Former Central New York pastor returns to porn as Nadia Hilton: ‘I just want to be me’

Former Central New York pastor Crystal DiGregorio has returned to her stage name and is doing porn again on OnlyFans, an online subscription service popular with adult entertainers. She’s still an ordained minister, but said she stepped away from the New Beginnings Christian Life church in Fulton, N.Y., after getting tired of dealing with judgmental parishioners.

“I’m not in any particular (religious) group anymore. I decided to step back from all that after seeing a lot of judgment from church people. Very judgmental,” she told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard in a phone interview.

DiGregorio, who grew up in Oswego and now lives in Clay, appeared in more than 100 films over 10 years as porn actress “Nadia Hilton,” earning $300,000 a year. She gave it all up in 2015 when she found God and her then-husband David Bassette; they both served as pastors at the Fulton church until they divorced.

DiGregorio, 37, has since remarried and embraced her famous alter ego again on social media. She opened up about her experiences last month in a video for “Brand New Me,” an international YouTube series for truly (formerly known as Barcroft TV) that focuses on “amazing true stories celebrating difference, maintaining a sense of wonder and confronting the extreme.” The channel has 5.8 billion views total and DiGregorio’s video has already been watched more than 200,000 times on Facebook and YouTube.

“After porn I did a 180 and became a pastor, and now I just want to be me,” she said in the video.

Crystal DiGregorio, also known as porn star Nadia Hilton, appears at left in an August 2021 photo by Michael Lepore | touch of boudoir, and at right at the 2006 Adult Video News (AVN) Awards Show in Las Vegas in a Getty Images file photo.

DiGregorio told syracuse.com that she does not do porn scenes with other people on OnlyFans. She still considers it porn, but is more like an adult model whose fans can message her one-and-one and ask for her to wear (or not wear) specific things in solo photos or videos.

“People are pretty respectful. I don’t have a lot of issues on that,” she said.

OnlyFans has 130 million users and 2 million creators who have collectively earned $5 billion, including many sex workers who joined during the Covid-19 pandemic when in-person strip clubs and brothels shut down. The site made headlines last month when it said it would block sexually explicit content on its app to appease banks and payment processors, but quickly dropped the planned ban after partners promised to support “all genres of creators.”

DiGregorio said she still goes to church, but is no longer contracted with an agency or an adult video company, allowing her to choose what she does and when. That’s a big change from when she was a pastor and was told she couldn’t show skin, wear makeup, or have visible tattoos.

“Doing OnlyFans as a Christian, I know I’m going to have criticism,” she said in the truly video. “The way I look at posting adult content is: God brought me into this world naked. Posting pictures naked I don’t think is this big huge crime or, you know, this big sin.

“I’m happy being in the middle. Not all porn, and not all church.”

Her husband Andrew told truly that he fully supports her (”As long as it doesn’t break up our marriage, I’m down with it”) and even helps manage her OnlyFans page for her. People who are interested in following DiGregorio can sign up at onlyfans.com and search for “Nadia Hilton.”

DiGregorio previously said she hated doing adult films, but embraced it for a while, even opening an Oswego nightclub with her name on it: Crystal. The club closed after a few years, though, and she had both legal and financial trouble, forcing her to file for bankruptcy. She broke her nose in a 2014 car crash and was arrested for drunk driving.

But now she’s a happily married mother of four who’s accepted who she is, flaws and all, and wants others to do the same.

“I don’t judge anybody,” she told syracuse.com. “People can live their lives and do whatever they want to do.”