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one of the powers of innocence is the
ability to have a world that is safe to
be able to play
and experiment in
without the threat of danger
what happens with pornography or when
sexuality intrudes through any form
of violation
as you all of a sudden realize there's a
parallel world
next to yours
and that if you walk through this door
nothing will ever be the same
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i remember being a kid and looking at a
rosebud and thinking how pretty it was
and i remember thinking oh well i want
it to open up like a rose you know so
i'll just pull back all the petals
and it'll open up it'll be beautiful
like a rose
now i realize you can't force that
that happens when that flower is ready
to open and when it's being fed and
nurtured and it opens and it's very
similar to a child's or adolescent
sexuality you know if you try to open
those pedals too early
i mean they will grow and they will open
but they're going to be damaged
they're not going to be the same person
that they would have been
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so
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growing up my dad planted a church in a
small rural town where everyone knows
everyone
we would always hang out in the streets
you know playing football with the
neighbors and stuff like that
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we're in this playground and
a friend of mine was like hey richie i
want to show you a picture
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he shows me this picture of this topless
girl
these sensations go through my body i'm
not even aware of the language or even
what to you know recognize or call them
and
i never forgot that it was like
imprinted in my heart
the next week or so
i'm riding my bike
and out of nowhere this paper blows on
my yard
i went over there and picked it up and
it was a full page like someone ripped
it out of a playboy magazine
and i was like this is it this is like
my chance of actually
getting pornography for myself
so i actually folded it put in my pocket
and hid it in my room
every time it was time for bed i would
literally just take it out
lock the door
and just start looking at it
and i remember doing that for hours even
as a child
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from there
porn created this whole mental script
on how to relate to the opposite sex
and so i remember i wanted to pursue
girls
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and i had no idea how to approach them i
had no idea how to start the
conversation
all i knew was he you know we go to the
room and have sex
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so it's like how do you start a
conversation
so i'm like well
i'll just um
just be the shy type but it's all
manipulation
and so that's how i learned it was be a
manipulator
so
when i first had a relationship
i remember just thinking
i hope she's gonna be okay with me
putting my hands on her breasts
and i hope that i can put my hands down
her pants
in my mind i'm hoping this happens i'm
not going to push it i just want to be
one of the shy guys and just kind of
just sneak it in that way so that way i
can i can gain her trust and then i can
go ahead and just
do what i want what i saw in the
pictures
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there's pretty good documentation that
the earlier someone is exposed to really
explicit pornography and sexual imagery
the more likely it is that they're going
to have compulsive and addictive
problems around their sexuality as an
adult
because that nine-year-old does not have
the emotional and biological development
to be able to really understand what the
meaning is of what he knows it's
incredibly arousing and amazing and
distracting and fun and it feels good to
look at but their brains are really not
ready to handle it
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our sexuality is wired into us
the most sexual organ is between our
ears not between our legs
so when you are developing your brain
sexually
what happens is that pornography
begins building that script this is the
way we're supposed to think about it
and so when a young person views
pornographic material they're
neurologically now starting to put
bricks in this wall of kind of building
the structure of what sex means
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adolescent brain is not an adult brain
with less experience it is in a unique
place it is anatomically physiologically
and biologically different and what
occurs during adolescence is several
brain changes that have a purpose and
the purpose is to become very excited
about sensation seeking about rewards
about sex
and it's to become wired up actually
changing the structure of the brain to
wire up to the environment
and it has been shown to occur with
nerve connections
the way nerves connect and intertwine is
really the basis for all learning and
all memory
so what occurs is around age 11 the
adolescent brain prunes down these
connections until you're set with the
connections that will perhaps last a
lifetime
pornography is a teacher and modeler of
sexual templates
particularly when they're
modeled early
because it's a powerful neuroplasticity
device
neuroplasticity means that our brain
changes and we change when we want and
when we learn and we have seen it in
pornography now people who are watching
pornography compulsively their brains
look different from those that are not
a leading researcher said recently to me
we are in the midst of the single
largest unregulated social experiment in
human history and what he was talking
about
was the inundation
of the brains of young children
with content that they're not prepared
to deal with
and what it is doing is normalizing
behavior that is going to affect
particularly young boys is going to
affect their view of women their fewer
relationships their view of the world
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a few years ago when i was 16.
i
dated this guy and we were both virgins
maybe a month into our relationship we
ended up having sex
the next morning he was like hey i want
to show you something
we watched porn and i had never seen i
didn't even know it was
a thing
until then but then that was when i
realized he watches this all the time
and he told me he's like i watch it all
the time it's not a big deal
over the course of our relationship the
different sexual things that he wanted
to do became more and more
vile and abusive and
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uh
scary for me
i just remember he would talk about
wanting to do like certain things that
he would see
in porn and he said
that
one of his favorite things about porn is
how
um at the end of some of the more
hardcore ones
the guy
will
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punch a girl in the nose
and
finish on her face
and it looks like a cherry sundae
and i was like do not do that to me you
can't do that to me and he was like i'm
not gonna tell you like when i'm gonna
do it it'll just be a surprise like you
won't even have to think about it before
and
i just
i was just scared
i just
i was really scared i didn't want that
to happen to me and that was when i
broke up with him
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it really just felt like i was an
object for his pleasure and like i owed
him anything he wanted
the whole point is that
he was a good guy who started watching
porn and somehow it escalated to
him thinking it's okay to punch his
girlfriend in the nose and finish on her
face like
like
where did that become okay like at some
point in it he stopped seeing women as
people because porn like
messed up his mind
and just like distorted his whole
thinking
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there's this very dangerous thing that's
going on in our culture right now where
we're not having a strong enough a more
vibrant conversation with young boys
about their sexual lives
in the absence of adults having
meaningful ongoing open and honest
conversations with young people about
sexual behavior their bodies intimacy
respecting themselves
the lack of that conversation enables a
very one-sided and dangerously one-sided
presentation of sexual behavior which is
the one that they have access to which
in very very often case is
pornography
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we know now that boys are accessing
pornography at age 11
and that there's an increasing
consumption of pornography from girls
and so if you think about it this way
pornography is the biggest sex educator
it is the most significant influential
sex educator that young people have
today
so we have to look at what they're
learning from this
when the average 12 year old boy puts
porn into google
he's directed immediately to the pawn
tube site such as you porn and pornhub
and the most accessible is actually
called gonzo porn that's the shorthand
term for the violent porn that has no
storyline
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if you want more soft core less violent
porn you're going to have to spend a
good 10 to 15 minutes looking for it and
don't tell me that the average 12 13
year old boy is going to start looking
for that for 10-15 minutes he's going to
go to that which is the most accessible
the most popular pornography it's always
around how men get satisfied
it's very very rarely about women's
pleasure
women are there as instruments
they're simply there as as tools
literally
for male pleasure
the images they're seeing are about
sexuality fused to domination
an aggressive sexuality
a sexuality that objectifies women
treats them as nothing more than objects
or male pleasure
it's not about equality or egalitarian
lovemaking
it's all about doing something to her
not sharing something with her
said you'll do it right
right
most porn ends up with women being not
only presented as the victims of
violence but often presented as the
victims of violence who love it
i want you to do anything you want
so girls are learning to be compliant
and they're learning that what's most
important is to be desirable to the boys
not that their own sexual agency or
their own sexual pleasure is important
at all
whatever you want to do to her
however debasing
however vile
she says yes
so in a way what you're doing is you're
socializing men into thinking that women
will consent to anything
it teaches a very one-sided dangerous
emotionless almost humanless sexual
experience that so many young men are
now seeing as being normal this is how
it happens
14 year old high school freshman daisy
coleman says matthew barnett sexually
assaulted her while she was unconscious
cornett would later claim the encounter
was consensual
22 year old madison smith says the
encounter started off with consensual
sex but things turned violent when he
started to strangle her and force her to
perform a sex act
two high school football stars sexually
assaulted a visibly intoxicated 16 year
old girl during the crime many did not
step up to help but nearly all got out
their cell phones and started snapping
pictures and tweeting
within five days children's mercy saw
444 kids for sexual assault almost half
of our perpetrators were minors
gagging strangling
when a child's acting out without
extreme violence you have to contribute
some of that to pornography because it
directly correlates with the genres that
kids are being exposed to
i've seen numbers of these cases that i
actually worked
where
kids who were sexualized early actually
act out on that because they don't have
the inhibitions or the knowledge of what
the actual sexual acts are what they
mean
now maybe they'll have the self-control
to get off that
the more time they spend reinforcing
that arousal pattern especially if
they're looking at violent porn my god
that's that's the worst possible thing
they can look at because what what it
will do will trip the wires in their
brain it will make them feel really good
about this stuff
and it will overwhelm reason in their
brain
and they could go down this road and
find that they don't have the willpower
to stop themselves from doing it
and it could surprise them how quickly
that can happen
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in previous eras to get sexually
explicit material you had to go to a
pornographic movie theater you had to go
to a bookstore now you can access
pornography sitting at home at no cost
over the internet
the internet has made porn not only
accessible it's really made it
inescapable because now of course
everybody has access to porn on their
smartphone
including children
once the online world came about it was
the game changer
i mean i went from being a private
practice clinician with one assistant to
running a clinic with eight therapists
and 150 clients a week i mean the
internet just swamped us
so many people started having so many
problems so quickly in relationship to
online porn and it was really just the
very beginning
because i'm now seeing 25 year old men
who've been looking at hardcore porn
since they were 15.
and they've never had a date and they've
never had sex with a person
and online porn really feeds that in a
way that pre-digital porn didn't
there are actually studies that show
that the internet has the ability to
cause addiction-related brain changes
the same brain changes that occur in a
drug addiction so that tells us that the
internet is different
what's different is the ability to
control arousal so you're sitting there
with your mouse and you're clicking on a
i don't want to look at that i want to
look at that i want to look at it i want
to see what george is doing i'm bored
with that i want to see what this
person's doing oh what about this
message i want to read this and you can
go on and go on and what you're doing is
you're controlling your arousal you're
controlling your dopamine
is the motivation chemical to drive us
towards natural rewards such as eating
and achievement and falling in love and
sexual desire
when you're in the presence of something
as arousing as images or a drama of
sexuality
your brain is going to produce two to
four times the normal amount of dopamine
where we get the word dope
which is what our brains secrete as what
we call our pleasure drug and it gives
us a sense of motivation and joy for
living our lives
well food is about a hundred and fifty
percent spike of dopamine
and sex is 200 which is equivalent to
morphine
sexual orgasm is equivalent to a morphed
rash
that's a pretty powerful reward
there's also though the frontal area
over our forehead and these are
important in judgment and in weighing
the pleasure that we want
and so you have these competing areas
you have this dopaminergic drive that
says do it with this frontal break of
the brain it says think about it weigh
it
and in a way they're competing
in young people those rental areas
aren't fully developed
and so that break isn't there
our frontal judgment volitional areas
aren't developed until we're in our mid
to late 20s
and so you have an eight-year-old with
this undeveloped brain who doesn't
really have the ability
to weigh or to judge what they're seeing
whether it's harmful not harmful what
will the result be if they participate
in this activity they don't even know
what it is
and so when we flood the child's brain
with these powerful sexual images
provide this physical emotional overload
the child is powerless
there it's absolutely impossible for
them to resist
this kind of stimulus
now we combine that
with a young male
who has high hormones and is driven by
interest and then you combine it with
the novelty of the internet so all these
qualities are put together
and they're matched with our highest
natural reward and your genes number one
job and that's reproduction
and that's what makes today's high-speed
internet porn
so enticing
growing up i was very anti-social
never really had any friends
i'd never had a girlfriend until just a
couple years ago
so i felt like i was missing out on
something i was very frustrated i was
feel like i wasn't um like everybody
else
then
when i was about 11 12 years old
i found some porn magazines
given our household we never really
talked to much about sexuality at all so
to see something like that was just a
adrenaline rush it felt like what i
thought would feel like if i had a
girlfriend or had a relation real
relationship
and of course my progression goes along
with technology as the internet came
and we got our first computer i
would sneak in there when nobody was
looking and keep on looking at porn
after a while the stuff that worked
before didn't work as well
you'll be able to tolerance
so it would get more edgier as your
stuff stuff that i wouldn't imagine ever
looking at
then i found a file sharing program
which i was using to um download music
and stuff like that
and there uh by some accident i found
illegal pornography
childborn
and um
it was so easy to get it it was almost
as it was as easy as getting the regular
stuff
i guess my curiosity got to me so i
couldn't believe that it could be this
easy so
i downloaded it
and i saw it
and i got thrush
it worked
it worked like nothing else did anymore
as much as i tried to get away from it
from time to time i would always find
myself going back to it because i was
looking for that fix
looking back it was a very dark
journey
i didn't even come to terms until i got
caught
i was a firefighter and i was going back
home from work about a year ago
and all of a sudden i had blue lights
going by me
pulling me out my truck
handcuffed me and put me in back of a
car
pathologically speaking were you a
pedophile
no
how would you explain reaching that
point of wanting to see a child in a
sexual act
it was
the dangerous dangerousness of it it was
dangerous it was wrong and
that part was appealing too
just how wrong it was but
it was what worked it was like the
the heroin of
pornography
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for each individual it's unclear what
the outcome of viewing pornography will
be
it's not uncommon the more you look at
porn the more you're going to stumble
into things
and so you may stumble into a genre of
pornography that's inherently violent
like rape porn
where you may stumble into an area of
pornography like child porn or something
like that
most people don't start out saying i
want to go into this particular type of
porn this is what i'm into it's that
process by which you are now caught up
in this wave of sexual arousal and
excitement and so what happens then is
you now as you're exposed to more things
you run the risk of now being bound to
more and more of these dangerous really
uh dishonoring forms of pornography or
illegal forms of pornography too
sex addiction is often about escalation
so someone could start looking at more
violent images
or more abusive images
or things that they really never even
thought would turn them on
even though it might feel shameful or
uncomfortable it's still intense and it
makes the heart beat faster and faster
and faster and that's very much what the
non-substance addictions are about
they're about adrenaline they're about
endorphins they're about dopamine
they're about feeling high and excited
and totally into what you're doing for
the sake of emotional escape
the thing i'm most concerned with is
that escalator effect
the fact that today's images
are not going to satisfy you tomorrow
and tomorrow's images are not going to
satisfy you the next day and there is a
continuing quest
for something new for something
different
and at some point because of the basic
inclination of the person
there's at least going to be a
temptation to experience it in real life
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my junior senior year of high school i
was getting more popular with not just
girls but just with the whole school
being homecoming king
i started getting a little bit away from
the porn a little bit it was just like
an afterthought unless something
triggered it
and so i graduated from high school
and i fell in love with this girl who's
not my wife
we moved from this town into actually
where our family's at and everything
both sides of our family
it was during that time where i i was
passing by a street here in town and
there was like this adult store
and i remember i'm like i don't want to
go there
i don't want to go there because if i go
there that's it i'm going to go ride
back to the bottom
sure enough i found myself opening the
door
and i'm walking right in
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this was before smartphones this was
like an 0.405
and so i would just go to the adult
store as often as i could
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from there the relationship i had with
pornography was definitely progressive
so you know first it was just a girl
and then it became two girls
and it was an orgy
then it was oh all this behavior with
certain body parts these fetishes
and i'm like i really like this
it came to a point where it's like
uh i need to experience what i'm seeing
because this is just like
amazing what i'm seeing oh but it's just
paper oh but it's just the page oh but
it's on my phone
my wife won't do any of this stuff no
way she's gonna say where are you
getting these ideas from so i'm like
a stranger
paying for it duh
i pay for it and they do what i tell
them because i'm paying for it
that was it
one night my wife was going to some
function at church
my kids were with my parents
and i had my own laptop
so i go on craigslist and i'm like
what's this personal stuff
i can contact someone here
oh i am free right now to do whatever i
want and no one knows anything
and i said
i'm gonna call
so i'm like hi
yeah we give massages and i'm like oh
that's cool all right
nude massages i'm like oh that's that's
great that's fine
so when can i come
and she's like you can come right now if
you want and i said right now that's
what i needed to hear right now
i go there and
i'm naked and she's naked
i can literally feel my heart pumping
out of my chest and my mouth dry and my
fingers shaking and i'm like what's
going on what going on what's going on
what am i doing what am i doing i'm
thinking this
but because of all those unspoken
secrets
they all just started taking over me and
saying this is your chance
this is your chance to be like a porn
star or you can say and ask the person
to do whatever you want and because
you're paying for it they will do it
when your wife was like i don't want to
do that
should this lady here she will and i
said in my mind
that is so right it's so true
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and so
that was the lowest i have ever been
and it was a porn dream that i had as a
child
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after we were finished
she looked at my ring
and she was like
how are you and your wife
and i said something so twisted
i said you know i love my wife and she
was like you do
and i said i i do
i need to go
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i gave her my money
and i left
and i went in my car
and i wept
i said i can't believe i did this oh my
gosh like this trust
am i going to tell anyone this
it was scary
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okay
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take us back to that moment that you
found out what did he say to you
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we were lying in bed and he asked me to
not get mad at him he was going to tell
me something he's like you promise you
don't get mad and i was like i promise
he's like you promise you won't get mad
and i was like yeah just tell me
um
and so he tells me
and it just like felt like i got punched
in the heart
um
and he just started crying and i just
held him
i just held him because
i've messed up really bad you know
and people would hold me
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and um
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so that was hard
because i was
you know
expressing love to him and then i felt
like i didn't want you to be by him
anymore
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and she's like richie i can't even see
you right now
you need to sleep in the boys room
so i'd be in the boys room and my boys
would be like
why are you here daddy
i remember crying i hurt mama
i hurt mommy and
i i'm here right now i need i was so
broken i just remember saying i hurt
mama
and
hearing myself saying that to my my own
son my two little boys
something in my heart was like
i remember when i was their age
i don't want this to repeat in my kids
this can't happen anymore
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so
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you