It’s a headline that makes you shudder every time you read it… “Man arrested on child pornography charges.”
What’s even more haunting is when the perpetrator is also a respected member of the community. Just this month, a huge human trafficking sting took place in Ohio in which 161 people were arrested for buying sex with minors. Among the arrests were a firefighter, a college professor, and a Cleveland-area city councilman—all willing to pay for sex with a child.
So how does a person actually get to that point? How do they get to the place of thinking it’s ok to look at innocent children as sex objects?
In our latest documentary, Raised on Porn, we ask those very questions of a man who was arrested for downloading over 9,000 photos and videos of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) onto his computer. And while his answer isn’t surprising, it’s an extremely sobering reality for our culture.
His story begins with him as a 12-year-old boy looking at a porn magazine. It ends with an arrest and a permamnent sex offender record. This is the story of Jacob, a firefighter whose porn addiction led him down a dark, destructive path of consuming illegal pornographic content.
Raised on Porn is now live! WATCH THE FILM HERE.
In our film, Jacob shares:
“Growing up I was very anti-social, never really had many friends. I never had a girlfriend until just a couple of years ago, so it felt like I was missing out on something. I was very frustrated, I felt like I wasn’t like everybody else.
Then, when I was about 11 or 12 years old, I found some porn magazines. In our household, we didn’t talk much about sexuality at all so to see something like that was just an adrenaline rush. It felt like what I thought it would feel like if I had a girlfriend or had a 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 build up a tolerance. So, it would get more edgier and edgier. Stuff that I wouldn’t imagine ever looking at. Then I found a file sharing program which I was using to download music and stuff like that, and there, by some accident, I found illegal pornography. Child porn.
It was so easy to get. It was as easy as getting the regular stuff. I guess my curiosity got to me and I couldn’t believe it could be this easy, so, I downloaded it. And I saw it, and I got the rush. It worked. It worked like nothing else did anymore.
RELATED: Raised on Porn Director Reveals the Heart Behind the Film
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 with it until I got caught.
I was a firefighter and I was coming back home from work about a year ago and all of a sudden I had blue lights going behind me… pulled me out of my truck, handcuffed me, and put me in the back of a car.”
Interviewer: Pathologically speaking, were you a pedophile?
“No.”
Interviewer: How would you explain reaching that point of wanting to see a child in a sexual act?
“It was the dangerousness of it. It was dangerous, it was wrong, and that part was appealing too. Just how wrong it was… it’s what worked. It’s like the heroin of pornography.”
Jacob served nearly five years in prison because of his criminal addiction, but all of this likely would’ve never happened had he been protected from porn exposure as a child. Too many porn addicts find themselves following this dark path and, even worse, many end up physically sexually abusing children.
In our work to end commercial sexual exploitation over the last ten years, we have spoken with scores of men who have paid for sex. In almost every one of these scenarios, the men started out by finding porn as children and becoming addicted. Raised on Porn reveals just some of the ways that porn and sexual exploitation are intertwined.
For the sake of the millions of children being exposed to porn, it’s absolutely crucial we understand what’s at stake. The more we understand this, the stronger the movement will be to protect children globally. That’s why we made Raised on Porn, and why we believe this film needs to reach millions. You can be an important part of making that happen.
Here are three ways you can help:
- Join 50k+ others by signing the petition demanding age verification, with ID, on porn sites. Then share it.
- Watch Raised on Porn, free on YouTube, then like, comment, and share it with 5 friends.
- Give here. The more resources we have the more people we can reach with this film and campaign.
