one day coming to America. In 1989, at the age of 16, she was honored as the first Soviet teenager allowed to come to the U.S. as a foreign exchange student. She arrived on an academic scholarship, as she describes it, as "a sort of ambassador of goodwill and perestroika and glasnost."[citation needed]


Adult life
Zdrok graduated from Pensacola Junior College in Florida at age 17 and West Chester University in Pennsylvania at age 18 with a B.A., Summa Cum Laude.[citation needed] She entered graduate school where she studied for a joint law and psychology program at Villanova University and Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[citation needed] She received her J.D. degree at the Law School and a subsequent M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology.[citation needed] Her dissertation on "The Effect of Judicial Instructions on Jury Perception of Defendants' Refusal to Testify" was recommended for the Law Psychology Awards.[citation needed] She aimed to specialize in the "area where law and psychology intersect" and originally intended to become a jury consultant. She passed the bar exam on her first try.[citation needed] She later completed a post-doctoral qualification in sex therapy at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.[citation needed]

She was crowned Philadelphia's "Best Beauty" in August 1994. She has appeared in videos, movies, talk shows and magazines. She became October 1994's Playboy Playmate of the Month. In an interview, Zdrok claimed she would have been selected Playmate of the Year over Julie Lynn Cialini except for false rumors Zdrok said were circulated about her.[1]

In June 2002, she became Penthouse Pet of the Month. In 2004, at the age of 30, she was named Penthouse Pet of the Year. She is the second woman, after Linn Thomas, to be both a Playboy Playmate and a Penthouse Pet.

At one point, she dated Prince Albert II of Monaco.[citation needed]

As of mid-2007, Zdrok is involved in writing the books The Naked Truth: Confessions of Centerfolds and Those Who Love Them, about the centerfold industry, and a book on the psychology of sexual fantasy.


Marriage to Alexander
As a seventeen-year-old foreign exchange student, she sought legal advice as to how to extend her student visa, and chose a well-known Philadelphia lawyer, Alexander Zdrok, because he spoke fluent Russian. Alexander was more than twice her age at thirty-seven, twice married, and twice divorced. Also, unknown to her at the time, he was representing mob boss John Stanfa, who eventually was sentenced to prison in 1995.[citation needed] Alexander subsequently proposed that Victoria marry him to get a green card and to permanently stay in America. Victoria and Alexander married in Las Vegas on October 26, 1990.


Divorce
Alexander Zdrok was disbarred by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1991 for forgery and deception. He was abusive to Victoria, once being arrested and jailed. There were purported threats from her husband's Mafia connections. In 1996, now 23 years old, Victoria sought a divorce. By this time a sought-after model, Victoria divorced with an agreement to pay her ex-husband 15% of all her future earnings from "pictorials, television, national and international films" and related ventures for ten years after their divorce.[citation needed]

In January 2001, Alexander sued her for monetary damages under the agreement, which Victoria now claimed was invalid. She also sought to seal the trial, but the court declined to do so. Victoria appealed and lost this issue. On December 9, 2003, she settled with Alexander for US$50,000. Afterwards, her ex-husband’s lawyer, Elliot Goldberg, expressed disappointment over not being able to reveal intimate details about Victoria.[2]

In March 2004, after Victoria was named Penthouse Pet of the Year, Alexander again sued to overturn the most recent settlement. The judge chastised Alexander for filing the suit.[3]


Family
During the trial in 2002, Victoria bore her first baby, a daughter. She was engaged to be married as of 2003.

Arriving in America two years after Victoria was her sister, a Ph.D. archeologist.[citation needed] Her sister also models under the names Tatiana Zdrok and Lara Buenfil and has posed topless along with their mother on the Howard Stern show.[citation needed]

Zdrok speaks six languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, French, Spanish and German.[citation needed]

Zdrok said[citation needed] she plans to "phase out" her adult entertainment career. She earned a post-graduate degree in sex therapy with the goal of becoming "the Doctor Ruth of the new generation".[citation needed