During the COVID-19 pandemic, OnlyFans has recently grown in popularity. Many have hailed the website as a means of legalizing consensual, self-identifying sex work with a more moral business model than rival platforms like P*rnHub. A growing roster of musicians, influencers, and onscreen talent are joining the pay-per-view social media OnlyFans site as traditional income streams remain stifled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Melissa Williams a dedicated Police Officer for 28 years is no exception. The 46-year-old former Police Officer, from Colorado, first launched her OnlyFans account in May 2020, sharing photos of herself with her husband, who has not been named for privacy reasons, in an attempt to spice up the couple’s sex life. However, when Melissa Williams’ colleagues and boss discovered her racy snaps, Williams claimed they shamed her, spread them around her office, and pushed her out of her role.
The mom-of-two also finds that posting things on the adult platform helps her to decompress after a day of work as her job can be very stressful and even dangerous. Williams somehow quit her main job when her colleagues and boss were shaming her for her side job. They used her images against her as a form of blackmail to scare her out of her job. Although Williams has been a police officer for twenty-eight years, making her one of the most veteran members of her department.
Becoming a police officer has been her life’s ambition since she was 14 years old, she said on her Instagram account, which she kept private from her coworkers. Using the alias Lexi Bella, Williams and her husband have been supporting themselves by creating content on the internet. She identifies as “the milf and wife next door.”
But then her boss was told about her account by someone who found her out.
She later said that she received a complaint in her email from her colleagues who learned about her side job:
“The complaint came totally out of the blue; I was in shock and panicking because I never wanted these two parts of my life to collide.”
“Then I was angry and embarrassed because the notice went on to say how five colleagues of mine – all in lower and higher ranks than me – had obtained access to my paid account to access my private content so they could investigate my conduct.”
“I didn’t feel that was professional or necessary. It felt like they all just wanted to see me naked. After their ‘investigation,’ my images were shared widely around our local force and the jail staff. It was all being treated like hot gossip. That’s when I had to take time off with stress because I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t eat, it was so frustrating and upsetting. I didn’t consider my OnlyFans page to be a work matter,” she added.
“A lot of the material my husband and I shared is stuff we’d taken in our private sex life over the years.”
“I was working up to 60-hour weeks, so mostly my husband ran the page and shared my pictures, and then sometimes we’d have fun dressing me up and taking photos especially to share. It was a fun way to relax and be creative together after a stressful week in a stressful job. I was never in uniform in any of my images.”
“I used a fake persona – most of my fans think I’m a stay-at-home mom. It felt like my bosses were policing my bedroom.”
She was signed off work for 12 weeks with her doctor’s permission due to anxiety and stress. She was also advised against returning back to her work. She received a total of $30,000 for her severance package.
Melissa has since focused on her OnlyFans account full-time and initially resented her colleagues. She asserts that she is making as much as $4,000 from her modeling job and that she is much happy now than she was when she was employed by the police.
Sources: AWM, Mirror, Dailymail