Milas was underage when he was first offered money for sex online. When he came out at the age of eighteen, his family did not accept it and he was left alone. Due to financial problems, he started sex work. “I was really hungry and when the customer was gone, I ran to the supermarket. I did sex work to make ends meet.”
When Milas* went online to discover his sexual orientation, he was offered money for sex for the first time. He was still a minor at the time. “After once or twice I stopped doing that, because every time you are asked to go a step further.”
“My entire environment turned their backs on me.”
At eighteen he came out of the closet and was rejected by his family. “I sent messages to my family, but received no response. I was told that I was a disgrace to the family,” he says emotionally.
Milas could no longer live at home and was assigned a home through social assistance. He ended up in a deep valley. “My entire environment turned their backs on me. That does something to you.”
“I feel sad about what happened to me.”
He had a bare house, without furniture and had to pay the rent himself. “That also contributed to my starting to do sex work to make ends meet.”
During that period, Milas increasingly surrounded herself with young people who also did sex work. “We arranged customers for each other, but in return we received a percentage of the profit. There was a lot of competition and they were not really friendships.”
After a traumatic experience during sex work, Milas comes into contact with a counselor from the aid organization Lumens from Eindhoven. They helped him to quit sex work and find other work. “I have now had trauma therapy and as a result I suffer much less pain. It is more that I am still sad about what happened to me, but that is it.”
In episode 3 of the new podcast Beyond the Red Light, Milas talks about the traumatic experience that made him want to quit sex work. Listen to the first episode of Beyond the Red Light below. The entire series can be listened to on all podcast apps.
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“It is reality.”
He shares his story in the new Omroep Brabant podcast Beyond the red light, because he wants to help others. “I know why I do this. I know that there are people who have experienced the same thing and, just like me, really want to stop it. Or want to do sex work, but in a safe and healthy way.”
He hopes his story can be an example. “So that people see what the possible consequences could be for them, because it is simply reality.”
* Milas’ real name is known to the editors.
