A controversial mayoral candidate has admitted to being arrested after accidentally helping to run a lucrative prostitution ring for £10 per hour at college.

Gabrielle Hanson claimed she applied for a “modelling and entertainment casting company” in Dallas, Texas, while she was attending Southern Methodist University in the mid-1990s. She responded to an advert offering $12 (£10) an hour to answer phones – double the salary of her previous job at the time.

But a year down the line, she had cops knocking on her door. Hanson was charged with one count of promoting prostitution and her punishment was “not live in Dallas for two years,” she said.

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Now, the married mother-of-one is running on a Republican platform for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee. And she decided to take to Instagram on Tuesday to clear the air about the alleged mix up decades ago, which is at odds with her conservative campaign.

Hanson claimed she believed she was taking names and dates to be used for model bookings for catalogues and adverts.

“Little did I know they had also been operating a lucrative casting couch. I was shocked, I was devastated,” she admitted.

“Everything I'd worked [in college] for 13 years was about to come true. It should have been the happiest, most exciting time of my life, and it ended up being the absolute lowest.”

Despite a wage from her illegal line of work, Hansen said she had no money to pay for an attorney. In a desperate bid to get out of the charge, she said she asked police what she could do.

They advised her to plead no contest - not an admission of guilt but acceptance of punishment - to one count of promotion of prostitution, an offence akin to a “speeding ticket”, she said. She was booted from Dallas for two years.