COOS BAY, Ore. — In September 2017, a 30-year-old woman named Nicole Gililland enrolled in the selective nursing program at Southwestern Oregon Community College (SWOCC).
Gililland, a Coos Bay resident and mother to two small children, had lived most of her life in Oregon and Utah. A Utah native, Gililland was born in 1987 in Layton, an Air Force-base town near the Great Salt Lake. Her family — with whom she is on extremely volatile terms three decades later after what she describes as a lifetime of abuse, exploitation and malice towards her — relocated to Oregon when she was ten, but she kept escaping from them and going back to her birth state.
By the time she got pregnant with her second child, Gililland had been working as EMT and paramedic for many years in Salt Lake City, but she realized that the hours and the pay of a nursing job would be much more convenient for a young mother who was the primary provider for her children.
She divorced her husband (from whom she got her married surname) and returned to Coos Bay to attend SWOCC during her second pregnancy. The father of the elder child was a bohemian type (and local lothario) who was only intermittently in the picture.
A focused, ultra-diligent Gililland completed the prerequisites for the two-year nursing program, which accepted her as one of 28 students. She accomplished this while going through a complicated pregnancy. By early 2018, she was making good progress towards obtaining the knowledge and credentials that would allow her to take care of her family.
This was Gililland’s world when the nursing student and mother returned from spring break in April 2018 — and her whole world came crashing down.
Classy and Unclassy
What exactly happened in March and April 2018 is now being argued as part of the lawsuit between Gililland and SWOCC.
According to Gililland, her advisor at SWOCC, a woman named Melissa who was also her teacher, began to act very strangely towards her after Gililland returned from spring break. Gililland claims Melissa, without giving reason or warning, started changing assignments and tests to make her fail and systematically docked her grades and made confusing decisions about attendance and make-up assignments (Gililland was going through health issues at the time).
Gililland was blindsided. Until then she had been treated fairly as a student, and her EMT experience, obvious love for learning and singled-minded focus to improve her standing in the medical field in order to give her kids a better life had made her a top student in the program.
Now, Gililland noticed in despair, her own advisor appeared to be doing her best to make her flunk out of the program.
It was at that point that Gililland confronted Melissa with the inexplicable situation, which the advisor sternly denied, justifying each of her academic decisions coldly and placing the blame on the student. However, during that confrontation Melissa said something that unlocked everything for Gililland.
“Nursing is a profession for classy women,” the advisor told her. “Unclassy women have no place in it.”
The tunnel vision that marked the beginning of a full-blown panic attack overtook Gililland’s senses. “Unclassy.” Coos Bay code for “whore.”
That thing that Nicole Gililland (who goes by Niki) had been fearing for the best part of a decade had come to pass. Someone, and she had a pretty good idea who, had told Melissa about Niki’s secret, her “unclassy” past.
“Shit,” Niki thought as the tunnel vision closed into a pinhole and jumbled visions of her kids, all her lost illusions, her unfixable family, the rats who called themselves her relatives, the criminals and crooks among her kin, small-time insurance fraudsters and small-con mediocrities, the scavengers of the American dream that had raised the rat, that rat, her niece, who had probably played Judas (she was almost certain) and come to Melissa — or was it her ex-husband? No, it must have been her niece.
“Shit. Melissa knows about Bree Barrett.”
Melissa had probably googled the name in her office right after Niki’s crooked kin ratted on her. Once Melissa (no fool) had turned “Safe Search” off, she'd probably discovered a much blonder, 20-year-old version of the nursing student she knew as Nicole Gililland, only the internet called her Bree Barrett and this shameless young creature was fucking, sucking, licking, being hogtied by men, women, one, many, giving bold interviews about how she liked to fuck and suck and all the rest, far from the forever-grey skies of Coos Bay, on couches and in fields and prefab mansions, under the lewd California sun.
Melissa (if you need a visual, think Angelica Huston in “Prizzi’s Honor” or “The Witches”) knew Niki was Bree and Bree was a porn star — and that porn stars didn’t belong in nursing, or in Coos Bay.
“Unclassy.”
The Bree Barrett Story
“I started doing porn at 19 and left right after I turned 21,” Niki reminisces to XBIZ, talking publicly and frankly about her past in the adult industry for the first time since the story broke.
A local Oregon paper, Willamette Week, broke the news of her lawsuit against SWOCC and several authorities in the nursing program. Niki alleges that her removal from the program for having been a sex worker, a career that is mostly comprised of women, constitutes discrimination on the basis of her gender under Title IX.
Niki worked in the adult industry as Bree Barrett for less than two years, around 20 months between 2007 and 2009.
“I chose my porn name using my own formula. Barrett Drive is a street in Hood River, Oregon that I lived on growing up. It’s the street I lost my virginity on so I thought it was fitting. Bree is because I’m so cheesy — I obviously changed the spelling, though, because I’m not that cheesy.”
During the time Niki was Bree Barrett, she never moved full-time away from Oregon, but she spent about half of her time in the Los Angeles area, shooting and partying.
“Many performers just come and stay for filming,” she explains. “That’s what I did. Agents usually have houses you rent a room in and share with other models who also live out of the state.”
Niki started off with the Red Rose agency, moved on to Gold Star and eventually landed at LA Direct, the domain of storied superagent Derek Hay.
“I stayed at the LA Direct model house,” says Niki. “Tori Black was my roommate. She was one of Derek's favorites. I wasn't.”
“Sorry, I don’t remember her,” says Hay over the telephone from his current Vegas residence when XBIZ sends him a Bree Barrett headshot. “I could have my office look through the files, but I doubt I’ll remember.”
How many scenes did she shoot in those 20 or so months? Two a week? About 200?
“I was away from L.A. a lot. I’d say one month on, one month off.”
About 100 then?
“I seriously have no idea, and I don’t want to be misquoted. It seems like a lot more than 100.”
A typical day for Niki during her adult career ten years ago is unremarkably similar to what’s experienced by the current crop of 2019 starlets. “If I had a scene the day would usually start early,” Niki explains. “Go to set, hair-and-makeup, paperwork, meeting co-stars and going over the scene. After filming was over, shower and head back to the agency’s model house. Nights were usually spent eating pizza and watching TV with the other models.”
At the exact same time, many upper-middle-class girls born, like Niki, in 1987, were experiencing sorority life (hair-and-makeup, high-end shopping, experimenting sexually, bonding and clashing with peers, trying drugs, testing alcohol tolerance, going to sketchy parties, pizza and “Law & Order: SVU” marathons), protected by the status trappings that allow for fucking up without ending up in the criminal justice system — or permanently tattooed with the digital Scarlet Letter of internet notoriety.
“I remember at one house the neighbors knew it was a ‘porn star house’ and they were always looking through the windows thinking we must be getting wild,” Niki recalls. “They were sadly disappointed by how boring we actually were.”
Many of Niki’s tales of “porn star excess” sound fairly tame when compared to the wilding out going on on most American campuses, not to speak of the prep schools and Eurotrips where the children of the 1% are known to “party” with abandon and impunity.
The model houses had a driver for girls who, unlike Niki, hadn’t brought their own vehicles down to Los Angeles. “Once the driver guy made these intense pot cookies and said, ‘Niki, I know you’re a lightweight — only eat a quarter of one of these cookies I made.’ But I was the first one home and when I ate the quarter, then I got the munchies. I had just gotten into town and hadn’t gone grocery shopping so I ended up eating all of them! The girls found me inside the grandfather clock enjoying ‘Family Guy.’”
Niki sometimes drove her car from Oregon to L.A. so she could “build up/decompress” on the road. Though she hates malls, one time she “got suckered” into taking the other models on a shopping spree.
“They wanted to go to the mall. These particular girls loved to comb through every single store. One of them ended up buying an expensive Louis Vuitton bag. Then we passed a pet shop and in the window there was a puppy who looked like he was dying. I got the employee and said, ‘I think that dog is sick.’ He said ‘No, he’s just been in that box for four months because nobody wants him.’”
So Niki bought him — for the same ridiculous mall-pet-store price as the other model’s LV bag. She named him Louie. “I ended up leaving him with my mom and her then-boyfriend because I traveled so much to shoot. He and the boyfriend became inseparable. When I quit porn and was moving back to Utah, I took him back, but he spent all night crying for his ‘dad.’ Apparently his ‘dad’ did the same. So I gave him Louie back and they lived happily ever after.”
Niki used to go down to Mexico “all the time” when she was in porn. “Just decompress for the day. Some of my happiest memories of those years involve horseback riding on Rosarito Beach.”
Many people forget that the now-inescapable Twitter was only created in 2006. A decade ago nobody imagined that “that weird Ashton Kutcher-endorsed app with the blue bird” would one day help elect a U.S. president. The concept of “Twitter drama” among porn performers (and in general) was in an extremely incipient stage a decade ago. According to Niki, she got along “very well” with the other models.
“I have a strong personality,” she explains (XBIZ can confirm this), “so it’s impossible to get along with everyone. But mostly it was a lot of fun and great memories. Porn is a trial-and-error experience. It definitely taught me a lot of street smarts and life lessons.”
But if life off-set was not that different from other young women her age, Niki did have a fairly exclusive set of experiences due to her job as adult performer Bree Barrett.
“Nina Hartley was the first woman I had sex with,” she remembers. “I was so nervous! I never would’ve guessed she was so famous by the way she behaved. She was very humble, professional and kind. She was very patient with me and I still remember her instructions and pointers to this day.”
Several of the Bree Barrett scenes start with those POV interviews that were a staple of pre-tube-site-era porn (e.g, guy who sounds like minor character from “MTV’s Jackass”: “When did you lose your virginity? Ever do anal? You’re from Utah — I hear all Mormon girls are FREAAAAAAAAKY…,” etc.). The young Bree is unusually thoughtful and direct; Niki’s intelligent eyes pierce through the makeup and the frenzied pace of the set.
It’s fortunate for this article that those interviews are still online because they give a true glimpse of how young Niki thought of herself at the time. A lot of those “skits” tend to ring phony, but Bree Barrett’s seem sincere.
“I can’t watch any of that shit, lol,” Niki texts us. “I’ve never been able to.”
Not many people have an actual record of what they thought about their life when they were younger and much less knowledgeable, though.
“I think my biggest point in this lawsuit against SWOCC is that I’m not the person I used to be,” Niki protests. “Everyone deserves the chance to grow up and move forward.”
But, aren’t we all the person we used to be, except older and wiser? Isn’t our experience what makes us stronger? Who among those who would judge Niki would be able to look at a video of themselves at 19 without cringing?
“You stop watching them too!” Niki fires back in mock anger at this reporter. “This is a big reason I’m nervous about my name being released. I just know there’s so many embarrassing things that’ll come up instantly. But you’re right, I’ve always been me. I just had a lot of young stupidity sprinkled in. I have always tried to practice integrity and be a good person.”
Bree Barrett: A Critical Retrospective (2007-2009)
One of the earliest scenes Niki shot as Bree Barrett in 2007 was released with one of those ultra-literal titles: “Another Coed in Search of Some Cash.”
The late 2000s was only a decade ago, but it was a completely different porn landscape than today’s.
2007-2009 was only a couple of years into the “tube era,” the period when digital porn completely eclipsed the physical product (DVDs, BluRay) on the strength and endless supply of free porn.
The now-dominant (in terms of marketing and branding) Pornhub launched in May 2007, about the time Niki started shooting. Pornhub was one of a rapidly growing number of tube sites.
Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, was then a relatively low-profile three-year-old Canadian company known as Mansef, which would grow into Manwin in 2010 and then into its current incarnation in 2013. Many of today’s inescapable names in the industry, like Pornhub and Gamma, were still known only to adult website marketers and industry techies.
Also, Big Data ten years ago didn’t play such a fundamental role in how productions, scripts and content were crafted. We are talking about a time before the Dawn of the Stepsister.
Some of the current and recent big players in the industry were starting out around the time Niki drove down from Oregon to pursue her porn dreams, so Bree Barrett, just another coed in search of some cash, also crossed paths with the younger versions of people who are now brand names in the adult industry.
One of the few XBIZ pieces in our digital archives mentioning Bree Barrett is about a party at Blue Moon Nights in North Hollywood, Calif. celebrating Girlfriends Films' “Lesbian Triangles 9” and co-hosted by Dan "PornoDan" Leal. The attendee list gives a snapshot of the porn community around 2008:
“Alexis Texas, Andrea Anderson, Anita Blue, Amanda Blue, Amy Emerson, Ashley Fires, Bree Barrett, Bethany Sweet, Brittany O' Connell, Cala Carves, Cleopatra of the Nile, Cynthia Damage, Deauxma, D-Money, Dominique Flowers, Elizabeth Starr, Elexis Monroe, Heidi Mayne, Gia Jordan, Gia Nova, Jaylyn Rose, Julezz, Katrina Isis, Kayden Kross, Kiralynne, Linsday Kay, Lisa Sparxxx, Lilly Paige, Lucie Lane, Marie McCray, Mya Mason, Michelle Avanti, Mimi Allen, Moxxxie Maddron, Misty Haze, Nakita Kash, Nikki James, Riley Evans, Sara Jay, Sadie, Sasha Heart, Savanah Jane, Shane Ryder, Sunny Lane, Totally Tabitha, Veronica Norton, Violet Marcell, Bobby Manilla, Brandon Stills, Christian, Derrick Pierce, Jeff Mullen, Johnny Soprono, Mofo, Monstar, Mr. Pete, Raven, Rick Shameless, Tony Batman and Van Damage.”
The name Kayden Kross — 2019 XBIZ Director of the Year — stands out. She doesn’t recall Bree Barrett (or that party). She was only a few years into her rising career that took her from being one of the last true "contract girls" (for Vivid) to further stardom as a Digital Playground performer, to her current status as an acclaimed adult film director.
Kross has recently launched the new studio imprint Deeper as part of Vixen's growing network of premium porn brands. Vixen/Tushy/Blacked/etc.’s co-owner and high-profile figurehead Greg Lansky was in 2007-2009 an ambitious director for New Sensations. Lansky cast a nubile Bree Barrett in a scene. “I’m positive he doesn’t remember me,” says Niki. “Everyone said then that he was going to be a big deal.”
And then there was Sasha Grey, who had her whirlwind, skyrocketing career at the same time as Niki’s. Fun Fact: Sasha and Bree shared title credit and box art for Kink.com production "Device Bondage with Sasha Grey and Bree Barrett" (front: Sasha, back: Bree).
We ask Niki if she remembers the DVD cover session that intertwined her obscure career with that of the most famous adult actress since Jenna Jameson. In her Kink.com photo, a bewildered Niki is all tied up and upside-down with a look that says, “What the fuck am I doing here?”
“Oh God, that shoot,” Niki says, still mortified. (By the way, Niki knows you’re Googling it right now, so when you’re done gawking at the trainwreck that was her messy life at 20, think about your own low points caught on camera, and please be kind.)
Other thirtysomething women, we might point out, have ridiculous, NSFW pics from when they were 19 and 20. Frat culture is rampant on and off campuses. Niki’s sorority just happened to be Kink.com.
“I’m still wrapping my mind around trying to tell the world about ‘sex worker stigma’ and here I am tied up naked with ropes and probably high,” she sighs, giving up on the self-analysis.
Could Bree Barrett have become a popular name in porn had Niki stuck around? It’s impossible to say. She started off as a slightly awkward newbie performer right out of high school, but when she was comfortable and styled properly, she had a certain aura that could have taken her places.
In some of the stills from the period, Niki looks a little like the ingénue played by Naomi Watts in the first, dream-like section of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” with piercing, probing eyes and a stylish blonde cut, ready for her close-up.
But other times she did not look as comfortable in her own skin. Near the end of her career, she got a boob job in order to become more classically “porny.”
Though her sexual performance was always outwardly energetic and eager, she says she never came on set. “I absolutely did not.”
It was intentional, she adds. “I admire the women that really love to fuck and love to do porn. They have this quality I admire, a strength. They’re owning their sexuality. I was more conservative that way; I wanted a relationship with the person I shared that with. Very intentionally, I made sure I kept business — and porn was always a hustle — separate from pleasure.”
While she hustled, like in any business, Niki saw the good, the bad and the ugly.
Her fondest memories in the industry are working with veteran adult performer and director Shane Diesel. “Shane was by far my best experience. It took a lot of lube,” Niki chuckles, “but such an amazing dude. I remember being proud that I made him bust early.” She laughs. “Such a silly ‘accomplishment.’”
Niki was sad to learn that Ron Jeremy’s image has been tarnished after being called out for inappropriately propositioning and groping women at events. She remembers Jeremy as “one of the actually decent people I met at the time. He was very kind to me. I am not discounting any of the women who complained, though. I support them and that type of nonconsensual behavior needs to change.”
“Jack something-or-other was by far the worst experience,” she reveals. “Everything I said not to do, he got off on doing. He had bullets tattooed around his thigh.”
We show Niki a photo of a male talent of the mid-2000s who left the industry shortly after their scene together. Later he was convicted of sexual assault and burglary for an incident at a Washington State sorority.
“Yup, that’s Jack,” Niki confirms. “It was awful. We had to keep cutting so I could take time to recoup.”
Niki also worked with another male talent who, after becoming a vindictive gossip blogger, developed one of the worse reputations in the industry: Donny Long.
“I was so fucked up in some of those scenes. I can watch myself being young and having sex, mostly, but looking messed up embarrasses me. That’s what I regret. Sex, I’m not ashamed of. A lot of people have a lot of sex at that age, on- and off-camera, and that’s OK.”
“It’s not even about having huge dicks shoved in every hole for money, but the look in my eye for just snorting a line… Is that crazy? If I had done it sober, it would represent a stronger choice — which I absolutely made.”
We tell Niki that XBIZ spoke with Nina Hartley, who at first did not remember their scene together, but then did when shown a still photo of the two of them. “Oh, her!” Hartley told us. She, like many in the industry, was familiar with the “Oregon nursing student” case and had read about Niki. “How may I help? Tell her hello!”
“Please tell her the same,” a moved Niki tells us, “and that I’ve always tried to model myself after her class. I didn’t know back then that she was one of a kind. I knew quickly though. Still, such an easy scene for a nervous teenager. Considering her stature, her humility meant a great deal.”
“Is Craven Moorehead still around?” Niki asks us.
We tell her that he’s thriving as a contract director for Gamma, having become one of the main creative forces behind the hugely popular Adult Time series Pure Taboo.
Niki texts us some photos circa 2007 that are her favorite reminders of her short-lived “Hollywood party crowd” days. There’s the already-mohawked Moorehead, boozily smiling with Bree Barrett and fellow performer Ashley Jensen — and his buddy Shavo, bass player for Glendale alt-metal giants System of a Down.
We sent Moorehead the party shots. “Ohhhhhh — totally remember,” the Gamma director immediately texted back. “I threw the greatest parties ever at my house!”
“I’m glad Craven’s doing so well,” Niki says. “He was always very chill and kind.”
Niki and Shavo from System of a Down had a friendship during her time in porn, but she says it wasn’t about sex.
“We sat around, mostly talking and drinking Scotch. I guess you find your fellow kindred spirits, you hang out on the weekends, that’s how you survive.”
Then one day, sometime in 2009, Niki walked away from it all. “Mostly it just stopped being fun and I needed to pursue something I had passion for.”
There was also the drugs. She noticed that they had started becoming more of a crutch than just a thing that was fun on occasion.
“I don’t remember exactly when I started to realize that, but once I fully did, the transition out of adult films happened fairly quickly,” she says.
Bringing Out the Dead
After leaving the adult industry, the newly 21-year-old Niki started her transition into the rest of her life. She returned to Oregon and began training as an emergency medical technician “immediately after I left the industry.”
But the full transition from sex work into health work would have to wait a couple of more years. Niki’s toxic family dynamics reasserted themselves in Oregon and she decided to go back to her native Utah, and to settle in Salt Lake City.
If this was a cheesy made-for-HBO redemption story, we’d be reporting that Niki’s time as a porn star was her only stint as a sex worker and then the rest of this story would be much more tidy. But reality’s showrunner, if you believe there’s one, is a rather more complex concept creator.
In Utah, Niki occasionally would use her name-recognition as Bree Barrett — “the Mormon porn star” — to try to make ends meet. The supposedly anti-sex, religiously-inspired Western state actually tolerates some forms of sex work under contradictory regulations.
“Companionship work was ‘legal’ work in Salt Lake City. You had to be licensed, tested, added to a registration, etc. The strict laws were monitored closely by a full time vice team that liked to point guns at us.”
“It’s not legal to have sex, but it’s legal to escort if you’re licensed,” Niki explains. “Really it’s just a way for cops to track you. Just to check your license in a sting they bust down the door and act like they’re arresting El Chapo.”
After a couple of years in Utah’s peculiar “companionship” limbo, Niki decided to ditch sex work altogether and repeat her EMT training in Salt Lake City. “This time I stuck with it,” she says. “and I worked as an EMT for about three years.”
Niki also got some new tattoos. The first one, along her forearms and in a curlicued script font, still reads “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
“I lived near Temple Square in SLC,” she explains, “and wanted to remind them what they were supposed to believe.”
She also got a large peacock (“the artist was terrible — I call it ‘the turkey’”) on her ribcage. “The Peacock is a symbol of integrity and the beauty we can achieve when we endeavor to show our true colors,” reads a symbology link she sends us by way of explanation. It also serves as a tribute to her older daughter, who allowed her to “breathe new life into her walk of faith.”
“She saved me as a person, gave me the family I never had and higher purpose than myself,” Niki reflects.
While raising her first kid, Niki — hard-working, driven and compassionate — progressed quickly through the health ranks. While busy as an EMT and (sort-of) single mom, she studied and qualified to be a paramedic, a much more demanding gig that required her many times to make life-and-death decisions. Many people are still walking around Utah today because of the years Niki put in as a health professional.
A Facebook post by Jordan Atwood from September 30, 2015, below a picture of a smiling young man hugging a bashful Niki: “This right here is the beautiful and AMAZING woman named Nicole, who was there to treat me as I stumbled out of my door the day I was almost killed. Her great paramedic experience was luckily there to instantly help with my wounds. She’s an amazing lady and I wish I could have met her another way than what was. I must say thank you 100 times before I could repay you in anyway. Thank you once again Nicole <3”
A Facebook post, the same day, of the same photo, by Niki: “What a wonderful surprise! This is Jordan. A little over a week ago he was shot in the chest and upper thigh, today he’s already almost fully recovered. He swung by to give me a big hug and make sure I got the flowers he left me the other day.”
When we ask Niki to summarize her experience as an EMT and paramedic, she immediately sends us a link to one of her favorite movie scenes about the work, from Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead.”
In the scene, Nicolas Cage and his partner, Ving Rhames, are brought into a club where a rock star has OD'd on smack. While Rhames distracts the onlookers with a gospel resurrection act, Cage pulls out the Narcan and, quite literally, “brings back the dead.”
Harmony Rose
From the moment she entered the medical field in earnest, Niki says she “lived in terror and shame,” worried about someone using her youthful stint as an adult performer to derail her career.
“I read an article about a porn star trying to become an EMT on the east coast and just the way everyone was talking about her, I didn’t want that to be me,” Niki explains.
Excerpts from a 2012 press report about the Harmony Rose case in Roanoke, VA:
Headline: “Porn star turned EMT could be in trouble over racy past.”
Subheadline: “Harmony Rose appeared in more than 200 pornographic films between 2004 and 2010, is training with Va. rescue squad”
Copy: “A volunteer EMT trainee's previous career as a porn star is attracting the attention of senior officials in Va.”
“Harmony Rose, 29, who appeared in more than 200 pornographic films between 2004 and 2010, is training with the Cave Spring Rescue Squad in Roanoke, Va.”
“Fire Chief Rich Burch contacted the county attorney when Roanoke Fire & Rescue employees alerted him to Rose's past, said Director of Public Information Teresa Hall.”
“Attorney Paul M. Mahoney replied in a letter saying that the county does not usually get involved in the decisions of volunteer rescue squads but ‘anything that results in public ridicule of the volunteer squads... must be avoided.’”
“He also recommended that Chief Burch ‘supports the decision of the volunteer chief if she decides to terminate the membership of [Rose].’”
“But nearly all of the 500 or so comments that appear under the story on the reporting TV station's Facebook page support Rose continuing work with the squad.”
“‘It's not like she was doing porn in the squad building,’ Theodore Hughes said.”
News about the Harmony Rose case was immediately picked up by the Huffington Post and blasted internationally, possibly because anything with the words “porn star” increases pageviews.
There has been no follow-up about Harmony Rose’s life after being outed worldwide as a porn star while trying to perform a non-sex-work job.
Once Niki discovered she was pregnant with her first daughter, she made a decision to continue her medical training. She became a paramedic in 2015 and returned to a remote coastal town in Oregon in 2016, after divorcing the father of her second child, still in her womb.
Coos Bay: I See a Darkness
The reader at this point might wonder, as XBIZ did, why someone so spirited, obviously smart and with such colorful experiences in the fast lane of Los Angeles and the crusty underground of SLC ended up, of all places, in Coos Bay, Ore., pop. 16,295.
“Strictly speaking,” she answers swiftly, “my divorce, being pregnant with my second daughter while raising a toddler and not having a lot of options. My relationship with my family has always been strained, so returning to them in Oregon was absolutely a last resort.”
The majesty of the southwestern Oregon landscape served as a palliative for what Niki, with no little understatement, describes as her “strained” relationship with her relatives.
“Once I got here I enrolled at SWOCC almost immediately so I could turn it all around. Nursing seemed like a better fit and had better hours and pay than being a paramedic. I was going through a difficult pregnancy, so a lot of my prerequisite work for nursing school was from a hospital bed.”
After the first couple of terms in nursing school went so well, Niki considered staying in Coos Bay. As she took up hiking and horseback riding, she could see herself and her little ones settling among the “stunning” vistas. But she also says she could not shake the feeling that the vibe in the place was off.
“Initially I just thought that there was something wrong with me and not this place,” Niki reflects. “That kind of thinking is what led to my suicide attempt. I thought that I was the problem. I know now I’m not perfect, but I’m definitely not the problem here.”
Outside of Oregon, people in advertising, cannabis enthusiasts and viewers of “Portlandia” might think of the Beaver State (yup) as a progressive paradise of flannel, social justice, hipsters and weed entrepreneurs. The reality is way, way, more complicated.
Many swaths of the Pacific Northwest can feel like they’re stuck in a toxic atemporal zone combining chamber-of-commerce Babbittism, failing industry, depressing sunlessness, oxycontin and white supremacy. People who think “Twin Peaks” is about coffee and cherry pie are missing the main point (as big as an enormous white horse in a living room) and people who think Kurt Cobain didn’t die for the region’s sins are not listening too carefully to his lyrics.
Coos Bay, by almost all accounts, seems, like Niki mentioned, more than a little “off.”
“For being in Oregon, Coos Bay is like its own planet.” She attempts to illustrate: “We are so secluded from the rest of the state that it just doesn’t feel like a part of it. It’s always grey, the landscape and the people. The people are very conservative. Oh, and it is definitely not uncommon to see Confederate flags almost everywhere.”
Niki later texts us a photo she just took in a drive-thru. The car in front of her had not one but two Confederate flag stickers. “Literally just took this 30 seconds ago. They don’t even seem to realize we aren’t in the South,” Niki texted with the photo.
“The vibe is very dark, it’s tough to explain,” she continues. “Are you a Stephen King fan? The absolute best description it that this is the real life Derry, Maine. I’m surprised I haven’t met Pennywise yet. Although maybe he teaches at Southwestern Oregon Community College,” she adds, referring to the institution that upended her life and dreams.
Niki, like many people shafted by The System again and again and again, has given much thought to what makes “the people in power” tick — and blind to what she clearly perceives as gross injustice.
“The people in power in Coos Bay are big fish in a small pond,” Niki explains. “It’s all about who you know. If you challenge their corrupt ideology, they call in favors and team up to get you out. There are two types of people here: the corrupt (the problem) and good people who know to keep their mouths shut.”
“People think of Utah as conservative, but SLC actually doesn’t have shit on this place. You mentioned Cobain? I loved him. I get it, he had the same attitude/look in his eye as any good person from such an awful place. Comes with some PTSD. That’s why I think nobody here speaks up, they’re too aware of what will happen. I used to think they were all weak, but I get it now.”
Niki brings up another recent scandal that put Coos Bay in the online news around the globe before the location popped up again connected to the “Oregon nursing student outed as porn star.”
“The ACLU was just here last year because the principal at the high school was punishing gay youth by making them read from the Bible,” Niki explains. “The community very much rallied — behind the principal.”
“Every time I think I can’t be any more appalled,” she adds, “they do their best to wow me. This isn’t just another backwards town, there’s something actually wrong here.”
Nothing she ever read or studied quite prepared Niki to describe the uncanny feeling she has experienced tilting her spear against the giants of Coos Bay. Maybe Lovecraft, or the King in Yellow from “True Detective,” or Twin Peaks' Killer BOB — or something from her beloved Stephen King.
“I’ve thought of things I never would have considered,” she laughs, though it's not really a laugh. “A historic curse, weird ocean tides, lizard people. You actually should swing through!” she invites, but thinks again. “My ex-mother-in-law thought I sounded crazy. Once she set foot here, she couldn’t run away fast enough.”
The Most Powerful Entity
“Unclassy.”
We are back in April 2018. The day Niki’s world collapsed.
Her advisor’s stigmatizing label sent Niki into a vortex of anxiety and paranoia. Bree Barrett had come back into her life, in the worst possible way. Sure, her vindictive family had threatened her many times and even occasionally told strangers “Niki is Bree Barrett the porn star, you know?” But this was different.
“I have no idea about the conversation that started everything with Melissa,” Niki tells XBIZ. “All I heard is that it probably occurred through my niece. For a while my family tried to convince me that they had nothing to do with it, and that my ex, the father of my youngest, had told on me. But later I learned that’s not what happened. It was them all along.”
Niki goes quiet. She has been battling these family demons, within and without, since she was as young as her own daughters are now.
“My family knew it was my biggest fear and they used it against me.”
Once Niki’s past as Bree Barrett was outed, the encroaching fear she had felt since reading about the Harmony Rose case became her reality.
Matilda Bickers of Portland sex worker advocacy group Stroll-PDX is organizing a GoFundMe campaign trying to help Niki and her daughters move to nearby, more liberal Eugene. This is how she describes the situation that unfolded in the fall and summer of 2018:
“Nicole had good grades, she made the Dean’s List, and she was set to have a great career as a nurse, but the instructors and administration of the nursing program decided that her past work in the sex industry made her unfit for the future she worked so hard for: her assignments were changed after the fact so her work didn’t match, instructors began to accuse her of plagiarism, and, when she tried to talk to the program director, she was accused of being unsafe for a clinical setting.”
“It’s important to note here that all of the accusations from the school fell apart. The charges of being unsafe were made immediately after the plagiarism didn’t stand up to scrutiny and didn’t offer grounds to Nicole, and these were also quickly proven to be completely false. None of that mattered in the end. The school pushed Nicole out of the program after months of harassment despite having no cause.”
“Other current and former sex workers will be familiar with the predicament: everyone wants sex workers to quit the industry—but no one wants to hire us once we do,” Matilda concludes.
In the case of deceptively quaint, rustic Coos Bay, being stigmatized by the gatekeepers of the community college nursing program had far-ranging implications that would seem preposterous to people living in large cities.
“SWOCC is the most powerful entity for 100 miles in each direction,” Niki explains, “and the nursing program is by far their staple. Without that program, SWOCC would likely go bankrupt.”
Being Scarlet-Lettered by SWOCC for her “unclassy” 20 months in the adult industry while she was barely out of high school seemed like the end of the line for Niki.
“I won’t be able to ride this one out,” the thought materialized, as she stared into the darkness, numb and stunned.
"I'm Supposed to Be Here"
On June 8, 2018, Nicole Gililland was unconscious in her car outside an abandoned building in Lakeside, a town on the 101 freeway 15 miles north of Coos Bay along the Oregon coast.
She had, by her own account, taken 27 Ambien pills and, after buying what she thought was heroin from a local dealer, had shot up three bags in an attempt to end her life and go out painlessly in a blaze of over-sedation.
“I thought I was doing my kids a favor,” Niki says. “I had been to countless OD scenes as an EMT and paramedic. I knew what I had to do to kill myself and a good way to do it.”
She was, once again, reenacting her favorite “Bringing Out the Dead” scene. Except this time she was the Dead.
Or almost Dead, to be precise. Thirteen hours later, Niki woke up, not in Heaven or Hell, but back in that car, in Southwestern Oregon, with the indescribable hangover of having shot up three bags of maybe some heroin cut with a whole bunch of meth.
“The dealer ripped me off. She sold me smack cut with tweak, and that probably saved my life,” says Niki, who had never tried meth or heroin before her fateful decision. "I had to watch a YouTube video to learn how to do it," she explains.
Disillusioned with authority, abused by her natural caretakers and shaken by injustice, Niki had spent much of her life as “a staunch atheist.” The day she almost died, though, she had an intense spiritual experience that changed her.
“Now I’m certain I am supposed to be here,” she says. “As long as your intentions are good, no type of faith is wrong.”
Her final word on the suicide attempt is this: “I will always carry a lot of guilt over the last year. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life was thinking my daughters would be better off without me. I’ll spend every day making it up to them.”
It took her a few months to get back in any kind of fighting shape. Her children were taken away and she had to fight the local Department of Health Services (DHS) to get them back.
The DHS incident re-traumatized Niki. “I know firsthand that the biggest trauma a child can suffer is removal from a primary caregiver. The first time I was placed in foster care, I was eight. Obviously trauma sticks with you.”
Almost immediately after her overdose, Niki was flunked out of SWOCC, after what she alleges was grade manipulation. She found a lawyer, Steven Baldwin, and filed a tort claim against the school in July 2018.
Niki would not back down. By Christmas 2018 she had recovered custody of her youngest daughter and her oldest daughter was allowed to spend the night with them, for the first time since the suicide attempt, so they could open presents in the morning. (Niki has since recovered full custody of both her kids and they are living with her as of this writing.)
By New Year’s 2019, Niki made a resolution. “I’m educated and motivated,” she told herself. “I’m sick of hearing how worthless I am and you bet your ass I’m ready to fight back.”
That was the moment Nicole Gililland decided to go all Erin Brockovich on the powers-that-be at SWOCC and Coos Bay.
“Well, Erin Brockovich meets Hermione Granger meets the Bad Girls Club,” she clarifies to the XBIZ reporter, who is unfamiliar with the Harry Potter mythology (I know, I know).
“I’m that basic, Gustavo — deal with it!” she laughs. “I like Harry Potter and Twilight.” Other interests include Game of Thrones, Jim Carrey’s paintings and the Keto diet, which she is on a mission to have her friends in Coos Bay adopt. She also loves Joe Rogan’s podcast, and Doug Stanhope is her favorite comedian (she wrote about him in college).
Even entangled in a thankless, spirit-draining battle against powerful interests, Niki retains the quick, silly-but-smart sense of humor that led her, at 19, to name her porn character after a misspelled cheese.
Oh, and her favorite song is Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” A little too on-the-nose, all things considered, but it’s the truth, and The Truth is a biggie with Niki.
Extra! Extra! Oregon Nursing Student Was Once a Porn Star
On February 2019, Nicole Gililland filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against Southwestern Oregon Community College and the individuals who she claimed had been directly involved in her case.
She is represented by Kevin Brague, who has extensive experience prosecuting Title IX cases in Oregon.
The lawsuit accuses the school of “breach of contract, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and subjecting Gililland to a hostile educational environment.”
Niki and her lawyer are using a peculiar (Brague thinks unprecedented) strategy: they are claiming that since she was discriminated against only when outed as a sex worker, and since sex work is an overwhelmingly female profession, therefore SWOCC had violated the Title IX provisions that prevent colleges from discriminating on the basis of gender.
"What we're alleging is, once the college found out about my client's prior work, that they then began orchestrating her departure from the college," Brague told Willamette Week reporter Susan Elizabeth Shepard, who broke the story in May. "And that's a violation of school policy, and because it's based on my client's status as a former worker in the sex or porn industry, that gives rise to implicating Title IX. It's [discrimination] based off of her gender and her sex as a former worker in that industry."
In other words, they would never have called a male nursing student “unclassy,” right?
“Experts say this lawsuit, in a remote corner of Oregon, could be the first time a plaintiff has used Title IX to make an accusation of discrimination based on a person’s status as a current or former sex worker,” Shepard wrote in her article.
If being fired for a topless selfie is a form of gender discrimination, Shepard’s article continued, “what about harassment based on having done sex work? Gililland’s suit will test whether the law—especially Title IX—protects sex workers from discrimination.”
Neither SWOCC nor its attorney would comment on Shepard’s story. XBIZ has been unable to reach anyone at the school willing to comment on the case.
The Willamette Week article brought Niki a lot of attention. Like the Harmony Rose article that had spooked her in 2012, Shepard’s piece, headlined “A Student at an Oregon Community College Says Instructors Flunked Her for Being a Porn Actress. She’s Suing,” was picked up by bigger media outlets.
To this day, the phrase “Porn Actress” in a headline still equates to pageviews.
The May 8 article, illustrated by a recent family picture of a radiantly smiling Niki with her two daughters, also outed Nicole Gililland’s porn past to the entire internet. Several XBIZ readers contacted this reporter to ask if there was more information about “the Oregon nursing student stigmatized for having been in the industry.”
But Niki decided at the time to keep Bree Barrett’s name out of the story, and stuck with that plan until this very article that you are reading. She was not ready for society, including future schools and employers, to google “Nicole Gililland” and find a cache of videos and photos of her goofy “sorority years” in Porn Valley.
Shepard’s description of the lawsuit’s background is deliberately Bree-free:
“Gililland claims that before her grades started falling, [Melissa] Sperry ‘made this weird comment about what kind of a classy woman it takes to be a nurse, and that unclassy women shouldn't be nurses.’”
“It was then that Gililland, who was born in Utah and grew up in Oregon and [briefly in] Montana, thought the issue might have been her career as a mainstream porn performer between the ages of 19 and 21. After she left the industry, she moved to Utah for a fresh start and became a paramedic.”
The article did name Niki’s academic advisor, Melissa Sperry, and Sperry’s superiors at SWOCC. “When [Gililland] went to nursing program director Susan Walker to show her how Sperry had changed the terms of her assignments after the fact,” Shepard wrote, “she claims she didn't get much help. Shortly thereafter, Walker accused Gililland of being unsafe in clinical settings.”
“SWOCC has only shown me stubbornness and lies. And more lies and denial,” Niki tells us. “But I have the truth on my side — and the evidence.”
The Willamette Week article closed with something that had happened shortly before publication. In mid-April, as the federal Title IX case against SWOCC was about to be publicized to the world, seemingly out of nowhere, the school mailed Niki diplomas in general studies, arts and applied science — three associate's degrees that she had apparently completed at the school while working on her nursing requirements and pre-requirements.
Without any pomp and under dubious circumstance, plaintiff Nicole Gililland was, for some unfathomable reason, proudly claimed as an alumna by defendant SWOCC.
Something Rotten in the State of Oregon
When XBIZ started reporting this story, Niki was in the thick of one of her many battles to move her Title IX lawsuit forward. Her firebrand nature and obsession with truth and justice (remember: she did grow up among Mormons) sometimes comes off as scary-intense when she is trying to explain the complicated series of alleged wrongs that derailed her life in mid-2018.
We tell her to be careful not to go “full Lenny Bruce,” referring to the revered 1960s cult stand-up comedian who found his entirely life and mind overtaken by his legal fight against the censors and puritans of his time. Bruce was pushed into an early grave by his obsession.
“I’m happy to send you my psych evaluation,” Niki replies. “It’s from Dr. Morrell, one of the top forensic psychologists in Oregon (over 5,000 court cases). Nobody disregards this man’s opinion. I did a nine-hour evaluation with him plus a ton of intense tests. The only reason I got my girls back is because of him.”
“I’ll always respect Dr. Morrell for being the first to combat this crazy hell though. The judge was being told by ‘a friend of the college’ that I was so crazy, that I couldn’t be in court without a ‘guardian ad litem’ [a person appointed by the court to protect the interests of a minor or someone incompetent in a particular matter] to help me. Dr. Morrell’s evaluation completely debunked the claims of this ‘friend of the college’ lady.”
Another frustrating detour in the complex legal labyrinth in which Niki finds herself trapped concerns an ongoing investigation into the matter by the Oregon State Board of Nursing. The board appointed a series of investigators that, according to Niki, continue delaying a resolution to this day.
“The initial nursing board investigator came down and found evidence to support all of my claims. Her findings launched an official investigation. Then a new investigator — Leslie Kilborn — took over and then… nothing happened.”
An enraged Niki emailed Kilborn about probing a connection between SWOCC and the local DHS office that had attempted to permanently remove her children from her after her suicide attempt. “Within an hour, a third investigator — David Bowman — emailed me and said he was now handling my case.”
XBIZ has reviewed evidence that appears to confirm Niki’s timeline. As of this writing, the SWOCC instructors involved in the lawsuit have not been reprimanded by the Oregon State Board of Nursing.
Niki is fully aware that trying to explain to out-of-towners the tangled web of ethically murky connections between all these Coos Bay organizations makes her sound crazy or like a conspiracy theorist. That’s why she keeps receipts, and Dr. Morrell’s psych evaluation, handy.
“Something is crazy here,” she says. “But it’s not me.”
Niki’s opinion is that “if Melissa or the others were punished for what they did to me, especially if they lost their nursing license, the case is over. That’s why I think the nursing board is dragging its feet. There’s a reason these women were so damn arrogant.”
Eventually, she believes, it is going to come down to karma. “After I reconnected with my spirituality, I tried to get practice in good karma. I went from atheist to a combination of everything! My daughter saw me praying and had a lot of questions. I told her that her relationship with a higher power is her business, and if anyone tells her they know exactly how it should be — they’re wrong.”
For Niki, her Title IX discrimination case against SWOCC isn’t just about the stigma attached to former or current sex workers, but has implications for “any woman who had ever felt her value was based on her chastity.”
“If we’re too sexual, we are awful. If we are too prudish — again, we’re awful. This has to be challenged.”
Living Under a Shadow
In the small community of Coos Bay, “the porn star lawsuit” follows Niki like an inescapable shadow. For a while she was waiting tables to support herself and her family. But someone important from SWOCC ate there and she was let go and told to “come back when my legal problems were over.”
Her defiance has affected all aspects of her life in the closely-knit coastal town, and Niki understands the moral compromises neighbors and employers have to make with themselves.
“Other than SWOCC and the people named in the lawsuit, I don’t want to call anyone out by name or anything,” she says. “The waitressing job is the first time I’ve been fired, so they messed up my perfect record, but they’re not bad people. It’s just politics.”
She considered, briefly, returning to sex work. But things had changed since her Bree Barrett days.
“I tried to webcam for a while to make ends meet. I stopped after I got evicted and ended up at the women’s shelter. No big loss, I wasn’t really digging it — it wasn’t for me. Now it’s just going to school and student loans and grants.”
The school she’s referring to is Southwestern New Hampshire University, where she’s switched her field from nursing to pre-law. She’s once again getting good grades, comments like “This is excellent. I commend you on your writing — it’s almost letter-perfect,” and enjoying the feedback from her instructors.
Niki is very enthusiastic about her new college. “It’s so strange to be back in a place of higher learning that isn’t about intimidation and strong-arming,” she says. Her new advisor there is familiar with Niki’s lawsuit and her situation and even provided her with a weekly document showing she is fulfilling her obligations.
When XBIZ started reporting the story two months ago, the document had helped Niki and her girls stay on their feet after a messy eviction and a domestic violence incident. The three of them had relocated to a women’s shelter and were getting food.
But recently the shadow of the lawsuit and what Niki characterizes as “the long arm of SWOCC” left her and her kids once again without a home. A few days ago the Coos Bay shelter, which according to Niki has an active partnership with SWOCC, told them to leave.
“Once the first article was published, the people who run the shelter crammed everyone in the house into my room to make it as uncomfortable as possible. Now there’s a bunch of empty rooms and mine is overflowing,” Niki texted us the day before they were asked to leave.
Niki and her daughters are, as of this writing, staying with friends. She hopes she can raise money, maybe through a GoFundMe set up for them by sex worker advocacy group Stroll-PDX, to relocate to nearby Eugene and start again.
She also found a new mission: she wants to go to law school and help others — particularly sex workers — fight against discrimination and stigma.
“Right now my research paper will be on Title IX,” says Niki. “Not to discuss my case, but to learn everything I can about it.”
“I remember a year ago I was talking to my old friend Justin,” she says, “and I told him I was going to get full custody of my girls and file a lawsuit against the school. He was trying to taper me down and adjust my expectations — I was up against a lot! But that’s exactly what I did. I know now that I can do absolutely anything if I want it bad enough. So if law school sounds like a stretch to people, they don’t know me very well.”
Niki’s attorney, Kevin Brague, recently informed her that other students from SWOCC are coming forward after they read the Willamette Week article.
And Niki has heard from a former classmate that four of the six defendants named in her lawsuit — Dean Francisco Saldivar, instructors Susan Walker and Pamela Wick, and the advisor who Niki says tried to pressure her into quitting, Melissa Sperry — have either left or are considering leaving the SWOCC nursing department.
Embracing Bree
One thing Niki never felt about the brief post-high-school performing career of Bree Barrett was regret. “I don’t regret the porn, but I regret the drugs,” she earnestly clarifies. “I also regret my eyebrows at the time,” she deadpans.
Niki is incredibly thankful to sex worker nonprofits SWOP and Stroll-PDX. “It wasn’t until I got in touch with them that things started turning around,” she says. “They’re the ones that found Susan Elizabeth Shepard [the Willamette Week reporter] and even bought hotspot data so I could start college online from the shelter. They’ve been just amazing, as they are with all sex workers.”
“I fucking love [Stroll-PDX’s] Matilda. I can tell we will be friends for a very long time. This is all because of her. She is who put me in touch with Susan and set everything into motion. After a year of complete isolation, she was an answered prayer.”
Niki thinks her Title IX lawsuit will show “exactly what it means for a sex worker, or someone with a sex work past that lives on on the internet, to live in a small town where everyone is aware of everyone else. And also why that needs to change.”
After a friend suggested that, before this article was published, she might want to set up some accounts (as @realbreebarrett) on Twitter and Instagram to prevent impersonators, Niki reluctantly agreed and was also surprised to learn that many of the most popular tube sites already have model pages set up for her Bree Barrett alter ego.
Niki does not profit from the repackaging of any of the hundreds of scenes featuring Bree Barrett, who continues yielding profits to this day to the studios who hired her over ten years ago for her day rate. Her scenes are constantly re-released as new Bree Barrett content. On the internet, Bree Barrett will live forever, whether Niki likes it or not.
“I’ve really been ‘in hiding’ for a long time so I had no idea how the industry might have changed,” she says. “Just based on recent conversations after the Willamette Week article came out, it sounds like performers are really demanding their respect and cutting out a lot of misogyny. I commend them on that.”
“People do porn for the right reasons and people do porn for the wrong reasons. I was somewhere in the middle,” reflects Niki. “But I don’t regret it, it’s part of my story and taught me a lot of important lessons. It gave me the passion I have now to battle discrimination against sex workers both with this case and hopefully in my future law career.”
What would Niki tell a girl born in the first year of the millennium who wants to get into the industry today?
“Be professional!” the proud mother of two counsels girls who are now the age she was when she arrived in Los Angeles. “Listen to the people who are experienced and heed their advice. There’s a lot of mistakes that can be avoided if you do.”
“Also, educate people!” she adds. “Sex work is work. Repression of sexual urges does not lead to anything healthy. Show the world that sex workers are not bad people. They’re not stupid or soulless. Sex work between consenting adults being decriminalized is the only way to sort out the actual victims of abuse, crime and trafficking so we can help them.”
Freedom Is Frightening
“It’s grey in Coos Bay all of the time,” says Niki.
“I don’t think I mind it,” she adds, “until I’m in sun and remember what vitamin D feels like. That’s why I’m doing my bachelor’s simultaneously with the lawsuit. It kills time while this drags out, gives me positive focus. Then hopefully by the time it’s time to move, I can base my decision off law school.”
Niki is still not sure where she and the kids are bound, but she’s leaning towards Texas or Stephen King’s own Maine.
“Maine, the snow kinda kills it,” she considers. “Texas, there’s the obvious…” Niki trails off.
Perhaps, we suggest, she might consider somewhere with a more, let’s say, liberal reputation?
“But I’ve heard great things about San Antonio,” she protests.
After long conversations between Niki and XBIZ about connecting her current plight with the short-lived character of Bree Barrett and her apparently endless internet afterlife, she decided it was time to take ownership of that part of her life.
During our two months of reporting, XBIZ reassured Niki that we would not publish her performer name as part of our coverage of the “Oregon nurse” story unless she was absolutely certain that she wanted to make that part of her life public and face the unfair social stigma against sex workers head-on.
After much soul-searching, Niki agreed to let the world know that the Oregon nursing student whose whole life was turned upside down when she was outed as having once, briefly, a long time ago and under a different sky, been an adult performer, had been promising starlet Bree Barrett.
Until this article, Niki has always been able to keep Nicole and Bree separate, unless she chose otherwise. “Bree was the strong survivor and hustler,” she says. “Nicole was the coward that was terrified of Bree popping up afterwards. Now (for better or worse) I will get to be both. It’s still terrifying, but there’s a lot of freedom in it too.”
“It took a while to find my empowerment,” Niki says. “But I’ve absolutely found it. My regret now is with not finding it sooner and letting my fear control me for so long. During my years as a first responder, I used to think, ‘I wonder how many lives I need to save before society will be okay with my past?’”
The answer for Niki, is relative.
“For the wrong people, no amount of lives saved will change their view of me. For the right people, turns out I never needed to prove anything."
Gustavo Turner is the News Editor for XBIZ. Twitter: @GustavoXBIZ
