When his father discovered he was gay, Nikolaos Al-Khadra was thrown out of the family home. On the streets, he was prey for pimps. He says, “I had become so mentally beat down by these men. I thought sex was my only skill. First, I was brainwashed, then conditioned by this lifestyle and at the end, dehumanized… I live with high amounts of PTSD… This message needs to get out about the amount of trauma associated with commercial sex.” For his advocacy work he says, “I let them know they’re not alone in this war, their soul is worth more than to be sold.”
How did you become involved in the movement against sex trafficking and sexual exploitation?
It happened when I quit nursing school. I was in counselling at the time just starting to deal with my past as an escort. That’s when I found my calling in life to be a social worker. In some of my first classes, I learned that social work was not just case management. And I knew that too from my past experience of having a case worker oversee services I needed when I had full blown AIDS.
While I was doing a research project for one of my classes, I noticed so many loopholes in state policies when it came to prosecuting those involved in youth prostitution. The victims, being the kids, were prosecuted and the adults, johns and pimps, were just fined. Then I saw something in my own past being a possible key as…
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Soul Destruction 