A church pastor who has become a stripper says her new job has given her life skills that have made her a better parent.

Nikole Mitchell, born and bred in a baptist family in Ohio, US, became very religious in her 20s – spending six years not even kissing a man as she said “Jesus was my boyfriend”.

But when she started evaluating her sexuality she decided to change her career from a pastor to  a stripper.

She now says she believes her career change is giving her children a far better start in life than they would have had if she remained religious.

Speaking to the Holly Randall Unfiltered podcast, Mitchell says she and her children freely talk about sex, consent, bodies and what’s right and not.

“[We have] All kinds of conversations and equipping them with tools that I was never equipped with as a kid growing up,” she said.

“It is now so important to me now as a mum to teach my kids these things so they have these skills for a life time, for dating, relationships, for their working environment for who they become, whatever they end up doing these are life skills everyone needs.

“I would say my work has prepared me and helped me with that better than anything else in my life.”

Nikole admitted she “had a lot of fear” leaving religion, as she worried her kids would “go mad” at her for missing out on the “community” of the church.

“Are they going to feel ashamed of me, are they going to be mad at me for embarrassing them with the internet content, all the fears that you can think of, I have thought about them a million times more than any other person?”

But having seen other people be porn stars and have children, she spoke with the pornstars and from it was the right move for her 

“Now I am where I am, I feel that not only my sense of sexuality but the sex work I do is so much healthier than this sex mindset that I grew up with in the church,” she said.

“So I think that the most toxicity you can have about sexuality, sex, bodies, can come from the kind of church that I came from aond I remember looking at the big picture and thinking I’m giving my kids a much better gift.”

Now the former pastor earns around £70,000.