The Nightmare of Performing in Porn

Some girls may enter the porn industry with big dreams, but most of them leave with nightmares and flashbacks.

I've heard many people make the statement, "Well, porn stars must love having a lot of sex—otherwise, they wouldn’t make these movies, right?" This fallacious statement is easily refuted in the words of men and women who have escaped the life of performing in adult films, and who still suffer from its effects.  There is no glamour in porn.

In the words of one former porn actress, Elizabeth Rollings, “You have to submit to others (producers, agents, etc.) no matter how important you think you are, you’re not in control… Having men do disgusting things to me and even if it hurt, I had to make it seem like I was enjoying every minute of it. I hated it.” *

Many of these young girls are lured into the adult film industry by promises of fame and fortune, which they quickly discover is not what it’s all about. Some of them even find themselves doing shoots to which they did not agree. “I definitely did some things I did not want to do… I was one of those girls who was gagged and choked,”** former porn actress Veronica Lain admits. Some performers are tricked into violent and forced sex acts on and off camera and told they must do it since they’re “under contract.”

Once entrenched in the business, performers often find themselves trapped by violence, drug addiction, and mental illness. Women involved in pornography are at huge risk for sexually transmitted diseases (Pink Cross reports that 66% of porn actresses are herpes positive; other prevalent diseases include HPV, all-out cervical cancer, and staph infections), drug abuse (everything from alcohol and Xanax to meth and heroin. Pink Cross estimates 90% of the actors involved with porn use drugs), mental illness (many performers suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder), and suicide (Pink Cross cites a statistic of 208 porn performers dying through drugs, diseases, suicide, and homicide since 2014).

Many porn actors and actresses transition from pornography to prostitution, as it’s easier to make $1,000 to $1,500 in an hour through an escort service rather than endure the grueling 8+ hour process of film-making (more on this in a later blog).

If you want to hear a former porn actress, Shelley Lubben, discuss many of these statistics, check out this video of her testifying before the California State Assembly.

 

 

Shelley Lubben founded the Pink Cross foundation, and the organization is staffed by former performers who are now anti-porn activists and work to help others escape the business and build a life for themselves. They are a faith-based charity whose mission is to reach out to the porn industry performers and equip them with a support system and extensive resources.    

If you’re interested in finding out more about them, check out their site at www.thepinkcross.org

 

 

 

*SOURCE: Rollings, Elizabeth. “Former Porn Star Elizabeth Rollings Story.” Ex Porn Star Stories. The Pink Cross Foundation, Jun 2009. Web. 9 Aug. 2013

**SOURCE: Lain, Veronica. “Former Porn Star Veronica Lain Story.” Ex Porn Star Stories. The Pink Cross Foundation, Sep 2008. Web. 9 Aug. 2013.

 

 

Modern Sexual Exploitation

In 2001, a friend of mine began working for an anti-human trafficking organization as a liaison and a zealous abolitionist. I’d never heard of sex trafficking before except brief mentions on Dateline regarding girls overseas that were abducted and sold. Over the next few weeks, my friend offered me a crash course in sex trafficking—plying me with statistics, news articles, case studies, and books addressing the topic.

Absolutely horrified, I began to extensively research the topic, sickened by some of the things I read. What kind of monsters could do that to another human being? Was this for real? It was a reality that was hard to fathom or comprehend for my average, then-twenty-something suburban mind. In 2009, I wrote a novel on the topic, AllThat is Right and Holy.

 

Although I originally had agent representation for the book, in 2009 the Christian fiction world was skeptical about taking on such a tough subject, so I eventually self-published. My readership was small, but I was amazed by the response I got. People contacted me to tell me they’d never heard of this issue and were eager to learn more about it.

In 2015, it’s impossible to turn on the television or open a newspaper without reading about trafficked women and girls. Venues posing as massage parlors, restaurants, or modeling services house the trappings for young women that span all ethnic and social demographics. Schools, shopping malls, and train stations are hunting grounds for the runaway, the naïve, and the lost. This has prompted me to write another novel on the subject, which is currently with an editor, after which I’ll begin shopping it around to agents and publishers.

Because I do write about darker topics, I’ve changed up the focus of my blog to feature snippets about trafficking, pornography, and child exploitation issues for my Thursday posts. On Friday, I’ll still have more light-hearted Favorite-Things-Friday fun.

Trafficking was never just an “over-there” problem, people simply didn’t realize that trafficking was not only about moving people across borders. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the formal definition of trafficking is found in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” This broader, more modern definition would of course include prostitution of all kinds, pornography, stripping, etc.  Make no mistake. Sex trafficking happens every day in our towns, neighborhoods, and in our schools.    

If you’re interested in learning more about the wide-spread nature of sex trafficking and exploitation, check out the National Center onSexual Exploitation based in Washington, D.C. They are passionate about the work and comprehensive in their resources.

Have you heard about specific incidents of sexual exploitation in your city or town?