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August 2023It has been a while since I have written about the links between porn and sex trafficking. I have been asked to speak on the subject and the review of my research material brought me to my knees again. God, help us, with what we are allowing to go on in our country.
First off, when you hear of sex trafficking it is referring to a boy or girl that has not attained the age of 18. They are minors, with the average age of induction, to the sex trade, being 12 years old.
According to www.enough.org 63% of men and 36% of women view porn at least monthly. Fifty percent of men and 20% of women say they are addicted to porn. Ninety-seven percent of teen boys and 80% of teen girls have viewed porn, 23% of teen boys, and 8% of girls say they are addicted. Eighty-seven percent of college aged men and 30% of women double click for online sex every day or at least weekly. Add to that there are over 500,000 internet searches, every day, for teenaged porn.
THERE ARE ONLY TWO CHOICES IN WHAT THESE PEOPLE ARE WATCHING: SEX ADDICTS ACTING OUT OR SEX TRAFFICKED/HUMAN TRAFFICKED VICTIMS spurred on by money hungry predators.
Most likely, a porn viewer is watching all of it at the same time. Casual sex, one-night stands, paying for sex or accepting money for sex, watching someone have sex, publicly exposing body parts, using power of position to exploit or be sexual with someone, giving or receiving physical harm or pain during sexual activity. These are all behavioral characteristics, any of which indicate a clinical diagnosis of sexual addiction, according to Dr. Patrick Carnes, a leading researcher in the field. Yet all of these characteristics are depicted as “normal behavior,” in porn production. Violence is hugely on the rise in porn videos. It is also on the rise in teen dating with 30% reporting violence on dates, it is much higher among the college aged. In the top 50 porn videos, according to statistical analysis, there are 3376 verbal and physical acts of aggression, 94% against women. Here is a quote from a former human trafficked porn star, Jersey Jaxin: “You are a number. You’re bruised. You have black eyes. You’re ripped. You’re torn. You have your insides coming out. It’s not pretty…on set. You get hurt…. you can say anything you want and they don’t listen… they have another scene to go to. It’s all about the money. They’ve forgotten who they are and they don’t care who they are hurting.” We must ask, what is being learned as porn is viewed?
The second choice is that the porn viewer is watching a sex trafficked or a human trafficked victim. Cassie was a dreamer. At 12 years old, she was determined to be an actress and be on the big screen movies of Hollywood. She would often talk about it with her friends and on social media. One day, as she was walking home to her grandmother’s, after school, a man walking in the same direction walked her home and started the conversation about Cassie’s hopes and dreams. The man met and walked her home over the next few days. After gaining some trust, the man introduced himself as a talent scout for a Hollywood producer, he believed he could take her to the top but she would have to run away because the adults in her life would hold her back. He assured her that once she was in her first big screen production, they would forgive her and all would be okay. She packed her bag and left. Her first production was a group sex video that was sold as porn. Fast forward four months and 400 “johns” later, two men rented, used, abused and left her broken, pregnant and dead body in a Nevada ditch. Cassie never saw the age of 13.
This is not an isolated occurrence. There are over 300,000, under the age of 18, victims of sex trafficking every year in the United States. Average age of induction is 12 years old. In the state of Wisconsin, where I live, there are documented cases of sex trafficking in every one of the 72 counties that make up the state, even the very rural, up north, ones. Kids are trafficked at the big game sites of Minneapolis, MN, Milwaukee and Green Bay, WI. Then they are sold to buyers along the driving routes between those cities during the week. Everyone wanting to buy these girls and some boys want to act out what they have seen in porn.
When you watch porn, you are educating yourself in the thought processes and behavioral characteristics of a sex addict and supporting the sexual exploitation of men, women and children. These are very unhealthy decisions and yet porn is producing and selling over $97 billion annually and just sex trafficking is rolling in $99 billion annually and both are climbing.
The demand for children is so high, pimps and pornographers come up with creative ways to get them. One way is through video gaming. Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games like Grand Theft Auto V or Call of Duty WWII. In GTA V, the player can purchase sex acts from a prostitute and advance in the game if you kill her rather than pay her. Combine porn, violence and a win at all costs — you have produced a criminal mind set. Ted Bundy and a host of other death row inmates have given testimony to this fact. I have been told that these are just harmless games. “It’s just a game,” I’ve been told. You will not fly a plane or a space craft until you have learned to fly them in a simulator. Fancy word for a game.
We learn from games. Many of the past school shootings have the shooter linked to acting out video games. History teaches us that military soldiers were having a hard time pulling the trigger on a man in their gun sights. Mattel developed a shooting game that the soldiers then trained on repeatedly shooting simulated humans. The result: it improved the soldiers’ ability to pull the trigger on an actual human target by over 80%.
We learn from playing games. Some games are teaching that sexual exploitation and even killing is okay if I win. The other danger of video games is the on-line chat rooms. Call of Duty WWII has the chat room built in as a debriefing room where team members discuss strategy. In these games you are a fantasy person and so is everyone else. However, according to the Department of Justice, there are over one million predators online at any given moment. They are looking for a victim. A case in point was a 16-year-old high school super jock. He linked up with a 16-year-old girl in the chat rooms of a game. After months of chatting, they were developing an attraction to each other. The girl sent the boy a nude picture of herself and asked the boy to do the same. He couldn’t refuse, he sent the picture. The 16-year-old girl turned out to actually be a 54-year-old pedophile. He sold the picture around the world along with the young man’s contact information. Pedophiles from all over wanted to meet this boy and have sex with him.
Every day, girls are also solicited into meeting someone they meet on the internet. They meet, he buys nice things for her and makes a lot of promises only to eventually add her to his stable of prostitutes.
NEVER BEFORE IN HISTORY HAVE SO MANY SPECIALTY PERVERSIONS HAD SO MUCH ACCESS TO THE AVERAGE CHILD/PERSON. The lesson: Never engage in an online discussion with someone you do not personally know. Do not put personal information on any internet location, like age, address, pictures or any detailed personal information. Doing so is putting out bait for a predator.
Bad information leads to bad decisions. It will create a belief system that cannot work in close, personal relationships. My experience:
Around age 9, I was enticed into having sex with a neighbor man. I was raped and being recruited by a homosexual. I was given pornography that same year. Physical abuse and neglect were happening in the home where I was being raised. Porn, fantasy sex with women and self-stimulation were about the only thing that felt good. It felt better than the rape by a man anyway. I did not know that porn was “educating” me into a belief system that will not work in real life relationships. Oh, I tried to make it work. I had academic awards in high school and college. I got a BA degree in theology and psychology. Yet operating under the secret influence of porn, I continued to make decisions based on bad information. My life and 20-year marriage fell apart at the age of 38. I entered counseling and started attending a self-help group for sexual addiction. I have learned that many people have been groomed into dysfunctional beliefs by porn over the last 60 years. I was just one of many. I was addicted to porn for 28 years. I now have over 30 years of freedom from that addiction. I wrote a book from a journal I kept during the first 16 years of my recovery, on how the divine power of God transformed my life. I had to turn my will over to a power greater than myself. Then I had to dismantle all of my thoughts and beliefs. The good I could keep but the dysfunctional beliefs had to be replaced. Ten years of concentrated effort through self-help groups and counseling. A ten-year time out at the peak of my life and career. Not only character defects had to be changed, but I had to totally learn what healthy intimacy and sexuality even was. Taking every thought captive and being transformed by the renewal of your mind is a gradual process.
I thought I could be a Christian and watch porn. Now I know that no servant can serve two masters — he will either love the one and hate the other or he will he devoted to the one and despise the other. Luke 16:13. Now I know that I was created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:24. God has given me a spirit of love, power and self-discipline. 1 Timothy 1:7. Dozens of thoughts and beliefs had to be relearned and replaced. Then practice, practice, practice until new behavior emerged. I can now see the horrors; atrocities and the demented teaching porn is delivering and how it has shaped our world in regard to sexuality. All things perverted, the sexual exploitation of men, women and children are the only thing porn distributes and the only way this stops, is to end the demand. Don’t click, don’t buy will end the demand.
The Church has been compromised. Many people are operating under the influence of porn. The statistics range from 50 to 80%. The American Association of Christian Counselors call porn an epidemic, The National Center on Sexual Exploitation calls it a pandemic. Yet most churches fail to address it. If you watch porn, stop. God is calling out to His people to come out of the darkness and be reconciled to God. God will not hold your sin against you but will embrace you with His love and forgiveness. The more people who do this will lead to more discussion in our churches. It is time that you and I and our churches lead, not follow, in ending the use of porn and the atrocity of sex trafficking. End their use and anything that supports them. End support for any media intended to arouse sexual desire and stand against sex trafficking.
Stay informed: The National Center on Sexual Exploitation,
EndSexualExploitation.org — this site has a lot of information, in regard to this fight, even telling you the businesses that support porn, how to protect your children on line and much more.
Lynn Fredrick is the author of “Stand Firm.” Stand firm over sin. Stand firm in your faith.
LynnFredrick.com
