Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E233: The Pastor's Secret: A Decades-Long Battle for Sexual Healing w/Gene McConnell |Lila Rose Show

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E233: The Pastor's Secret: A Decades-Long Battle for Sexual Healing w/Gene McConnell |Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  I became an avid consumer almost immediately.
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  It was like a drug injected in my veins.
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  How old are you at this? Point 12th Early exposure to
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  prophy has the same impact as sexual abuse.
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  When did the addiction become something more?
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  Whether it's sex addiction, food addiction, alcoholism, there's
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  always driven by two basic things.
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  What would you say are the top three best practical resources
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  that can be used to help somebody?
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  I'm learning the most important principle or recovery in mental
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  health is so. You work now with hundreds of
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  men over the last few decades. Have you seen recovery?
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  Have you seen healed marriages? Absolutely yes.
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  Hi everyone, welcome back to the Lila Roche Show.
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  Before we get in today's episode, a quick content
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  warning. If you are listening to this
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  episode with children, this is an episode that is not
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  appropriate for kids and I recommend that you listen to
• 0:50
  this episode. Later on today's episode we ask
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  the question why? Why do people fall into porn
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  addiction? Why do people fall into cheating
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  or infidelity sometimes in their marriages?
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  And even the question of why do molesters molest?
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  Jean McConnell is the founder of Authentic Relationships
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  International, and he has worked with the LAPD and other
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  organizations to train law enforcement and experts for how
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  to rescue women and children from sex trafficking.
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  As well as to. Address the root causes as to
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  why men and even women today increasingly are consumers of
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  sexual content as well as prostitution.
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  Jean himself battled the sex addiction for years and he's
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  very open about that in this episode and share some of the
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  root causes behind what he experienced.
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  Gene also shares ultimately a story of hope and healing, so
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  make sure to watch all the way through.
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  We explore these topics at the Lila Rose show because they
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  matter because many people today are affected by the sexual chaos
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  and dysfunction in our culture. But we always want to seek to
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  understand and ultimately seek to heal and set free.
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  Also, you guys, thank you so much to the over 300,000 of you
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  who have subscribed to the show on YouTube and are listening and
• 1:58
  watching, thank you. It means the world to me.
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  I love to create this content for all of you and I hope that
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  if you are not already subscribed, make sure that you
• 2:05
  join the rest of us and subscribe.
• 2:07
  And if you're listening a podcast app, make sure to leave
• 2:10
  us five stars in a review that helps us reach.
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  More people. Jane McConnell, welcome to the
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  podcast. Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
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  Thanks for inviting me. Thank you so much for coming in.
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  I am so excited to talk to you. I think this is one of those
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  incredibly important topics that affect so many people and your
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  story's incredible. So thank you.
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  Thank you for making the time it's.
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  My pleasure. You are part of touring right
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  now, a very fascinating documentary called Buying Her
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  Very Serious Topic, and you are working with Exodus Cry and
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  other organizations I know. Can you give people a little bit
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  more about your background? Well, I mean, I, I'm, I grew up
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  in church, if you want to start kind of there.
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  I grew up as a preacher's kid, been in church more than I've
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  been anywhere else in my life. And growing up in that world was
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  very beautiful and good. I got a lot of great memories.
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  But in that world, there was very little opportunity to talk
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  about the things that I struggled with.
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  And when I was six years old, I was molested by a babysitter and
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  she was at within the church. And that was a very painful time
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  because I long for attention and affirmation and love.
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  And my parents. My dad was a contractor and a
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  pastor at the same time, so he had very little time and I was
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  hungry for attention and this babysitter gave me the time.
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  And then she began to introduce sex into our the relationship
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  over time and it she said she loved me, she liked she thought
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  I was handsome and special and she really cared.
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  And boy, that felt good. What didn't feel good was the
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  sex I felt. I felt dirty, I felt soiled, I
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  felt like damaged goods. But I couldn't talk about that
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  because I was afraid of losing what I was getting.
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  And so the dilemma of feeling treasured slash feeling shame.
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  So my first sexual experience was shame and pleasure combined.
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  At age 6. At 6/6.
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  How? How often were were you getting
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  exposed to this babysitter as a child?
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  She was next door to us, so it was quite often for several
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  years. I don't, I can't put the exact
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  numbers together on that because it seems at least for a couple
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  two or three years and and she was always nice and kind and
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  sweet. So there wasn't any threatening
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  or beating me up or it was just simply, I really care about you
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  and this is normal. And so the feelings that I had
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  or this feeling I am dirty, I am broken, I'm damaged goods.
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  And So what it did to me at that moment was as there is a place
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  of me that was now hidden, I couldn't talk about.
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  And what I mean by that is I was afraid to let anybody see that
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  part because I knew in in church circles that sex was bad and
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  quote UN quote bad, you're wrong or unhealthy.
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  And so I had this idea of sex being unhealthy.
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  And yet here I'm getting pleasure and and there's
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  something wrong with me that I would enjoy or I would I would
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  find pleasure in something that was so wrong.
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  And so a part of this was had a lot of self hatred and self
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  contempt because I mean, why would someone healthy want
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  something bad and enjoy something bad?
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  And why didn't I tell somebody? Why didn't I go to my parents?
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  Why didn't I say no to her? And all I could do was take that
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  inward. So I internalized it.
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  And I believed inside that there's a part of me that you
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  can't see. There's a part of me that if I
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  share that, I'll have a high cost.
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  And so I I began to learn to compartmentalize stuff.
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  And because at six, being molested at the age of nine, I
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  was molested by an older boy who was brought into our home and
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  his parents were going through a divorce.
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  And my parents took him in to help him and he moved into my
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  bedroom. And the whole time he was there.
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  And I don't even have the number of times.
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  It's just one kind of blurred memory of many encounters
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  sexually. How old was this boy?
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  He was six or seven years older and he represented a kind of a
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  dad figure, you know, he, we went, we skateboarded together,
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  we played ball together. He taught me how to catch, how
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  to hit. He beat up my bullies.
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  He was kind of like that, that figure him and we did everything
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  together and then he introduced sex as well.
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  And again, I don't I didn't know how to put words to what the
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  heck's just happening doing. You know, do I have this like
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  neon sign on my forehead that says here I am molest me, right,
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  Because I mean these two people, this girl and now this guy are
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  close and they're friends, but they are doing the same thing to
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  me, just male or female. And so I knew that I couldn't
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  talk about that. And the fact that I was enjoying
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  some of it, then the fact that he was giving me attention and
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  affirmation, I just internalized the whole experiences.
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  I'm bad. Did you feel close to your
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  parents during all this time? I felt close in the sense of,
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  you know, I go to church, memorize Scripture, enjoyed.
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  I would actually, even at nine years old, I was actually
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  speaking at different situations.
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  I felt close in doing projects around the house, but you know,
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  not close emotionally. And for me, I was, you know, I
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  use the word needy, like I was a needy kid, but actually I was
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  just a normal kid wanting attention, hungry for attention.
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  And there are certain people who recognize that and and then
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  abuse that and misuse that harm. Then they harm us by looking for
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  some water and they give us poison.
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  And I didn't see it at the time as it was their fault that
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  they're taking advantage of something very, very special, a
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  child. There's nothing wrong with a
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  child needing love and needing attention, or needing a hug or
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  needing time. But they gave it.
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  And when they gave it, they had a hook to it.
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  I'm so sorry, Gene. Yeah, it was.
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  It's extremely painful because any pictures that I have of that
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  six year old, I almost destroyed everything.
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  I I hated. I had self contempt for him
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  because I felt that he's dirty, he's ugly, he's no good.
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  And I couldn't look at pictures from 6 to 16.
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  It literally it was it was hard. And so I only have a few of
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  those pictures now, even now, but I that's totally a turn for
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  me now. But but back then I couldn't
• 10:00
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  I think what you're describing is every parent's worst
• 11:07
  nightmare that that this could happen to their child.
• 11:12
  And I know there's a whole world of your story we're going to get
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  to. But I want to ask you, based on
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  your experience and what you've seen from the many, many men
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  you've helped and women you've helped, do you have any
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  recommendations to parents about how they can protect their
• 11:29
  children? And any telltale signs that you
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  would say you would identify that there may be abuse
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  happening even under the parents own roof that they're unaware
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  of? I think the, the number one
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  thing is that that you be a safe person to talk to negative stuff
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  as well as positive stuff that there is time taken.
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  And I would say that my parents love me and they did it.
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  They did they worked hard to provide a good environment, but
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  they didn't know how to just sit down and let's have a
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  conversation or let's hang out. And not trying to do a sex talk,
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  but actually on an ongoing conversations about difficult
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  things and good things and being able to be safe to have
• 12:17
  conversation. Because I think the thing that
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  is most painful for a kid for me, especially when I was a kid,
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  is that I didn't have a safe space to talk.
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  And I want you to think about this, that I was in church more
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  than anybody else because I was there Sunday morning, Sunday
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  night, Wednesday night, Friday night.
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  I was there when those doors were open because I was a
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  preacher's kid. So every time I'm there and all
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  that stuff that is happening to me and I'm watching people
• 12:44
  worship, I'm hearing the words being spoken.
• 12:47
  I'm watching people go down to the altars and I in that
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  environment where it's supposed to be the, the best possible
• 12:54
  place to get your stuff on the table, I didn't feel like I
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  could. And so that the pain and the
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  shame of not having anywhere to talk about it and to carry that
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  inside is huge. It's huge.
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  It's. Devastating.
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  Yeah. And so I I don't look back and
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  go my parents were evil or they were bad or they did wrong.
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  I just see it as my parents didn't have the tools either.
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  What would it have looked like at the time for your parents to
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  have had those tools? To have regular times where we
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  just sat on, talked and, you know, conversation about what's
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  going on in your life, being more attentive.
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  And I was a performer, so I had a ton of shame on the inside.
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  And so the way I tried to overcome that shame was to be
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  really good. So I was extremely talented.
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  I was outgoing, I had a super bubbly personality.
• 13:54
  So you would never know that I was smiling on the outside,
• 13:59
  biggest party guy in the in the place.
• 14:02
  But on the inside, I was dying. And, and no language to even
• 14:07
  tell you why I'm hurting And, and you know, and then on top of
• 14:13
  that, you know, at 12, I was at a church camp.
• 14:15
  One of the most powerful moments, God moments I had at
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  that church camp was my really recommitment to walk with God
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  and to, to serve him in a big way.
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  And that the last night of camp, the boy that I had carried his
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  baseball bat for him. I'd been his buddy throughout
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  the week. He lived in the, he was staying
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  in the same cabin I was. And the last night he molested
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  me as well. And so it, it was like, wow.
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  I mean. How old was he?
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  He was 19, I was 12. So he was like a camp counselor.
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  He was like a camp counselor, but he was still a, he was
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  still, he was still a participant.
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  And he, you know, he was talent. He won all the talent contests.
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  He was the best athlete there. And everybody liked him.
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  And so I got close to him because I thought, you know, he
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  would be, you know, he would make me feel better about my own
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  self. And he was like, kind of like a
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  mentor in my mind. And then he molested me as well.
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  And it, and it just reinforced to me that depth or intimacy the
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  of, of closeness connected to sex.
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  And I don't think I could have put language to it at the time,
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  but I know, I know looking back that that is what happened.
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  And so with especially with sexual abuse, it breaks the
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  ability to have closeness. It actually twisted and turns it
• 15:45
  and it shames it. So that closeness is sexual and,
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  and it also causes deep inside confusion as to who am I because
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  there is a side of me. I want when I was in church, I
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  want to be like, I want to be. I want to be what God's calling
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  me to be. I want to have impact.
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  I want to walk in a healthy frame.
• 16:12
  And then I would get into circumstances where I would be
• 16:15
  going, Oh my gosh, I am no good. I look at this, look at this
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  part of me. Nobody knows about this.
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  And if they did, it will be the end of me.
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  And and then I would just get my guard up and then I would shut
• 16:27
  down inside and, and those are the times that I would find me
• 16:33
  going to the wrong choices. And right after that of that,
• 16:38
  that camp, I was at a my uncle's house.
• 16:42
  I don't know, he was an uncle or a cousin.
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  He was a cousin and he was an elder in the church and he led
• 16:49
  worship and did some counseling for people.
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  And I was playing army in his backyard and the shed was
• 17:00
  locked. Normally it was locked up, it
• 17:02
  was open. But normally when I would've
• 17:04
  been over there many other times and and now it's shed was never
• 17:07
  open. This time it was open.
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  And so I walked in the shed to hide.
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  And in the shed was 2 to 300 pornography magazines.
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  So my first exposure to pornography or to sexuality in a
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  visual form was there. And I kept coming back to my
• 17:31
  cousin's house over the period of years, like going through the
• 17:35
  magazines, tearing out pages, taking them to school.
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  I became an avid consumer almost immediately.
• 17:46
  It was like a drug inject into my veins and.
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  How old were you at this point? And again, how do you talk about
• 17:55
  that? Did you talk about it with
• 17:57
  anyone? No.
• 17:58
  Absolutely not no, because I saw a lot of different sermons not
• 18:08
  done by my dad. My dad was never that way, but
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  we, you know, I we were the church.
• 18:12
  We were exposed to a lot of other preachers and and topics
• 18:18
  and and and I never heard anybody talk redemptive.
• 18:21
  It was always it was always you're a scumbag or get your act
• 18:25
  together. How, how could you as a
• 18:27
  Christian, you know, and, and so it was always shaming.
• 18:32
  It was always making you feel like a worm because you actually
• 18:35
  had thoughts or you actually were consuming.
• 18:38
  And how could you be a Christian and consume at the same time?
• 18:41
  So even I was wrestling with my own, whether I was even a
• 18:45
  Christian. And so it was a really, really
• 18:50
  difficult season of life. And from 12 to 16, I would buy
• 18:54
  was an avid consumer of porn and and when I would go on dates, I
• 19:01
  would try different things based on what I was consuming and
• 19:04
  ideas. And you know the articles they
• 19:06
  say, well, you don't look at the pictures.
• 19:08
  We just read the articles where the articles are even worse, to
• 19:11
  be honest. They bring in toxic ideas of
• 19:14
  brother, sister relationship, mother, son relationship, father
• 19:18
  daughter relationship and having women who are, you know, now as
• 19:24
  a parent, no or man, no, an adult that they were 18 or
• 19:28
  older. But they were dressed like
• 19:31
  little girls. So they have Bobby socks and,
• 19:34
  you know, and pigtails and ribbons and teddy bears and all
• 19:38
  of that. So they were dressed like a
• 19:40
  little kid, but they were adults.
• 19:42
  And so it set the appetite for just just for the youth, the
• 19:49
  young. And so this, this was really
• 19:53
  beating me up because again, keep in mind, I'm in church
• 19:56
  every week and but I'm also consuming.
• 20:01
  And So what that looked like, without going into great detail,
• 20:04
  was I would run down to the altar, I'd cry out and I'd say,
• 20:07
  God, I don't want this in my life.
• 20:09
  I want this to change. And I'd make a make a
• 20:12
  commitment, Never, never do again.
• 20:15
  And then here I am again. It's two weeks later, sometimes
• 20:18
  maybe a couple days. Ultimately, I couldn't go more
• 20:22
  than a couple months and I was back at it.
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  Did anyone in your life up to that point know anything about
• 21:41
  any of this? It was a secret you kept deep
• 21:44
  down and the the people that abused you from that first
• 21:48
  sitter, that young guy who your parents had move into your home,
• 21:54
  did they ever have a conversation with you about the
• 21:56
  abuse at any point? No.
• 21:59
  So they just. Not early, no.
• 22:01
  They just sort of dropped off at some point.
• 22:03
  The guy moved out of the house. The babysitter stopped
• 22:05
  babysitting. Yeah, the babysitter stopped
• 22:07
  babysitting. We moved away.
• 22:09
  That's when that stopped. The the the boy was family
• 22:15
  member. So that happened even though it
• 22:18
  stopped at a certain age, it just stopped.
• 22:22
  There's not, it wasn't any conversation about it just
• 22:25
  stopped. And then we moved away from each
• 22:27
  other, come back around, but no conversation about it.
• 22:31
  Did you ever have a? Moment growing up in those
• 22:35
  really ages, we're looking, we're talking like 6 to maybe 18
• 22:38
  where you felt that you could even talk to God about it.
• 22:41
  You said you were crying out on the altar.
• 22:43
  I don't want to be looking at porn, but was there an internal
• 22:47
  monologue about what the events that happened to you about the
• 22:50
  pornography afterwards? Or was it more just you knew it
• 22:54
  was happening and you didn't know what to do with it and it
• 22:56
  was hurting you? The way it went for me was the I
• 23:02
  struggled with the fantasy it came out fantasy wise.
• 23:05
  So a lot of a lot of this, the wounding, instead of addressing
• 23:11
  the wounding, the the wounding got sexualized, right?
• 23:16
  So then the sexualization means it actually turns into action.
• 23:20
  It turns into fantasy, turns into thought life, you know, and
• 23:24
  you know, masturbating to those images, those images, there's a
• 23:29
  there studies out there that when we masturbate to those
• 23:33
  images, that the, that the, the, the orgasm to that image
• 23:39
  reinforces the behavior you're consuming.
• 23:42
  And even though I might say I would never do that, the, it's
• 23:47
  the, the pleasure is reinforcing that idea.
• 23:51
  And so the thing that's really difficult to even talk about,
• 23:54
  even I'm in the presence of of you as one, as a woman.
• 23:58
  So it's more it's a little difficult, but the idea of
• 24:01
  seeing material that I said I would never consume that and I
• 24:06
  would never do well, the old, the material that got me high
• 24:12
  before never works. It stops working and and it
• 24:17
  needed more deviance and needed more something that crosses a
• 24:21
  line, something to get the excitement, arousal.
• 24:25
  And then you're you're having an orgasm according to that, to
• 24:29
  that. And it it continues to escalate,
• 24:32
  continues to grow till you don't even recognize who the heck you
• 24:36
  are anymore and, and everybody on the outside is patting you on
• 24:43
  the back saying you're a great guy.
• 24:45
  Because I think I said I'm a performer.
• 24:46
  And the greater shame I had, the greater performer I became.
• 24:51
  So my performance was my way of trying to undo the shame I was
• 24:55
  carrying inside. It was a very difficult thing
• 25:01
  for me. And at 16, the probably 1 of the
• 25:10
  hardest things for me was my sister was my best friend.
• 25:17
  She's 14. I was 16.
• 25:19
  She was two years younger than me.
• 25:21
  We rode horses together, we rode bikes together.
• 25:24
  We, we, we live down the country.
• 25:27
  And so we lived a mile away from our nearest neighbor.
• 25:30
  So we, we would go to the Creek and we'd swim, we'd take hikes
• 25:33
  together. We, we go, I'll go, I'll go
• 25:36
  hiking or camping together. We, we just did like best, best
• 25:40
  friends. And then when I was 16, was
• 25:43
  dating her friends at 14 and she was dating guys my age.
• 25:48
  So it was double dates. And so we were like, like, you
• 25:52
  know, like this. And I was walking home from my
• 25:58
  wrestling practice in high school and, and as the the last
• 26:04
  mile of getting to the house, there is this car that drove by
• 26:07
  and it threw a magazine or it's actually a book, threw a book
• 26:12
  out the window into a ditch about probably 100 yards in
• 26:16
  front of me. And so I wonder what the heck
• 26:19
  they threw out. You know, I was.
• 26:21
  And so I walk up and I pick it up and it was a book that I
• 26:28
  don't even remember the title, but it was something like
• 26:30
  playing with little sis. So it was encouraging brother,
• 26:33
  sister sexual relationship and saying that this is how you
• 26:37
  learn about sex, that sisters are meant to be where you can
• 26:41
  explore and it's safe and all that.
• 26:43
  And never thought in a million years to that point, I can say
• 26:48
  with full integrity, I never had a thought about my sister.
• 26:52
  All of a sudden now reading that book made me think and made and
• 26:58
  so within a a month of that time, somewhere near I don't
• 27:03
  time is kind of a blurry, but really close to that time I had
• 27:07
  a my sister was asleep and I did some exploratory stuff with my
• 27:14
  sister while she is asleep. And to me, I mean, it just about
• 27:19
  killed me. Does she know?
• 27:28
  I talked to her later in my recovery side of it and she
• 27:32
  doesn't even remember. So she never, she doesn't.
• 27:35
  She never did. She forgive you.
• 27:37
  Yeah, but yeah, she did. And we had a great relationship
• 27:41
  on the other end of my sister's now dead of died from COVID.
• 27:45
  So we did work through this. But when I first approached it,
• 27:49
  she just said I don't remember that.
• 27:51
  And so it was, well, I still own it and I know what happened.
• 27:57
  And you know, when you're ready to have the conversation in a
• 28:02
  real way, I'm, I'm ready, but that's counseling or whatever.
• 28:07
  So I had to, I took full ownership of it.
• 28:09
  But that was later in life that I took ownership of that.
• 28:12
  But at that time it was so painful because now I see my
• 28:17
  sister in the wrong light. And so I literally had this, I
• 28:23
  would say the probably the biggest breakdown in my, in my
• 28:28
  life where I just got on my face and I just lost it before the
• 28:32
  Lord. And I just said, God, I, I've
• 28:34
  got to turn this around. I've got this.
• 28:36
  I can't continue this path. And, and keep in mind that while
• 28:43
  I was in that 13141516 year old, while I was dating and start,
• 28:48
  all the things that I was consuming was being tried in
• 28:52
  those relationships. And quite frankly, there were
• 28:56
  some, some of the girls were accepted, were recipients or
• 29:02
  they were accepted, accepted or they, they accepted some of the
• 29:05
  behavior. But for the most part, women,
• 29:08
  the girls hated it. And I and I lost relationships
• 29:11
  overnight. Couldn't understand.
• 29:13
  And this sounds really stupid as we're talking about it, but I
• 29:16
  couldn't understand. Here's a here's a magazine that
• 29:19
  says this is adult entertainment.
• 29:21
  This is how adult men and adult women treat each other.
• 29:25
  This is how we relate. And this is, this is wide open.
• 29:29
  You can buy this. This is what this is what it
• 29:31
  means to be an adult. So I want to be an adult man and
• 29:35
  I'm trying to learn how to relate with women in this
• 29:38
  framework. And so I literally thought I was
• 29:41
  operating in a healthy way in some ways because it, I know it
• 29:45
  was just too soon, but I, I know it sounds really weird, but none
• 29:54
  of it worked really. And it caused relationship after
• 29:58
  relationship after relationship to break.
• 30:02
  And, and many of the young women never told me why.
• 30:08
  And so it was always a dilemma for like, what is going on?
• 30:11
  And so to realize that that early exposure to pornography
• 30:20
  has the same impact as sexual abuse because it wounds the
• 30:24
  ability to see sex and women and men and relationships in a
• 30:29
  healthy light, It puts dirt on what is good.
• 30:34
  And so it wasn't that sex. Yeah, it's not healthy for us to
• 30:38
  have sex with each other without marriage.
• 30:40
  But it wasn't the sex is the issue.
• 30:42
  It was the toxic belief system, the toxic tools, the toxic
• 30:47
  ideas, fantasies, trying to come into a relationship.
• 30:51
  So it was it was destructive. And the ones that were more
• 30:56
  receptive actually learned later that their background had sexual
• 31:02
  abuse and they were already, their walls were already broken
• 31:06
  down sexually. So it was more of a norm for
• 31:09
  them and so. Were these, when you're talking
• 31:14
  about this disconnect in the women that you're dating and
• 31:17
  getting to know, is it because you're saying the porn was
• 31:19
  training you in these deviant and sexually destructive
• 31:23
  behaviors that the porn sort of was saying, this is play, this
• 31:26
  is fun, this is normal? And so you're bringing that into
• 31:29
  these relationships and these girls would freak out or if the
• 31:32
  girls were wounded themselves, they would engage.
• 31:34
  But it was just broken all around.
• 31:36
  And this, this really took on the whole nature of the
• 31:38
  relationship. Was this, was this undertone
• 31:41
  right? Right.
• 31:43
  And I mean, there was articles in the magazines that says, you
• 31:47
  know, 1212 steps to getting in a girl's pants and the idea that
• 31:52
  it being in a girl's pants was a home run.
• 31:55
  Then they had all these different like what base did you
• 31:57
  get on by based on the different steps that you took?
• 32:00
  And there was article after article after article that it's
• 32:03
  normal for the man to pursue the girl and then the this is how
• 32:06
  the girl's supposed to respond. So there there was an
• 32:10
  indoctrination of what is supposed to be healthy, but it
• 32:15
  is not. And but if the young boy growing
• 32:19
  up who hasn't had conversation, yeah, I know that we're supposed
• 32:23
  to wait, but it don't have any information around what a sex is
• 32:28
  about. And everything that I'm seeing
• 32:30
  in sex, in this material looks alluring and exciting.
• 32:34
  And look at the smiles and everything is glossy and
• 32:38
  glamorous. So it looks like a life that I'm
• 32:41
  not having now. And I want that.
• 32:43
  But I don't understand when I try to apply it, why it's not
• 32:47
  working. And so it must be me.
• 32:50
  And it goes right back to the shame aspect, right?
• 32:53
  It must be me. When you say those are articles
• 32:55
  you were reading, were do you not remember the names of the
• 32:59
  publications? Well, Playboy was the biggest 1
• 33:02
  Playboy, I mean countless. I mean, I look back now over the
• 33:07
  years that I've worked with LAPD for years when I moved into the
• 33:12
  anti trafficking and pornography world.
• 33:14
  So I, I traveled with LAPD and we did, we spoke in schools, I
• 33:19
  spoke in colleges. We've done workshops for law
• 33:22
  enforcement officers. We did a lot of work in the anti
• 33:24
  pornography world, teaching how pornography is harmful.
• 33:28
  And LA has the biggest hat. I don't know where they are
• 33:31
  today had the biggest stash of porn because they, they had, you
• 33:36
  know, porn, 85% of all porn is made in LA.
• 33:39
  So they had the biggest responsibility to go through the
• 33:43
  magazines, see what's illegal, what's not.
• 33:45
  And so when I started working with them, they gave literally,
• 33:49
  I had every copy of Playboy from the beginning to the, to the
• 33:53
  time. And, and I did it with a group
• 33:55
  of people and we just literally could see, I mean, as you start
• 33:59
  going back through it as an adult now and you're going, Oh
• 34:02
  my gosh, I can't believe, you know, I can't believe they did
• 34:05
  this. And they're, they do it with the
• 34:07
  subtle, subtlety of, you know, like I said before, a Girl
• 34:10
  Scout, you know, she dresses like a Girl Scout.
• 34:13
  She's an adult. Well, supposedly she's an adult,
• 34:16
  but she's an adult. But she's dressed like a little
• 34:18
  girl. And so why would you dress a
• 34:21
  woman like a little girl unless there's an appetite for that?
• 34:24
  And so the idea is a little boy growing up and he's learning.
• 34:30
  Pornography is your education, and it's supposed to be men's
• 34:33
  entertainment. This is what I'm This is what's
• 34:36
  supposed to teach me how to be a good man in the world.
• 34:40
  Excuse me. It's baloney, it's toxic, it's
• 34:43
  destructive. You apply any of those
• 34:45
  principles to real relationship and you're destroying them.
• 34:49
  And yet I couldn't see that as a kid because this is supposed to
• 34:52
  be adult. So I was thinking I'm just doing
• 34:55
  it wrong. And so I would double down
• 34:59
  rather than step back. Was there anyone up until, let's
• 35:03
  say, 18 years old that asked you, well, let's get into your
• 35:06
  20s so I know we're going to get into the story of you getting
• 35:09
  married, but that asked you point blank, Gene, are you
• 35:12
  looking at pornography? You know, what's funny is that
• 35:19
  most I I I was the men's pastor for several different churches
• 35:25
  over the years. And the typical typical men
• 35:29
  questions are, are you are you struggling with, are you
• 35:34
  struggling with your thought life?
• 35:36
  And so in the most open of guys would say, well, yeah, I am once
• 35:44
  in a while, but I've got that underhand, but no one would say,
• 35:48
  So what does that look like? No one would actually ask the
• 35:52
  question that goes deeper because I think that most men
• 35:55
  are afraid to have the conversation because if they
• 35:57
  have the conversation, then they'd have to talk about their
• 36:00
  own. And so therefore we keep it at
• 36:03
  thought life. Like, yeah, I'm struggling with
• 36:05
  my fantasy or no, we don't. We very, very few.
• 36:09
  But I'm just curious if someone had asked you, and again, it's
• 36:11
  hard to know going back in time like this, but said to you,
• 36:14
  Gene, like a close friend or even your own dad, are you
• 36:17
  looking at porn? Would you just lie through your
• 36:18
  teeth or you said yeah, I I'm really struggling, What do you
• 36:21
  think? No, I would never tell anybody I
• 36:22
  was looking at porn. No, the only person you know, I
• 36:25
  look back on it. There's one time in high school
• 36:30
  that a coach caught me distributing porn to, you know,
• 36:35
  I'd take Playboy and I'd tear out the pages and then I'd sell
• 36:39
  them to different ones. So I was making money doing
• 36:41
  that. And so my caught my people, my,
• 36:44
  my, my friends knew that I was doing that.
• 36:47
  But my coach caught it and and he had a really strong
• 36:52
  conversation with me about that. This isn't cool.
• 36:57
  And it was, and he was not mean, but it was still kind of like
• 37:04
  just don't do it. He didn't really give any good
• 37:06
  tools or talk about it or it just was bad.
• 37:11
  And so I just learned to hide it.
• 37:13
  So being confronted, I just did it more secretly.
• 37:16
  It didn't confront with Gene. What's going on inside of you?
• 37:19
  Why are you drawn to this? Why are you consuming this dude?
• 37:22
  This is not a good thing. It was just don't do this.
• 37:25
  And so that just kind of like slapped me on the hand.
• 37:28
  OK, I'll just do it secretly. I'll just do it more privately.
• 37:32
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  Use the code Lila. When did the porn addiction
• 38:36
  become something more? So it's 16.
• 38:41
  I went to Bible college after that event.
• 38:44
  I said, God, I'm serious. So I mean, I'm going to stop
• 38:47
  this. That's not going to do this
• 38:49
  anymore. And I'm with your sister.
• 38:51
  You left the house at that point.
• 38:53
  No, I just said I'm just, I made a commitment that I was going to
• 38:55
  serve God. And so I within the next several
• 38:59
  months, the opportunity for college came and I chose to do
• 39:03
  that as a, a way of demonstrating that I meant
• 39:06
  business. And so when I went at the Bible
• 39:09
  college, literally nothing that I didn't touch it.
• 39:12
  And I went from 16 to 21 literally sober with no touching
• 39:17
  it and. When you say no touching it, you
• 39:21
  mean no pornography? No pornography?
• 39:22
  And what about your relationships?
• 39:24
  Were they generally chased or chase?
• 39:26
  Wow, totally stopped, but I didn't know what I was just it
• 39:30
  was basically it was just cutting off the branch, right?
• 39:33
  It's just it wasn't really stopping it.
• 39:35
  It just because the only difference was as I was
• 39:37
  consuming. No, I'm not and thinking that
• 39:40
  somehow I can just stop this without dealing with what's
• 39:43
  driving it. And this is the typical
• 39:46
  Christian approach to the pornography.
• 39:50
  And even in recovery, as they're wanting to know how long have
• 39:54
  you been sober and what they mean by that and how long you've
• 39:57
  been not been using it. They want to know about the
• 39:59
  product. They want to know how long have
• 40:01
  you not been consuming. And that's like asking about the
• 40:05
  fruit. The fruit is there because
• 40:07
  there's roots, there's a source to it, but we don't really get
• 40:10
  to the sources. We only just say cut the branch
• 40:13
  off. Let's just stop that.
• 40:15
  And so the typical approach is. You know, you just don't go
• 40:18
  there anymore. You don't go to the websites
• 40:21
  anymore. You don't run with those people
• 40:22
  anymore. You don't buy that magazine
• 40:24
  anymore. You don't look at those things
• 40:26
  and thinking that that is sober. But true sobriety has nothing to
• 40:31
  do with product. True, true sobriety has to do
• 40:34
  with what drives it. We'll get into that a little bit
• 40:36
  later. So for me, it it was 16.
• 40:39
  I was, I was clean stopped 21 that time.
• 40:44
  And so met my first wife in Bible college and we got married
• 40:51
  at 20. I was 20 when we got married.
• 40:57
  And then the thing that started this thing to go crazy was when
• 41:05
  my wife was 6, my ex-wife was six months pregnant.
• 41:10
  She began, she began to wake up in the middle of the night
• 41:14
  screaming and crying, sweating in a be a fetal ball position.
• 41:20
  And I tried to touch her and she just, she pushed me away, tried
• 41:24
  to comfort her and she wouldn't let me get close.
• 41:27
  And and I'm trying to have a conversation like what's going
• 41:31
  on? And I would come up to her.
• 41:35
  She would be washing dishes. I'd come and give her a kiss on
• 41:37
  the neck and she'd pushed, she'd wipe it off, kiss her in the
• 41:40
  lips, she'd wipe it off. She would, if I come up and give
• 41:42
  her a hug, she would stiffen up. And so I don't know what I did.
• 41:47
  I'm thinking at the moment the time I didn't know what I did.
• 41:50
  And inside it went right back to see.
• 41:52
  She sees something. She sees something about me that
• 41:55
  that dirty little boy. She sees that mess inside.
• 41:58
  Somehow I don't know that person that doesn't deserve love.
• 42:03
  And so I reacted big time inside.
• 42:06
  And so I the way I reacted was now I'm of age and I walk into a
• 42:13
  sexually oriented bookstore for the first time.
• 42:16
  Now, was she going through like a psychosis of some kind because
• 42:19
  she's dealing with some issues? Because it sounds like it the I
• 42:23
  want to get to what how you responded, but for her, what was
• 42:27
  driving these sudden emotional reactions that she was having?
• 42:30
  The baby, the six months of her being pregnant, the baby moving
• 42:34
  inside triggered her own childhood sexual abuse.
• 42:38
  And so as early as she can remember now, we didn't know
• 42:42
  this. This was not in anything in our
• 42:46
  conversations. Or neither of you had disclosed
• 42:48
  that you were both sexually abused as children.
• 42:50
  No, we didn't even think that was the worst conversation to
• 42:52
  have. I mean, do what it, but she just
• 42:56
  was reacting out of her memories were coming out of the the baby
• 43:01
  movement and but she didn't tell me that.
• 43:03
  She didn't tell me that I'm having nightmares or I'm having
• 43:07
  a reaction. She just shut me out completely
• 43:10
  shut me out and my way of reacting.
• 43:13
  It was saying, well, if you're not going to love me, if you're
• 43:17
  not going to let me love you, that I have quote UN quote, sex
• 43:22
  is a need. I have every right to get that
• 43:25
  need met in in my mind at the time.
• 43:27
  That's wrong. That's false, but in the
• 43:29
  thinking then as a sexist in need.
• 43:32
  And if you're not going to meet it and I've committed to this
• 43:34
  relationship and I can't go outside of it by by with you,
• 43:38
  I'm going to violate it if I do. But if you're not going to meet
• 43:41
  my needs, what do I do? And so I chose to go to this
• 43:44
  club or this bookstore. And your wife, she'd been
• 43:48
  sexually abused as a as a little girl, that sounds like, but she
• 43:51
  had never disclosed this to you. You would never disclosed and to
• 43:53
  this point sounds like you would never disclosed your sexual
• 43:56
  being abused to anyone. No fact, I had so shut that down
• 44:03
  that I didn't even think that had any relevance.
• 44:06
  So who wants to talk about something that happened a long
• 44:09
  time ago? You know, I'm I don't, I just
• 44:13
  didn't see it as important. But when she started reacting,
• 44:19
  the we, we decided to get her into some counseling.
• 44:21
  And then that's when we became real about her own story, which
• 44:26
  I can't, I don't want to tell that story, but it, it was
• 44:29
  profound. It was traumatic and
• 44:32
  unbelievable. And, but I'm, I'm still in this
• 44:36
  mindset that sex is a need. And I don't care what you've
• 44:40
  gone through. You should be meeting my needs
• 44:43
  as a, as a, as a man. And if you're not willing to do
• 44:47
  that, then I have the right and like, I need to eat food, I need
• 44:50
  to drink water, I need to get air.
• 44:53
  I have a right to take care of my own needs.
• 44:54
  That was my thinking. Who taught you that?
• 44:57
  I think that's the pornography. That certainly isn't my parents.
• 45:01
  My parents had a whole different view of that.
• 45:04
  You know, they didn't think that way.
• 45:06
  They didn't have that kind of thoughts.
• 45:07
  So you were chased up until getting married, it sounded like
• 45:10
  and like you said, and you didn't weren't using porn.
• 45:12
  You get married and then it kind of reactivated.
• 45:14
  Oh, sex. Now I can have it within the
• 45:17
  Christian realm because I'm married, but that reactivation
• 45:20
  didn't come with healing or any sort of like clarity on who, how
• 45:26
  Jean was behaving before. And so when you and your wife
• 45:29
  were no longer being intimate because she had her trauma,
• 45:32
  you're just thinking, I'm going to go right back to it.
• 45:34
  Well, it was just like white knuckling it.
• 45:36
  I'm, I'm when at 16, I just kind of hold my breath.
• 45:41
  It's like, so I stopped it, but I did nothing to to to arrest
• 45:45
  what was going on. And I had no clue, you know, and
• 45:48
  I had no place that I felt safe to do that to even look.
• 45:52
  So I thought just change the behavior just change.
• 45:55
  And so I did. But it when I when, when all of
• 45:59
  this pressure came on and the relationship was sucky in that
• 46:05
  moment, I went right back to where I left off.
• 46:10
  And when I walked in that club, it was the most, I was so mad at
• 46:17
  myself for walking in there because it was the most
• 46:20
  disgusting material on the wall, beyond anything I'd ever seen
• 46:24
  before. And I was just disgusted by it.
• 46:29
  And I turned right around and I walked out and I said I'll never
• 46:33
  go back, which was the beginning of going back again and again
• 46:37
  and again. And each time I went back a
• 46:41
  little more involved. Was this a strip club?
• 46:45
  No, this was a this was an adult bookstore.
• 46:49
  So, and I don't want to get too much into the adult bookstore,
• 46:52
  but I will say this, that, that there are what they call glory
• 46:55
  holes. And the glory holes are you go
• 47:00
  into a booth and there's a hole where someone puts their anatomy
• 47:03
  through the hole. And then you have anonymous sex
• 47:06
  with someone you don't even know while you're watching live or
• 47:10
  not live movies. And, and so I thought that was
• 47:15
  disgusting. And then eventually that I, I
• 47:19
  had a couple encounters at the end of that or in a finally, I
• 47:24
  just, you know, we moved, thank God we moved away from there
• 47:27
  because that was going downhill fast for me.
• 47:30
  And all of This is why I'm now I'm leading men's, I'm a men's
• 47:36
  pastor and I'm a youth pastor. And so all of this is happening
• 47:42
  with Sunday and Wednesdays and Friday nights.
• 47:46
  But then what am I doing? And when I and I, and it just
• 47:53
  began to grow. I mean, at this thing and I
• 47:55
  never talked about it. So I'm sitting there as I'm
• 47:57
  speaking in front of people, I'm leading and I'm thinking, Gene,
• 48:01
  and what would they do if they knew what you were doing, You
• 48:06
  know, Saturday night, what were you doing?
• 48:09
  You know, going to the club? And so this, this dilemma of,
• 48:15
  man, if I talk, this is the end of me.
• 48:19
  And so more stuff goes down into that closet that all that other
• 48:23
  stuff was there unaddressed. And then I would repent and I'd
• 48:27
  say I'm not doing it anymore and mean it.
• 48:30
  But there was just a matter of time.
• 48:31
  And there I was back again and again, from 21 to 29.
• 48:37
  It was this season where I was out of control.
• 48:42
  It grew and grew and grew. Your wife had no idea.
• 48:47
  No idea. Were you distant from her?
• 48:50
  Did she? Have an Oh, yeah.
• 48:51
  Well, she knew that there was something wrong because there
• 48:53
  was no intimacy. No, what?
• 48:55
  I mean intimacy. I'm not talking about sex.
• 48:57
  Sex happened, but it was more about me having an orgasm than
• 49:00
  her. It was about me getting what I
• 49:02
  want and bring her. And so that there was no
• 49:06
  connection. There was no real depth.
• 49:10
  You know, I, yeah, it's, it's such a painful place because
• 49:15
  when I, when I think back of she's when she was going, you
• 49:21
  know, that's very typical for a sex abuse survivor to have the
• 49:29
  body carry all of that, right. So for her, it was chronic
• 49:33
  headaches that you couldn't even, you had to turn all the
• 49:36
  lights out, close all the doors, no noise whatsoever.
• 49:40
  And for her to and literally would leave her for hours to get
• 49:43
  over it, right. But because I believed that
• 49:47
  sexual was my need and we would go long periods of time where
• 49:52
  she wouldn't, so I would. I remember in one particular,
• 49:56
  she was in one of those headache modes and I wanted sex.
• 50:00
  That's how disconnected I'd gotten and it's it, it even
• 50:05
  hurt. I mean, it just causes my my
• 50:07
  skin to crawl when I think that I was had gone to that level of
• 50:12
  depravity and thinking. And so this was destroying me
• 50:19
  and it was destroying my wife, ex-wife now and my children.
• 50:24
  And what I didn't recognize is that when someone is in any
• 50:29
  addiction, that you're emotionally taken from the
• 50:33
  moment. So every child of an addictive
• 50:37
  home feels alone, isolated, unloved, unnurtured, even though
• 50:43
  the parent may be in the room. So I was there, but I wasn't
• 50:47
  there. And yeah, it I'll get into a
• 51:00
  little bit more of that in a minute, but that so at 29, I was
• 51:08
  my wife and I had had a bump for if we had an argument and I just
• 51:14
  decided I was going to take a drive and go to the gym and work
• 51:17
  out. And so I went to the racquetball
• 51:20
  court to play racquetball and it was about 7 o'clock 8:00 at
• 51:26
  night and in the parking lot was dark and it was pretty empty,
• 51:30
  wasn't a lot of people. And so I parked in the back of
• 51:34
  the parking lot and this woman walks by as I was parking and
• 51:43
  inside something just snapped and said, this is the
• 51:47
  opportunity that you, all these fantasies that you've had that
• 51:51
  you've kind of stuffed down and put down here.
• 51:55
  It is right in front of you. And so I followed her to her car
• 52:01
  and she opened the door to get in.
• 52:04
  And I asked her, I think it was where Walmart is.
• 52:07
  I can't remember where, but I asked her a question about a
• 52:09
  location of something. And she, she told me.
• 52:12
  And as she was getting in her car, I forced my way in the car
• 52:18
  and put my hands around her throat with a full intent to
• 52:21
  rape. And that she was she, she was
• 52:25
  obviously scared and she asked me what my intent was.
• 52:31
  And I told her. And when I told her the fear in
• 52:38
  her eyes there it was just like her eyes went to these like
• 52:41
  large baseballs. It's like she you could pure
• 52:44
  fear game. And it was like somebody just
• 52:48
  walked up and hit me across the face and said, hello, wake up,
• 52:50
  dude, what are you doing? You're about to destroy another
• 52:53
  human being's life. This is what are you doing?
• 52:56
  And it's and I, I sat there for a moment and froze.
• 53:01
  And I realized that this fantasy stuff, which I would have never
• 53:10
  in a million years thought that I would ever take it to that
• 53:13
  level. But then the fantasy side had
• 53:16
  taken it all the way through and masturbated to it and had all
• 53:20
  these sexual highs to it, but never thought about it actually
• 53:24
  becoming something of real reality.
• 53:26
  Here I am in that car and I just, I couldn't hear fear in
• 53:31
  her eyes. Just it woke me up.
• 53:33
  It's like somebody just hit me and said, Gene, what are you
• 53:37
  doing? And I said, excuse me, I've made
• 53:40
  a serious mistake. And I, I, I let her go and I got
• 53:47
  out of the car and I start walking to my house in a daze.
• 53:50
  I was, I just couldn't believe that I just done that.
• 53:54
  And I've done nothing but forced my wing in the car, which was
• 53:57
  more than enough to cause a great deal of pain and shame.
• 54:01
  And so I walked to my own car. She drove by and got my license
• 54:06
  plate. She turned me in.
• 54:08
  And that was 20 when I was 29. So up until this point, had you
• 54:13
  been seeing prostitutes? Yes.
• 54:15
  And so and, and, and had you been kind of acting out violent
• 54:19
  sexual things? So this was the first kind of
• 54:21
  time where violence and sex was you.
• 54:24
  You had maybe you could say force yourself on your own wife
• 54:27
  and even her times of of ill health.
• 54:29
  And that was a form of not like aggressive.
• 54:32
  I mean, I wasn't, you know, we're not going to, I won't
• 54:35
  characterize it without knowing how you would characterize it,
• 54:37
  but. Characterizing it right, it was
• 54:39
  aggressive. And so, so you'd had those
• 54:41
  experiences with your wife, but this was the first time you were
• 54:43
  having them with another person that was not your wife.
• 54:46
  And so when you when she turned you in, did you when you got
• 54:50
  back into that car, did you just hope I'm in a bad dream, this
• 54:53
  didn't happen and try to go home and just forget about it?
• 54:55
  And then she, the cops showed up at the door.
• 54:57
  What happened next? Well, I, I mean, it was one of
• 54:59
  those moments where it just, it was, I mean, I felt so much
• 55:03
  shame and, and was confused as to how I could have ever, I
• 55:08
  mean, how could I have even, how could I have even gotten there?
• 55:13
  How could I have stepped into that world?
• 55:17
  And so I was very, I was dazed. So I drove to the house and I, I
• 55:23
  knew that I needed to tell my wife.
• 55:26
  And so I said, I said, I need to talk to you.
• 55:29
  And so I told her what happened right away.
• 55:33
  And as I was finishing telling her, the police came, came in,
• 55:37
  came up to the front door. So they arrested me.
• 55:41
  And so I spent time in jail that night.
• 55:44
  And then they, they, we had to go through court system and all
• 55:47
  that stuff. And then it took a year for that
• 55:51
  to all happen. And then I was, you know, went
• 55:54
  to jail for, I thought it was going to be 6 to 9 years in
• 55:57
  prison. And I ended up because of my
• 56:00
  first offense and there was no sexual, there was nothing other
• 56:04
  than forcing my way. So they caused the aggravated
• 56:06
  assault, which to me, I think I got it off too easy, honest, you
• 56:14
  know, but back then I was just looking to, to get out of this.
• 56:17
  But it the the impact was the the the law enforcement and the
• 56:23
  prison jail system. This is in.
• 56:27
  LA That didn't hit me as hard as what happened in church.
• 56:33
  So the church put me in front of 12 elders and they literally,
• 56:38
  I'd call it the hall of shame, they just literally beat the
• 56:42
  heck out of me. Truthfully, everything
• 56:45
  accusational I get, you know, I get the fact that that I lied.
• 56:51
  I was deceptive, I was hiding. It was, it was betrayal to the
• 56:57
  little people who have trusted me.
• 56:58
  I get all that. But there was no redemptive
• 57:02
  framework at all. They made me speak in front of
• 57:06
  two search Sunday morning services.
• 57:09
  So it was just horrific. And then I was they they told
• 57:16
  the church not to contact me, not to get together with me, not
• 57:18
  to do anything with me. And I was not to contact them.
• 57:21
  So literally all those people that were friends or now not and
• 57:29
  I just. Did during those conversations
• 57:32
  with the elders, did anything arise to them about your former
• 57:38
  porn use or the sexual abuse of your childhood?
• 57:41
  Again, I'm not saying that obviously someone's sexual abuse
• 57:44
  in their childhood justifies them attempting rape or
• 57:48
  beginning the attempt of rape. Of course not.
• 57:50
  But I'm curious if that was part of any of the conversations,
• 57:54
  like your background. Everything that they were asking
• 57:57
  was meant to have information to chop my head off.
• 58:01
  So I was not going to give them anything more than what they
• 58:04
  knew. I was determined.
• 58:06
  I was not open in that room. I I knew that I was to my
• 58:10
  deficit if I brought anything on the table other than the.
• 58:14
  Why do you why do you say that? Because of the way they were
• 58:16
  attacking me in the moment. I mean, they were mad at me,
• 58:20
  they were angry at me, they were telling me I was a scumbag, I
• 58:24
  was a pervert, I was a wolf in sheaf clothing.
• 58:27
  So there's a lot of that kind of framework going and none of it
• 58:30
  was how can we help you? How can we support you?
• 58:33
  The only thing that they did do was they said that we will have
• 58:38
  an elder meet with you once a month just to stay in touch with
• 58:43
  you. And and then they did a nice
• 58:46
  little sermon about prodigal son.
• 58:49
  Prodigal son. Yeah.
• 58:52
  And so the sermon was really good, but it but I was just
• 58:55
  pretty much alienated. And the guy that I was supposed
• 58:58
  to see, he he met with me once out of six months and they found
• 59:04
  out that he was in his own stuff.
• 59:07
  And so I never really got any really help there.
• 59:11
  And I swore that I would never go back to a church.
• 59:13
  And the rest, I mean, I was done.
• 59:15
  Did looking back, I, I need to ask about your family too, but I
• 59:18
  just on the church front, looking back on it and and of
• 59:22
  course, you know, you've been through this healing process.
• 59:24
  We're going to talk about in this ministry you have now.
• 59:26
  What do you think they should have done?
• 59:28
  What's the proper response when a when a pastor falls and
• 59:32
  dramatically so in your case, because it wasn't there's a
• 59:35
  pastor fall, he's cheating on his wife, right.
• 59:37
  That's a common one, right, But the pastor falls in this very
• 59:41
  unusual. He potentially would have raped
• 59:43
  a woman and a bargain like a random woman random happened
• 59:46
  since first offense. That's a that's a very like I
• 59:49
  can see the church being like, what are we dealing with?
• 59:52
  This is scary. What?
• 59:54
  What do you think they should have done?
• 59:56
  Well, you, you don't alleviate the consequences.
• 1:00:00
  So I didn't need for them to say, oh, don't worry about it,
• 1:00:03
  it's OK, we love you. I didn't need that.
• 1:00:06
  I didn't need for them to give me a pity party.
• 1:00:08
  What I wanted was someone to say.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah, you did wrong. I've got, we got you though.
• 1:00:15
  We're going to work through this with you.
• 1:00:17
  And here's what we want you to do.
• 1:00:18
  We're going to do, we're going to set up some counseling and
• 1:00:22
  that we're going to have some groups for you to get involved.
• 1:00:25
  We're going to set up some and we're going to have some
• 1:00:27
  accountability going on for you. And we're going to help you walk
• 1:00:30
  through this restorative process and that at some point that we
• 1:00:35
  want to see you back in the congregation, actually least
• 1:00:39
  being a part of the congregation in a healthy frame and that
• 1:00:42
  people can see your recovery and the people can see the change.
• 1:00:46
  But we want you to have limited access right now to a lot of the
• 1:00:50
  people. And we want you to just kind of
• 1:00:52
  stay within the group of people that we're going to give you so
• 1:00:55
  that you can actually deal and work through the stuff.
• 1:00:58
  And so we're keeping it safe for the congregation.
• 1:01:00
  So we're keep, we're not using some stupidity here that and if
• 1:01:04
  it was a, if I was a molesting a child and I would need to go, I
• 1:01:08
  would have even a bigger protective bubble around me.
• 1:01:14
  And that protective bubble wouldn't mean that I'm in the
• 1:01:16
  same congregation as the child. So that means that maybe I might
• 1:01:20
  have to go to a sister church or to someone that they can trust
• 1:01:23
  that. And, and, and sorry to
• 1:01:24
  interrupt, but you're saying this is after jail time, you're
• 1:01:26
  saying? Well, there's a year before
• 1:01:29
  jail. Right.
• 1:01:31
  But so for example, if someone, God forbid, abuses a child,
• 1:01:34
  right, and they're part of a church and horribly this
• 1:01:37
  happens, right? Are you saying in that situation
• 1:01:40
  it's like, well, you don't, you can go to this church because
• 1:01:42
  the kid you abuse is here, but you can go to this other church
• 1:01:45
  because there's other kids? Saying no, no what?
• 1:01:47
  I'm what I mean by that. Thank you for clarifying is that
• 1:01:50
  they would be I want them in small group and that means
• 1:01:54
  healthy individuals surrounding them.
• 1:01:56
  I want them in a a mentoring relationship.
• 1:01:59
  I want them in a counseling framework.
• 1:02:01
  And maybe that it's severe enough that maybe we get him
• 1:02:05
  into a 90 day treatment program or a six month treatment
• 1:02:08
  program. But they never get back into the
• 1:02:12
  church that they were, that they offended until they he's worked
• 1:02:16
  through it with the parents. And then if, if that child feels
• 1:02:20
  safe to have a conversation with a letter to him or whatever,
• 1:02:25
  that there's a need for possible restoration.
• 1:02:29
  And it doesn't mean restoration with a child.
• 1:02:31
  It just means that the he's willing to hear what the child
• 1:02:35
  has to say and what the parents have to say.
• 1:02:38
  So it's impact statements from the victims and then the impact
• 1:02:42
  statement and recovery looks like what the congregation felt
• 1:02:46
  those who had trusted and what the leaders would say if they
• 1:02:50
  how they were impacted. So if I really want to recover,
• 1:02:54
  you can't protect me from the impact.
• 1:02:57
  If I'm truly going to recover, I got to know what my actions cost
• 1:03:00
  you. I think in the case of a a
• 1:03:02
  sexual abuse situation with a child though, you got to go to
• 1:03:05
  jail. Yeah, well, there's no doubt.
• 1:03:06
  There's no like talking to the parents and the family.
• 1:03:08
  Or, well, there will be at some point.
• 1:03:10
  But you mean after jail? Yeah, After jail, Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  But even if you don't, even if you're in jail for the rest of
• 1:03:15
  your life, even let's just say you your offences, there's 20
• 1:03:19
  kids in that in the congregation that you've harmed.
• 1:03:22
  You're going to be in jail for the rest of your life.
• 1:03:24
  But there's still, if you're looking at recovering, whether
• 1:03:27
  you're in jail or not, you still have to to restore and heal
• 1:03:31
  yourself. And so having impact statements
• 1:03:35
  like letters written, meeting with the parents or never
• 1:03:39
  meeting with a child, that's not necessary because a child should
• 1:03:42
  not have to be to be put under that again.
• 1:03:44
  But the idea of having there be the impact of what my actions
• 1:03:50
  cost, because what we tend to do is we want to restore somebody
• 1:03:54
  without having them ever face the consequences.
• 1:03:58
  Not the consequences of their actions, yes, but that's not all
• 1:04:02
  the consequences of what it how it hurt the other person, the
• 1:04:06
  other people and. You mean in the church?
• 1:04:08
  Church or anyone else? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:11
  Well, I think about a, a case that I know of where the
• 1:04:13
  grandfather was abusing the daughter, the granddaughter, and
• 1:04:18
  you know, for years horribly, and he did not end up facing any
• 1:04:23
  jail time, statute of limitations I think had passed
• 1:04:26
  and the abuse didn't come out till decades later.
• 1:04:29
  And then there was this kind of roundup where everyone talked to
• 1:04:32
  each other about it, but it was like there was no justice done.
• 1:04:35
  And I think that's what is so concerning for people today, is
• 1:04:39
  like, if you don't have justice, how can we really be protecting
• 1:04:42
  victims? Well, not only protecting, but
• 1:04:44
  how does your how does the child learn that that was not them,
• 1:04:48
  but the person who did it? And the the the justice done
• 1:04:52
  helps the child separate out that this wasn't their fault,
• 1:04:56
  this was punishable by law, this was illegal.
• 1:05:00
  This was wrong. This is what the offender did
• 1:05:03
  and they took advantage of my innocence.
• 1:05:05
  So it's a help. It's a big help for the IT isn't
• 1:05:07
  the only thing, but it helps the child make it separate out.
• 1:05:12
  Is this really me or not right? And so by when we just say, oh,
• 1:05:16
  it's OK then or you know, it's wrong, but we're just going to
• 1:05:20
  move on. We're just setting the child up
• 1:05:23
  to not know the difference between right and wrong.
• 1:05:26
  And so then they get in relationships, typically get in
• 1:05:28
  relationships with men who do the same thing.
• 1:05:32
  They abuse them, it hurt them, they mishandle them, and they
• 1:05:36
  just say, well, it's okay. So they learn that it's okay to
• 1:05:41
  be harmed by others in the name of loving.
• 1:05:45
  It's like they become a Jesus doorman right to in the name of
• 1:05:49
  and it's wrong. It's it's, it's in, it's just
• 1:05:51
  not healthy. How did your wife respond to you
• 1:05:55
  when you told her that you had almost attempted rape?
• 1:05:59
  It blew her away and it took us. We went to counseling, we did
• 1:06:05
  some treatment program stuff, but she never really recovered
• 1:06:10
  from it. And, and truthfully, when I was
• 1:06:15
  trying to figure out how to heal, I wasn't the best of the
• 1:06:19
  best. I still, there was not any
• 1:06:21
  really good help out there, to be honest.
• 1:06:23
  And so I was trying different things.
• 1:06:25
  I mean, there was Christian groups that were, you know,
• 1:06:28
  casting demons in the Dixie cups and you know, you spit in the
• 1:06:31
  Dixie cup and it's in you, you're being delivered and you
• 1:06:35
  know, crap like that. Excuse me, the language, but it
• 1:06:38
  is just terrible ideas of, you know, just memorize Scripture
• 1:06:42
  and you can't have those kind of thoughts at the same time in the
• 1:06:45
  same head baloney. You know, just there was using
• 1:06:50
  spiritual disciplines as a way to solve the issue and it's
• 1:06:54
  spiritual disciplines are absolutely essential for your
• 1:06:57
  health and life. Wrong application to the
• 1:07:00
  addiction. And so the learning, you know
• 1:07:02
  what it means to help someone actually change and heal.
• 1:07:06
  So I was going to counselors that were saying this is who you
• 1:07:09
  are. You just accept it that you're
• 1:07:11
  once offender, always an offender.
• 1:07:14
  So unless you admit that you're an offender or that you're a sex
• 1:07:17
  addict and always a sex addict, then you are walking in denial
• 1:07:21
  and you're never going to recover.
• 1:07:23
  So there's hopelessness put within the whole frame of what
• 1:07:26
  it means to recover. One side wants to give you
• 1:07:28
  freedom with no consequences, real or little consequences, and
• 1:07:32
  the other side just calling you that this is who you are.
• 1:07:35
  You can't change. You never will change.
• 1:07:36
  All you can do is modify. And so it's like once an
• 1:07:40
  offender, always an offender. So there was no real help.
• 1:07:43
  So I committed myself that I was going to learn.
• 1:07:46
  I'm going to get through this somehow and I'm going to learn.
• 1:07:49
  And when I learn, I'm going to develop my own stuff.
• 1:07:51
  I'm going to help people. So, so you, you didn't you, you,
• 1:07:55
  you knew that there had to be some kind of a consequence.
• 1:07:57
  You knew that I mean, you were in prison for a month basically
• 1:08:01
  and then they let you out on good behavior, it sounds like.
• 1:08:04
  But then you didn't want to have this identity of sex addict, sex
• 1:08:08
  offender. You wanted to be free.
• 1:08:12
  And so but there are no resources that you could find
• 1:08:15
  that word, that word guiding on this path.
• 1:08:16
  And then meanwhile, your wife is just fed up.
• 1:08:19
  I mean, she's just like, this is so broken.
• 1:08:21
  What was the dynamic going on at that point?
• 1:08:24
  Well, I mean. Because a lot of women today
• 1:08:28
  would just would just pack up the bags that night.
• 1:08:31
  Like this guy, I don't know what I'm dealing with, you know,
• 1:08:33
  before he would have sex with me.
• 1:08:34
  What kind of against my will. I mean, again, I don't want to
• 1:08:37
  put words into your mouth, but it is it.
• 1:08:38
  I don't know if that's the correct.
• 1:08:39
  I'm going to back on that. If that's not the correct view.
• 1:08:42
  Like it would would she have said that herself?
• 1:08:44
  I would say that she would. She would.
• 1:08:48
  I would say that she would say that I would if and I also, you
• 1:08:52
  know, like I said to you, that there wasn't really good help
• 1:08:55
  out there and I was making poor choices.
• 1:08:58
  I was still going back. I was still making unhealthy
• 1:09:01
  choices. I still was going back to the
• 1:09:04
  clubs off and on. I was still going to pornography
• 1:09:06
  off and on, even when I said I'm going to recover.
• 1:09:09
  So I was trying to figure out how to change and I was finding
• 1:09:12
  myself falling short and I'd get back up and I'd try again.
• 1:09:16
  And, and so I could say that I recovered very roughly.
• 1:09:21
  It took me a long time, took me several, almost a decade to get
• 1:09:27
  to a place where I go, oh, this is what recovery really looks
• 1:09:30
  like. And I began to, once I got my
• 1:09:33
  hands on understanding my mind around what it took, then I
• 1:09:37
  could do the work. And then the work actually made
• 1:09:40
  a difference. So.
• 1:09:42
  This is 10 years after 29, so your entire 30s and it was your
• 1:09:47
  wife with you this whole time or did she stayed with you?
• 1:09:50
  27 years of marriage and we finally she just walked out.
• 1:09:54
  And I don't blame her. I'm I'm not here to say, oh,
• 1:09:59
  wow, she just she jerk, she's a jerk.
• 1:10:01
  She left. No, she I think it's the more
• 1:10:10
  sober I got, the more I realized the impact of my actions.
• 1:10:15
  So in the in the, in the moment, while I was still living with
• 1:10:18
  her, I wasn't really aware of how much I was harming and how
• 1:10:23
  much of a mess I was in. And she was in a more
• 1:10:27
  codependent framework of oh, well, I love him, I'm going to
• 1:10:30
  stay in this and there. So she was letting things go.
• 1:10:34
  And so I would say to you, say to you that I had, I was still a
• 1:10:38
  mess for the 1st 10 years, yeah. So after you got out of prison,
• 1:10:44
  your church kind of extra ostracizes you and you are still
• 1:10:49
  at this point you're like, I want to get clean.
• 1:10:50
  And so you're kind of talking to the therapist or doing different
• 1:10:53
  things, but you end up keep on continuing to fall back into
• 1:10:57
  patterns of sex addiction. So you're going to brothels or
• 1:11:00
  seeing prostitutes, You're looking at pornography.
• 1:11:04
  Thing is, is that there's a, there's a difference in that
• 1:11:06
  first ten, those 10 years about this.
• 1:11:11
  I mean, the first year of when I got arrested and then I went to
• 1:11:15
  jail and spent my time and then come when I got out, I was like,
• 1:11:23
  I'm never walking back into a church.
• 1:11:25
  I'm done with Christianity. I'm done with all of this.
• 1:11:28
  And I was pretty much seeing myself as a victim.
• 1:11:31
  So that's telling you that I'm not recovering if I'm seeing
• 1:11:34
  myself as a victim. And yes, there was victimhood in
• 1:11:37
  my world and I needed to address that, but I didn't know that.
• 1:11:40
  I just saw everything that happened to me as it's their
• 1:11:43
  fault, they would, they're mishandling me.
• 1:11:45
  So is everything was about them and not about me.
• 1:11:48
  So as we're talking about this, the mentality of me then was
• 1:11:53
  it's everybody else's fault and they're not handling me well.
• 1:11:57
  So I had everybody to blame and not taking any ownership myself.
• 1:12:04
  And a year into this, after I got out, the there's this pastor
• 1:12:10
  in Orange County. It's no longer here.
• 1:12:13
  He died of cancer, but it, and so he's been gone for a while.
• 1:12:17
  But he was like a he, he, he was a, he was a part, a part of a
• 1:12:20
  really powerful church. And he was kind of like a mentor
• 1:12:24
  for me since high school. Every once in a while, he
• 1:12:27
  touched base with me. I lived 3 hours away from him
• 1:12:29
  and but he would come to church camps or he'd come to a retreat
• 1:12:32
  or he'd speak at a conference. And so I knew there was
• 1:12:35
  something about him that was different, but I couldn't put my
• 1:12:38
  fingers on it. So I was always interested in
• 1:12:40
  talking to him and, but I never really opened this stuff up to
• 1:12:44
  him because I wasn't close enough to really actually do so.
• 1:12:47
  So when this all came out in the open, he didn't know and he, you
• 1:12:51
  know, he lived 3 hours away. So he kept out of the he didn't
• 1:12:54
  know. And so for about a year, we
• 1:12:56
  hadn't talked. And we were talking at least
• 1:12:58
  every week, every month. And so he calls me up and
• 1:13:02
  finally gets me. And he says, I haven't heard
• 1:13:05
  from you in a long time. What's up?
• 1:13:07
  You know, are you OK? And I said, you know, I said,
• 1:13:09
  yeah, I'm doing great. I was lying through my teeth.
• 1:13:12
  And he just said, you know, I really want you to come down and
• 1:13:15
  spend time with me. And I thought, well, I haven't.
• 1:13:18
  I need to say I can't just say no.
• 1:13:22
  So I went ahead and agreed to come.
• 1:13:23
  And so on my way down, I'm thinking I'll talk about the
• 1:13:25
  Dodgers, I'll talk about the weather, I'll talk about this,
• 1:13:27
  I'll talk about that. I'm not talking about anything
• 1:13:29
  serious. And I get into his office and
• 1:13:32
  he's one of those guys that he just can't lie to, not really.
• 1:13:37
  When I sit down face to face to him, he just said, I've had you
• 1:13:41
  on my heart and I know something's up with you.
• 1:13:45
  So what's going on? And that question right there, I
• 1:13:50
  just went, I just this is vomited literally everything I
• 1:13:55
  told childhood stuff. I didn't even know the
• 1:13:57
  connections to childhood stuff other than I just told all of
• 1:14:00
  the stuff, everything that I had stuffed inside.
• 1:14:03
  I just put it on the table and he just sat there and it was
• 1:14:06
  probably a couple hours, maybe maybe more.
• 1:14:09
  And I mean, I would snot running and then I had my eyes were just
• 1:14:12
  that was a mess. And when I got done, I'm
• 1:14:17
  thinking, Oh my gosh, what did I just do?
• 1:14:20
  I just ruined my last and only relationship.
• 1:14:25
  And he gets up from behind his desk and he walks around and
• 1:14:30
  there's no way out of this room. I'm, I'm stuck.
• 1:14:33
  It's either I got to push him out of the way or I'm, I don't
• 1:14:37
  know what to do. And so I stand up with my fist
• 1:14:40
  clench because he's moving towards me and I'm standing up
• 1:14:42
  with my fist clench. And I'm thinking if he does
• 1:14:45
  anything like everybody else has done, I'm I'm going to deck him.
• 1:14:49
  I was so angry inside and he just comes up and he just gives
• 1:14:54
  me this wrestler's hug. And he, I mean, the wrestler's
• 1:14:57
  hug, it just is the one that just doesn't let go.
• 1:14:59
  It's going to take you down if you wanted to.
• 1:15:02
  So he's got me in this wrestler's hug and he just
• 1:15:05
  leaned his face into my neck and he just start weeping.
• 1:15:17
  I just told them my worst. I just told them, I mean, I
• 1:15:21
  didn't give anything to the elders and they bot killed me.
• 1:15:25
  And here he's just taking this whole thing and he's weeping and
• 1:15:30
  and I mean, I was water running down my neck.
• 1:15:32
  I felt the the tears and he just said, I'm so sorry that you've
• 1:15:36
  never tasted God's heart towards your struggles.
• 1:15:38
  I want you to know that God loves you and we're going to get
• 1:15:41
  through this and I'm going to help you.
• 1:15:43
  I'm here to support you. Now he had a a congregation of
• 1:15:48
  probably 2000 people and so he had no room for her time.
• 1:15:53
  But he took time weekly. I drove 3 hours down and three
• 1:15:59
  hours back weekly to see him and had the biggest messes and he
• 1:16:04
  didn't quit. He didn't know how to give me
• 1:16:08
  the tools to change. He had some great principles,
• 1:16:12
  but what he did know is he loved me well and he never condoned
• 1:16:17
  what I did. He didn't say, hey, it's OK, no
• 1:16:19
  big deal what you've done. He didn't wrap his mind around
• 1:16:23
  and say or wrap his arms around and say, hey, I see what you
• 1:16:25
  did. No big deal.
• 1:16:27
  No, he, he just said, but I see who you are and I want you to
• 1:16:31
  know that that's who I'm going to help you get back to.
• 1:16:37
  So even though his actions didn't change my the struggle
• 1:16:43
  completely, is something inside shattered that said that I'm no
• 1:16:49
  good? Something went, something broke.
• 1:16:54
  And I can say for the first time in my life and being in church
• 1:16:58
  all those years that I actually felt loved because I was seeing
• 1:17:06
  all the stuff's on the table and he's embracing me.
• 1:17:11
  And that gave me the will to change.
• 1:17:14
  And I so I put my mind to trying things and I really did try and
• 1:17:19
  I would fall or make mistakes. What does that look like, Jean,
• 1:17:23
  when you say you would try like I'm going to go cold Turkey, no
• 1:17:25
  porn for the next month. Yeah, cold Turkey, but, but I
• 1:17:29
  would also, I mean, it would be, I mean, I would go to counseling
• 1:17:32
  and I and I still was tripping up counseling, meeting church
• 1:17:35
  counseling. I would, you know, see the
• 1:17:39
  elders and that didn't work very well.
• 1:17:41
  And I had, I went to to a group that was considered, it was kind
• 1:17:47
  of like a bondage breaker kind of scenario.
• 1:17:49
  So there was a lot of they're dealing with bondage and you
• 1:17:52
  know, and the whole idea of prayer and memorization of
• 1:17:56
  scripture and casting that demons and all that kind of
• 1:18:00
  stuff and Bible memorization. All that was the first elements
• 1:18:04
  of trying to change. And, and it wasn't until I
• 1:18:09
  attended a a workshop here in Orange County that I'm trying to
• 1:18:14
  remember the name of the church. I think it was Metro or
• 1:18:18
  something like that. But they did a sexual trauma
• 1:18:20
  seminar and that sexual trauma seminar I took my wife to
• 1:18:25
  because I'm thinking she needs help.
• 1:18:28
  I took it for I took her there, but I went there as a support.
• 1:18:31
  How? How, where, how far in the
• 1:18:32
  marriage were you at this point? This was before the rape.
• 1:18:36
  After the rape. And so you think that.
• 1:18:39
  So if so, that mindset of were you still keeping it all like in
• 1:18:44
  your mind, was it like, I didn't actually try to hurt that woman?
• 1:18:48
  I was never going to actually do anything?
• 1:18:49
  Like what? What was yourself?
• 1:18:50
  What was your own narrative about yourself at that point?
• 1:18:55
  I still I saw myself as a scumbag.
• 1:18:57
  I saw myself as a pervert. I saw myself as that.
• 1:19:01
  I don't know if I can change. I I really started losing hope
• 1:19:06
  because no matter how much I tried and I did try, I did put
• 1:19:11
  everything into it, but it was it wasn't working.
• 1:19:15
  I'll give you any, I'll give you a visual if I can of have you
• 1:19:19
  ever done a pinata? OK, so you get the blindfold on,
• 1:19:24
  you got the baseball bat, you got all the power in the world
• 1:19:26
  to knock the snot out of that, whatever that is, what you know
• 1:19:30
  that that animal or stuffed animal or whatever it is.
• 1:19:33
  And you swing with everything you got and it isn't making an
• 1:19:36
  impact. So you step back and you go,
• 1:19:38
  I'll get it this time. And he keep doing it and you
• 1:19:40
  keep doing it. And each time you do it, you
• 1:19:44
  start losing a little bit more hope.
• 1:19:47
  And The thing is, is that when somebody would come finally, he
• 1:19:52
  says, take off the blindfold. Now I see what I'm fighting.
• 1:19:57
  Now my swings count. And so I would say in my first
• 1:20:02
  part of my recovery, I didn't know what I was swinging at.
• 1:20:04
  I couldn't see. And it was when I started
• 1:20:09
  getting some real help. And so that was a a Jan Frank
• 1:20:14
  who was wrote a book called A Door of Hope, and she shared her
• 1:20:18
  own personal testimony of the impact of sexual abuse.
• 1:20:22
  And up to that moment, I had no clue that the sexual abuse that
• 1:20:26
  I experienced had any connection to what I was doing.
• 1:20:30
  Even when you were taking your wife to trauma therapy for her
• 1:20:33
  sexual. Abuse.
• 1:20:34
  No. You.
• 1:20:35
  You. Did you and your wife ever talk?
• 1:20:37
  Hey, I was sexually abused. You were sexually abused.
• 1:20:38
  Did you ever have a conversation?
• 1:20:40
  No. Did she know that you had been
• 1:20:42
  sexually abused your life? You never told her?
• 1:20:44
  No. Who was the first person you
• 1:20:45
  told that you were sexually abused?
• 1:20:47
  That conference, that sexual abuse conference, Jen Frank's
• 1:20:51
  story. That that you had taken your
• 1:20:52
  wife to. It was that story that my had
• 1:20:57
  similarities and I saw the parallels.
• 1:21:01
  What about the the guy though from the other pastor from OC
• 1:21:05
  and you poured out your heart to him?
• 1:21:07
  Had you told him about the sexual abuse?
• 1:21:09
  I didn't tell him too much about that because I didn't see the
• 1:21:11
  relevance. I mean, I did it in passing, but
• 1:21:15
  quite frankly, he didn't either. So back in the, you know, you're
• 1:21:18
  looking 40 years ago, we didn't have any, there was very little
• 1:21:21
  knowledge about how sexual abuse connected to sexual acting out.
• 1:21:26
  So now it's we have a ton of information out there.
• 1:21:28
  And so we all kind of have a, some kind of basis for
• 1:21:31
  knowledge. But Jan Frank was the first one
• 1:21:34
  that opened my eyes and it was her perceptions of what sexual
• 1:21:39
  abuse does that I'm going, holy crap, this is hitting me between
• 1:21:44
  the eyeballs. It isn't that I am that I am
• 1:21:48
  some kind of a pervert. Yes, I'm I've done wrong things
• 1:21:52
  and yes, I deserve punishment and yes, I've made a big mess of
• 1:21:57
  my life and others lives. But man, this is the first time
• 1:22:01
  that somebody is like giving me a fresh breath of air as to how
• 1:22:06
  sexual abuse plays a role in what I'm doing.
• 1:22:09
  So that is so the sexual abuse was huge.
• 1:22:12
  But then in that same conference, there's this guy,
• 1:22:15
  his name was Ray Jones. And Ray Jones was this he did, I
• 1:22:22
  forget what they call it, sexual deviant behavior specialists.
• 1:22:28
  And so I'm thinking, wow, that's a big title.
• 1:22:32
  But I sit down and listen to his workshop and he hit me between
• 1:22:35
  the eyes. Like I've been in tons of
• 1:22:38
  workshops. Nobody, nobody was touching my
• 1:22:41
  stuff. This guy did.
• 1:22:43
  So between Jan Frank and him, it's like my whole world opened
• 1:22:47
  up. And I began to say, wow.
• 1:22:49
  The driver to my behavior is there are many roots to it.
• 1:22:55
  One is sexual abuse, right? And the other one is the
• 1:22:59
  sexualization of the pornography and the sexually acting out.
• 1:23:02
  And then I learned a little bit later in that day, there was a
• 1:23:06
  guy named Gordon Dalby. And Gordon Dalby was a guy that
• 1:23:10
  dealt with father wounding and the impact of when you're empty
• 1:23:13
  from not feeling connected and not knowing what that what it
• 1:23:16
  means to be a man and starting to look ways to fill the void.
• 1:23:20
  And so I saw three core things that actually were what I needed
• 1:23:25
  to work on. I go, those things make sense.
• 1:23:29
  And so I started digging in. I started going to her workshops
• 1:23:32
  and her conferences. We started going to counseling
• 1:23:34
  with her. I went to counseling with Ray
• 1:23:36
  Jones, started reading his materials, started going to his
• 1:23:39
  workshops, and then I started going to Gordon Dalby's
• 1:23:42
  workshops and started reading his books and the end.
• 1:23:45
  So that was the journey that actually started me on the track
• 1:23:49
  to heal. And behaviors started changing
• 1:23:54
  as I started looking at what was driving them, and so it made a
• 1:23:59
  big difference when I actually saw what it is I'm fighting.
• 1:24:05
  What was the behavior that changed once you start to have
• 1:24:09
  the sense of connecting your behavior to these deeper wounds
• 1:24:14
  and habits? Well, let's just use, for
• 1:24:18
  instance, Gordon Dalby talks about the male wound and the,
• 1:24:22
  the lack of father in the, in the life and, and the lack of
• 1:24:27
  connection there. The fact that I was looking for
• 1:24:30
  connection in all the wrong place.
• 1:24:32
  There's nothing wrong with looking for connection because
• 1:24:35
  that is a need, a need to be affirmed as a man and to and to
• 1:24:42
  to understand what it means to be a man and to walk in a
• 1:24:45
  healthy community of men and whether it's bonding and there's
• 1:24:48
  mentorship and there's a sense of healthy masculinity.
• 1:24:53
  And then in that was the idea of when you have sexual abuse, the
• 1:24:58
  impact of that of the that sexualizes my needs.
• 1:25:02
  It it also causes me to have shame around sex.
• 1:25:05
  So sex is done in secret. Sex is sexual behaviors get
• 1:25:09
  strange and weird based upon the pain that I'm carrying.
• 1:25:13
  My pain gets acted out sexually. And so the, the idea that the,
• 1:25:18
  the, how the impact of sexual wounding got played out in my
• 1:25:23
  world was, you know, anger. And so when you were six, when I
• 1:25:27
  was 6, abused as a child, I realized how much rage I had
• 1:25:31
  from the sexual abuse, how much anger I had.
• 1:25:34
  But you know, where I went before it went towards me.
• 1:25:37
  So my rage and my anger didn't go out here.
• 1:25:40
  It went in towards me. And so, and when I had that much
• 1:25:43
  rage and anger, so then where does that go?
• 1:25:46
  Well, it goes out towards women because women started the
• 1:25:49
  wounding and so my anger and my pain and my shame, I, the things
• 1:25:54
  I was doing to women was coming from what happened to me.
• 1:25:58
  Now there's no excuse. You don't get to blame that on
• 1:26:02
  the things I did, but it helps me understand what drives it.
• 1:26:06
  And if I don't change that, it doesn't change.
• 1:26:09
  No matter time, no matter what I said said I'm stopping, I'm
• 1:26:12
  never doing it again. I don't like it.
• 1:26:14
  I don't like what it's doing in me.
• 1:26:16
  I want to change it. It doesn't change by just trying
• 1:26:18
  to stop it. You got to get to the roots.
• 1:26:20
  You got to understand what drives it.
• 1:26:22
  It's the why. It's what is the source to this
• 1:26:28
  and my understanding now as I look back 40 some years now, 44
• 1:26:34
  years to be exact, of working on recovery and healing and and
• 1:26:39
  then begin developing my own system to help people.
• 1:26:42
  As I understand that there are two basic things that drive
• 1:26:45
  well, 33 basic things that drive a problem and whether it's sex
• 1:26:49
  addiction, food addiction, alcoholism, doesn't matter,
• 1:26:54
  gambling, whatever. There's always driven by two
• 1:26:57
  basic things is, is that I'm using the mood altering
• 1:27:01
  experience to cover pain. So I'm so the level of pain I'm
• 1:27:05
  carrying is the, the, the drug. The stronger the see, the
• 1:27:10
  strong, the stronger I need the drug is because I'm carrying
• 1:27:14
  more pain. So the more pain I carry, the
• 1:27:16
  stronger drug I need and the more drug I need.
• 1:27:20
  So what I'm doing is I'm numbing out.
• 1:27:23
  I'm using the drug to numb pain. I'm not working through pain.
• 1:27:27
  I'm just keep covering it with, with addiction mood altering
• 1:27:31
  experiences. So I'm hiding pain, unresolved
• 1:27:34
  pain and #2 is as I have unmet needs, legitimate, God-given
• 1:27:39
  needs. I need to feel connected, I need
• 1:27:41
  to feel known, I need to feel like I'm loved and I'm
• 1:27:45
  untreasured. I'm wanted and those are legit.
• 1:27:50
  But sex, the sex abuse, the the damage done was is that all of
• 1:27:55
  those needs got met through sex. Sex doesn't meet those needs.
• 1:28:01
  Those aren't that's not that's not what sex is for.
• 1:28:04
  And to the idea that I was using those things sexed to meet
• 1:28:11
  unhealthy or real needs in an unhealthy way.
• 1:28:14
  So it's learning how to meet those needs, what are those
• 1:28:18
  needs and then learning new strategies to meet those needs.
• 1:28:22
  And there there's no shame around having those needs and to
• 1:28:25
  be able to identify them and to look at new strategies rather
• 1:28:29
  than going to the default, whoops, excuse me, the default,
• 1:28:32
  which is go to sex, sex for everything sex does that sex
• 1:28:36
  does solves that sex. So all my knees got sexualized.
• 1:28:40
  I hear it's often that term that sex is a need.
• 1:28:43
  It's a very modern idea, like everybody, people just need sex.
• 1:28:47
  And it's used to justify all kinds of things, including
• 1:28:50
  premarital sexual activity, certainly masturbation, all
• 1:28:53
  these things. And the reality is, no, you
• 1:28:55
  don't. People can be celibate.
• 1:28:57
  We need love. We need human touch, we need
• 1:29:01
  human connection. When was that aha moment for
• 1:29:04
  you? Sounds like you're in a period
• 1:29:05
  where it says that that mindset of Gene saying I need sex.
• 1:29:08
  And in your marriage, it meant you could have this dimension
• 1:29:12
  with your wife where you're just like, I want you to do this for
• 1:29:14
  me. Even though she's not even
• 1:29:16
  wanting it, she's suffering. When did that switch for you to
• 1:29:20
  say, I'm actually, I'm not. First of all, I'm not entitled
• 1:29:22
  to it. And then second of all, I don't
• 1:29:23
  even need it. Well, I think when you, I think
• 1:29:27
  for me, when you asked me is when I started tasting, when I
• 1:29:31
  recognized that I had these needs and I started moving
• 1:29:35
  towards Stratton, new strategies to meet those needs.
• 1:29:39
  And all of a sudden the, the energy level that it brings, the
• 1:29:45
  awareness that it brings, the, the, it's like my eyes get
• 1:29:52
  opened and it's like, oh, I don't want that.
• 1:29:54
  I don't want this. And so that the strategy for
• 1:29:57
  helping anybody change is, is that it's not about stopping
• 1:30:00
  something. It's about becoming something.
• 1:30:03
  So what I what I needed to know was that I was worth something
• 1:30:07
  and that needed to happen more than anything.
• 1:30:10
  And that's the shame aspect. So there was three It was the
• 1:30:13
  the pain, the need and the shame.
• 1:30:16
  I need to address the shame. And the shame is the false
• 1:30:19
  identity. Shame says you are.
• 1:30:21
  What happened to you? You are a pedophile.
• 1:30:23
  You are a pedophile. Right.
• 1:30:25
  So I can't recover in an environment that says the first
• 1:30:28
  thing they ask you to do in a in a group is say hi, I'm Jean
• 1:30:31
  McConnell. I am a perpetrator.
• 1:30:34
  Hi, I'm Jean McConnell. I am a sex addict.
• 1:30:36
  So that's part of the 12 steps, right?
• 1:30:38
  Yeah, it's, it's born out of that.
• 1:30:39
  So like, hi, I'm right. I'm an alcoholic and I can't do
• 1:30:43
  anything. I'm powerless to stop being an
• 1:30:45
  alcoholic, so it sounds like you totally disagree with that.
• 1:30:49
  Well, I disagree with that element.
• 1:30:51
  OK, interesting. Yeah, because and I there's
• 1:30:56
  plenty of people who get help from it.
• 1:30:59
  And so I'm not in any way, shape or form discounting anyone's
• 1:31:03
  recovery. And if they, because you can get
• 1:31:06
  recovery from a lot of things, that doesn't have to be
• 1:31:08
  completely accurate, But the problem that that created in
• 1:31:12
  that that world is that everybody in that room stays be
• 1:31:17
  stays stuck and that element of who they are, because it's
• 1:31:21
  saying that your, your struggle is your identity.
• 1:31:26
  And it may sound like a really simple thing and it's just being
• 1:31:29
  ridiculous, but the the scriptures teach that you that
• 1:31:33
  as a man believes in his heart, so is he.
• 1:31:36
  So you're believing that the whole sum of your life is that's
• 1:31:42
  you, That I'm an addict, that I'm a sex addict.
• 1:31:45
  And that's baloney. I wasn't created an addict.
• 1:31:47
  There's so much to me than that. And the what helps me recover is
• 1:31:52
  when I discover there's something more to me than my
• 1:31:55
  shame. There's something more to me
• 1:31:57
  than my messes. That I am meant for more.
• 1:32:00
  There's purpose. I'm designed with reason.
• 1:32:03
  And it's not to say this is me now, I am not.
• 1:32:07
  I don't believe that denial works either.
• 1:32:10
  So that means well, if I don't say that, then how do I admit?
• 1:32:13
  Well, it goes something like this.
• 1:32:15
  I'm Jane McConnell. I struggle with sex addiction.
• 1:32:18
  I'm Jane McConnell. I struggle with a sexual sexual
• 1:32:22
  perversion or hi, I'm Jane McConnell.
• 1:32:25
  I struggle with alcohol. I you hear the difference?
• 1:32:29
  I'm recognizing I'm struggling. I'm recognizing as a journey,
• 1:32:33
  but is not my identity. And I can't say that's thing
• 1:32:36
  strong enough because when I help people, one of my primary
• 1:32:40
  roles is to restore dignity first before we ever take on the
• 1:32:44
  harder things. Why?
• 1:32:45
  Because if you get your dignity back, if you get a picture of
• 1:32:50
  who you are and a taste of that. Who God made you to?
• 1:32:54
  Be, Yep, who God made you to be. He didn't make a mistake when he
• 1:32:57
  made you. The debris has just covered it.
• 1:33:00
  So we want honesty to not we want honesty not to say, oh,
• 1:33:06
  look at all. Look at all this bad stuff so
• 1:33:08
  that you are this big mess. Look at all this.
• 1:33:10
  No, the honesty is meant to help remove the stuff so that you can
• 1:33:16
  actually see who you really are underneath all that.
• 1:33:20
  So the the purpose of light is not to reveal your brokenness.
• 1:33:25
  The purpose of light is to reveal your dignity.
• 1:33:29
  So yes, the brokenness comes first because it's in the way.
• 1:33:33
  So you remove the brokenness one piece at a time, but that's not
• 1:33:37
  the end of the story. The light is meant to expose
• 1:33:42
  your value. It's meant to expose your
• 1:33:45
  purpose that you were meant for more than what you're living.
• 1:33:49
  And what that is when people recover, when people recognize
• 1:33:53
  there's more to me than this mess, that I'm going to fight
• 1:33:56
  for that. And the more I help them grow,
• 1:34:00
  that at the same time that muscles getting built and heart
• 1:34:04
  is getting built and there's a connection to purpose, now they
• 1:34:08
  have the energy to take on the heart.
• 1:34:10
  But if I say this is all there is to you, it's all this hard
• 1:34:13
  stuff, and I'm saying this is who you are, that's
• 1:34:16
  hopelessness. That's not who you are.
• 1:34:20
  What is at the end of my battle? This is just admitting that I am
• 1:34:23
  this mess. No, no, not at all.
• 1:34:27
  If I wouldn't be sitting here today, if that was the if all
• 1:34:31
  there was to me is everything I had done.
• 1:34:34
  What would you be doing do you think?
• 1:34:35
  Oh my gosh, I'd still be in the mess, so I really would be.
• 1:34:38
  Because if you don't see yourself more than your mess,
• 1:34:41
  you'll always be your mess because you always walk out your
• 1:34:45
  core beliefs. If you believe you're nothing
• 1:34:48
  more than an addict, then that's what you will be.
• 1:34:53
  Did you, when you were having this real, real realization of
• 1:34:57
  that's not who I am, the woundedness of your childhood,
• 1:35:01
  the unmet needs, understanding these patterns of behavior that
• 1:35:04
  you are just stuck in again and again and again?
• 1:35:07
  Can you share what happened with your marriage?
• 1:35:12
  Unfortunately what happens in a lot of times when people start
• 1:35:19
  recovering and one of them does and the other one kind of stays
• 1:35:22
  stuck in their stuff, then the relationship ends up breaking up
• 1:35:27
  and and to be honest, I did so much damage.
• 1:35:32
  I don't I don't blame my my my ex-wife for walking away.
• 1:35:36
  I get it. I betrayed her the way beyond
• 1:35:40
  anything that she should have ever accepted.
• 1:35:43
  But she was so stuck in that. The pain of her, what had
• 1:35:46
  happened to her, and also the pain of what I did to her
• 1:35:49
  because I lived at her worst fears.
• 1:35:52
  And so she was still stuck there and she couldn't, she couldn't
• 1:35:57
  move. So when you so are you saying
• 1:35:59
  there was a period of time where you got healthy, you're in
• 1:36:02
  recovery, you got healthy, you were not cheating on her, you're
• 1:36:06
  not being unfaithful, you're actually doing it.
• 1:36:07
  And that's when the marriage fell apart.
• 1:36:09
  It's like the marriage stayed strong, not strong, but the
• 1:36:12
  marriage was lasting through your infidelities and your
• 1:36:16
  betrayals. And then when you actually stop
• 1:36:18
  infidelity and betrayal, that's when it's like she woke up and
• 1:36:21
  she said, I can't do this anymore, right?
• 1:36:23
  And so at that, at that juncture, you're having this
• 1:36:27
  whole experience of really just transformation for yourself of a
• 1:36:33
  new gene that you didn't know was possible before.
• 1:36:36
  When did you start to connect that to OK?
• 1:36:37
  Now I got to help other men. It's funny, I've been doing,
• 1:36:41
  I've been doing it from the day one when I started walking, even
• 1:36:43
  in my biggest messes, guys would hear me talk about my story.
• 1:36:47
  And they go, well, obviously you're one step ahead of me, can
• 1:36:50
  you help? And even though I didn't know
• 1:36:52
  diddly squat about anything other than the fact that I got
• 1:36:55
  to talk about this, I started. I was helping, trying to help
• 1:36:59
  men way back. They just came out of the.
• 1:37:02
  Woodwork. Yeah, just came out of the
• 1:37:03
  woodwork. And and you wouldn't say you
• 1:37:04
  were. You would tell them your story.
• 1:37:06
  You would tell them a story about the conviction for
• 1:37:10
  attempted assault. And that was what just got men
• 1:37:13
  talking to you like, oh, I have this struggle or I have this
• 1:37:15
  because I thought, oh, if he's being public about that, I can
• 1:37:17
  go to him and tell him my worst you.
• 1:37:19
  Know the darndest The darndest thing about this is that I would
• 1:37:25
  prefer never to go back and talk about this, just rather just
• 1:37:29
  bury it and move on. But what happens every time I do
• 1:37:34
  is as it pulls back, are the curtains enough to say, hey, if
• 1:37:39
  he can do it and he's alive and he's thriving, so can I.
• 1:37:44
  And so I do this because it it actually provides a trail for
• 1:37:49
  those who don't think there's a possibility of change.
• 1:37:52
  Because I know what it's like to be in that hole and ain't
• 1:37:55
  pretty. And most of the men that are
• 1:38:00
  stuck there don't believe there's any real good to them.
• 1:38:03
  And so every time I go there with my story, doesn't matter
• 1:38:08
  what level I go to, that authenticity breeds authenticity
• 1:38:13
  and grace and mercy and healing and restoration breeds the same.
• 1:38:19
  So and when I go, when I go to my story, the one thing that I
• 1:38:25
  want communicated more than anything else is it there's
• 1:38:29
  nothing beyond the cross. Nothing.
• 1:38:34
  The only thing that holds us up is our willingness to be open.
• 1:38:39
  The one step that we have in our recovery, the one step is to be
• 1:38:44
  to come into the light. Because God is light, and in him
• 1:38:47
  there's no shadows, there's no darkness, there's no hiding,
• 1:38:49
  there's no printed any. There's no pretending.
• 1:38:52
  There's no half ass God is in the open.
• 1:38:58
  He is in the light. So light and truth are the same.
• 1:39:01
  They're synonymous. So I have to be a man who
• 1:39:04
  pursues truth and openness. And if I do that, if I do that
• 1:39:09
  with the only I'm trying to use the trying to get the right
• 1:39:17
  language that I that sanity is that it's it.
• 1:39:21
  It is the idea that I am completely given and committed
• 1:39:28
  to being a man of the light, not about the forget the behavior.
• 1:39:33
  Forget the problems that you're struggling with.
• 1:39:36
  If I come to the light, he is faithful and just to forgive me
• 1:39:39
  of my sin. And it cleanses me from all
• 1:39:41
  unrighteousness and it sets the tone for me to have the the
• 1:39:45
  architect of light begin to work.
• 1:39:48
  God works in the light. So I can't heal what I hide.
• 1:39:53
  I can't heal what's hidden. So if if I think that God's
• 1:39:57
  going to recover me while I'm still staying secret, not going
• 1:40:02
  to happen. It takes the courage and
• 1:40:04
  strength to step into the open and to get into the light and
• 1:40:08
  what you bring to the light, God's promises to rebuild what
• 1:40:13
  you bring. So what I do with my story is I
• 1:40:16
  say, here's my story. Here's as honest as I can be and
• 1:40:20
  look at the mess I created and. If God can take that, then he
• 1:40:27
  can do it in you too. And so I mean, there's no
• 1:40:34
  pleasure in bringing this to this to the table.
• 1:40:36
  It's it's hard. In fact, the movie that we'll
• 1:40:38
  talk about is so hard for me to even see myself on the screen.
• 1:40:43
  It hurts. It's it's painful.
• 1:40:45
  To see her. Buying her because it has my
• 1:40:48
  story weave throughout the, the, the, the film in it.
• 1:40:51
  It's painful to see and hear me talk about that mindset that I
• 1:40:55
  was in before and to actually put that out in the open and it
• 1:40:59
  just makes me cringe, makes me struggle.
• 1:41:02
  And yet it's, it's crazy how God uses it.
• 1:41:07
  It's just crazy. So I'm I'm learning the most
• 1:41:11
  important principle for recovery and mental health is to live my
• 1:41:15
  life in the in the light to pursue what is true in.
• 1:41:18
  Me to. Tell the truth and even if I
• 1:41:21
  don't know what is true, I'm in pursuit of truth.
• 1:41:25
  And that that will help me more than anything else because it's
• 1:41:28
  the truth will set you free. It's knowing what is true that
• 1:41:33
  brings freedom. And I don't want mediocracy in
• 1:41:37
  my thinking. I want health.
• 1:41:40
  And so it means the pursuit of what is true.
• 1:41:45
  And even if it costs me in my mind everything, it actually I
• 1:41:49
  gained the whole world. Actually, I don't lose at all.
• 1:41:53
  I only lose the things that are hurting me when I come into the
• 1:41:56
  light. It's really the lie of the enemy
• 1:41:59
  that says if you do this, you lose everything.
• 1:42:01
  No, if you do this, you gain everything and you can you lose
• 1:42:05
  the things that are holding you back.
• 1:42:08
  So it's that lie that holds most in in in bondage.
• 1:42:11
  So I know that coming into light is everything.
• 1:42:17
  How can family members, if they have a suspicion that their
• 1:42:21
  husband, their boyfriend, their son, and again, there can be
• 1:42:26
  women involved here too, maybe it's their daughter, but we're
• 1:42:28
  talking largely about a man's experience and they have a
• 1:42:31
  suspicion that they're in some sort of a sex addiction or some
• 1:42:35
  compulsive sexual activity or disordered, dangerous, deviant
• 1:42:39
  sexual activity, whatever it is. How do you recommend family
• 1:42:42
  members talk to or try to connect with this other family
• 1:42:47
  member that they love, that they're worried about?
• 1:42:49
  And I wish there was a one thing that could could handle because
• 1:42:55
  there's so many different variances and personality and so
• 1:42:58
  forth. But the one thing that I can say
• 1:43:01
  that it kind of comes with in line with what we were just
• 1:43:04
  saying that being getting it into the open, getting it out in
• 1:43:10
  the open. So what what causes the problem
• 1:43:13
  to consider continue is when there is enabling behavior,
• 1:43:18
  which means I can't talk. I don't want to hurt my husband.
• 1:43:21
  I don't want to disrespect him. I don't want to cause him shame.
• 1:43:27
  I'm just going to keep this silent and we'll just pray
• 1:43:29
  together and we'll just pray that God works this out.
• 1:43:32
  I'm going to put my head in the sand.
• 1:43:33
  I'm. Going to put my hand in the.
• 1:43:34
  Sand, maybe I suspect something, but it's too painful, too scary,
• 1:43:37
  too crazy. I'm not going to go there.
• 1:43:39
  And then when you do bring it to the table, he black, you know,
• 1:43:42
  he gaslights you, you know, he said.
• 1:43:44
  You're being ridiculous. You're being over controlling.
• 1:43:48
  You're being, you know, too religious.
• 1:43:51
  Whatever he's going to attack, he's going to come him after you
• 1:43:55
  because he's fighting for his life.
• 1:43:57
  See, that's the thing we don't get is the reason why he gets
• 1:44:01
  that way is because he's trying to protect what he believes is
• 1:44:04
  the end of him. So he's not going to give that
• 1:44:07
  to you. And so the thing that helps us
• 1:44:11
  is that when people quit doing the dance and saying no, the
• 1:44:18
  line, the boundaries are there. I love you and I want you in my
• 1:44:22
  life, but to have you in my life, there's no secrets.
• 1:44:26
  Then to have you in my life is there's there's no going to the
• 1:44:29
  clubs or if I have you in my life, there's no doing things
• 1:44:33
  separate. So it's a boundary, you're
• 1:44:34
  saying? It's how learning how to set
• 1:44:36
  boundaries not to control, but to actually define who you are,
• 1:44:40
  because it's. A sort of interrupt, but it's
• 1:44:42
  not a boundary unless you're willing to walk away and move
• 1:44:45
  out. Yeah, and it's not a boundary.
• 1:44:47
  I'm not saying divorce per SE because as a you know, I don't,
• 1:44:50
  I don't believe in divorce in terms of reject your first
• 1:44:55
  marriage and remarry. I believe if it's a real
• 1:44:57
  marriage, it's a marriage and then you may live separately to
• 1:45:00
  protect yourself or your kids or whatever.
• 1:45:03
  Now you can also look back on your marriage and see it was it
• 1:45:05
  a real marriage because sometimes there's deceit or
• 1:45:07
  other mitigating circumstances. So maybe you annul that because
• 1:45:11
  you realize it wasn't even a marriage.
• 1:45:12
  Anyways, I'm getting into sort of details here, but I'm for
• 1:45:16
  family members, especially talking about the wife of the,
• 1:45:18
  you know, particularly the wife in the situation.
• 1:45:21
  You you're saying set a boundary, don't be a doormat.
• 1:45:24
  Don't let it continue under your roof.
• 1:45:26
  Well, she can only do so much. And what if he's the economic
• 1:45:29
  bread, You know, he's the breadwinner.
• 1:45:31
  She's got kids. What is that?
• 1:45:33
  What? What does that woman do?
• 1:45:34
  Well, I mean, if she actually does the work, the steps, well,
• 1:45:40
  she doesn't matter whether he's a breadwinner or not.
• 1:45:43
  She can actually be covered and taken care of.
• 1:45:46
  And we can go down that rabbit trail.
• 1:45:48
  But I can say to you this that the she has a better chance of
• 1:45:52
  living life what she wants when she's real and being honest and
• 1:45:56
  setting boundaries. And if she then being a doormat
• 1:46:00
  and doormat meaning I'm just going to let him do whatever he
• 1:46:03
  wants to do no matter what it cost me because I want this
• 1:46:06
  relationship to work. And so as long as he has no
• 1:46:10
  consequences, he won't change the consequences.
• 1:46:14
  Is the first step to realize oh this isn't working?
• 1:46:18
  What is the consequence you recommend?
• 1:46:20
  Well, it every, you know, if I had a cut on my finger, OK, so I
• 1:46:25
  might put a, a bandage on it or a Band-Aid.
• 1:46:28
  And if it gets worse, I might do some infection stuff on it like
• 1:46:31
  spray or, or cream. And then I might wrap it up
• 1:46:35
  more. But, and maybe it is a, if it
• 1:46:37
  gets worse, I go to a doctor. And but what you do, what I'm
• 1:46:40
  saying there is you have levels of consequences based on the
• 1:46:44
  severity of the issue. You don't, you certainly could
• 1:46:48
  cut the finger off and deal with the cut, right?
• 1:46:50
  But that's too severe to do at the stages.
• 1:46:54
  But when the, if that cut becomes something that the risk
• 1:46:57
  of the whole body, then that finger has to go.
• 1:47:00
  So the question mark is how severe is this?
• 1:47:03
  And so I would say that it gets severe when there's, we don't do
• 1:47:08
  what we call increment steps towards having consequences.
• 1:47:13
  And it would look something like a boundary is defining who you
• 1:47:19
  are, not controlling another person.
• 1:47:22
  So if I set a boundary to control him then it's only going
• 1:47:25
  to come across as I'm I'm just controlling, no?
• 1:47:28
  And you can't control him. You can't control him.
• 1:47:30
  But if I set a boundary, that is the boundary is a fence line
• 1:47:34
  that says this is who I am. And that means what's what I
• 1:47:38
  love, what matters to me, what I hate, what are my values, what I
• 1:47:43
  believe. In I mean, I think a lot of
• 1:47:44
  these women, the boundaries and I, I know some of these stories,
• 1:47:47
  the boundary is I'm not going to have sex with you because you
• 1:47:49
  are chronically cheating on me. It's it might not even be safe
• 1:47:53
  for me to physically have sex with you.
• 1:47:54
  But then what's often happens in these dynamics is the man says,
• 1:47:58
  well, all the more reason why I'm going to go do like, why are
• 1:48:00
  you judging me so hard? Like you look at you, it's all
• 1:48:03
  on you. It's your fault, your fault,
• 1:48:04
  your fault. And then that there's like this
• 1:48:06
  toxic downward spiral that they find themselves.
• 1:48:08
  So instead of carrying this where it's her fault for the
• 1:48:12
  problem with the setting the boundary isn't is half of that
• 1:48:15
  is setting is communicating that boundary and then setting
• 1:48:18
  consequences that are that are adequate for the the offense.
• 1:48:23
  So being able to say I love you, I want this relationship to
• 1:48:28
  work, but I'm not willing to share you with other people.
• 1:48:31
  I'm not willing to have pornography in our world or I'm
• 1:48:34
  not willing for you to go and have A to go out with these
• 1:48:36
  other women. It could be a more simple of as
• 1:48:39
  I don't want you going out to dinner alone with another woman
• 1:48:41
  or I don't want you, you know, here I'm going do you?
• 1:48:44
  You're she's setting that boundary based on what she feels
• 1:48:48
  and her values and what it matters.
• 1:48:50
  And what she would do is say you have a choice.
• 1:48:53
  You can. To love me is to understand and
• 1:48:56
  respect what I value. So you have a choice.
• 1:48:59
  I'm saying that if you continue down that path, you're choosing
• 1:49:03
  to move away from me. I'm not walking away from you.
• 1:49:06
  You're walking away from me. And if you choose to do those
• 1:49:10
  things again and not get help, then you're then you're choosing
• 1:49:13
  it, not you're not choosing us. What I want for us to do is to
• 1:49:18
  go to some counselor together and let's get some counseling
• 1:49:21
  advice and let's look at how the two of us can actually build
• 1:49:24
  this and work this. If you don't want counseling,
• 1:49:27
  you're choosing. You hear what I'm saying?
• 1:49:29
  You're, you're putting it back on in his court to say you're
• 1:49:34
  choosing or not health, to stay or not.
• 1:49:37
  You're here's what it looks like to be healthy.
• 1:49:39
  I want you to go to counseling. I want us to go to counseling
• 1:49:42
  together. I want us to do a season of, of
• 1:49:46
  sobriety sexually because you've been with other women and I need
• 1:49:49
  you to get some testing done to see if you are carrying a
• 1:49:52
  disease. And I need to know that you have
• 1:49:54
  some sobriety sexually before we come back together in in the
• 1:49:58
  bed. And so there's some, but you do
• 1:50:00
  that with a counselor. You do that with somebody that
• 1:50:02
  can provide a good set of, of advice and come alongside of and
• 1:50:09
  him have an accountability for the messes that he's creating.
• 1:50:13
  She has every right to stand up for what she wants.
• 1:50:16
  The key in it is you're saying if you want this relationship to
• 1:50:20
  work, I do, then you will do this.
• 1:50:24
  But if you don't, you're choosing.
• 1:50:26
  If you don't do this, you're choosing.
• 1:50:28
  Not me, I'm here. I want to work this out.
• 1:50:30
  You're choosing not to to. So you're putting it back
• 1:50:34
  because he's going to look at blaming her for, he's going to
• 1:50:37
  put it all on her. He's going to gaslight her and
• 1:50:39
  all that. That's usually the story that
• 1:50:41
  they, that we find and, and often I find, you know, the, the
• 1:50:45
  large majority of the anecdotal cases I've heard, which is maybe
• 1:50:48
  in the dozens now, if not more, is they, it doesn't work.
• 1:50:53
  I mean, because he's, he's, he's, he's locked in, you know,
• 1:50:56
  he's locked into these cycles. She needs a boundary.
• 1:50:58
  She creates 1 and she leaves or he leaves, you know, before she
• 1:51:02
  leaves. But they live, they part ways
• 1:51:04
  ultimately. And then of course, if there's
• 1:51:06
  kids in the mix, it's all the more dangerous and dramatic for,
• 1:51:10
  for, for them too. Have you seen, so you've worked
• 1:51:14
  now with hundreds of men over the last few decades.
• 1:51:17
  Have you seen recovery? Absolutely.
• 1:51:21
  And have you seen healed marriages, Yes.
• 1:51:24
  And and how have you seen that take place?
• 1:51:25
  What are the core steps? You mentioned some of them
• 1:51:27
  earlier, but what do you see happening?
• 1:51:29
  What are the key things that have to happen?
• 1:51:34
  So the the I just there's a couple in my mind, so the no
• 1:51:38
  names or any of that stuff, but I'm just giving that she was the
• 1:51:40
  one who was walking out on him. So there's a there's an affair
• 1:51:45
  going on. And The thing is that what you
• 1:51:49
  do with that is you, you get the two to come together and they
• 1:51:53
  tell their tell talk, they tell their stories, talk about what's
• 1:51:57
  going on. So there's a season of
• 1:51:59
  collection of story information before you.
• 1:52:02
  Because not one size does not fit all.
• 1:52:05
  And for me to give you a prescription, so to speak, and a
• 1:52:08
  system in place without hearing your story, except for just
• 1:52:11
  knowing what's happened on the outside.
• 1:52:12
  Oh, you had an affair. Here's what you do.
• 1:52:14
  No, you got to sit and hear what's going on and what's her
• 1:52:17
  story? What's his story?
• 1:52:19
  And then and then you got to bring them together and say,
• 1:52:21
  what's your story together? And what?
• 1:52:23
  So you're, you're doing a more holistic frame rather than doing
• 1:52:27
  a Band-Aid. And so, so we, we don't take it
• 1:52:30
  as this is just just do a quick fix here.
• 1:52:33
  If you want to do, you want to really dig in and work.
• 1:52:36
  And during that season, if there's been an affair like that
• 1:52:39
  and it's an ongoing thing, there has to be thing with that person
• 1:52:43
  saying you need to cut that off and we need to, you need to stop
• 1:52:48
  it and to then look at why you were going there and it isn't
• 1:52:52
  because of him or it isn't because of her.
• 1:52:54
  That's not why there. There's much deeper than that.
• 1:52:57
  You're using that as an excuse. You're telling yourself a story
• 1:53:00
  that makes everybody think that you have a reason for going
• 1:53:03
  there. So we always tell ourselves
• 1:53:04
  stories so we can legitimize our mistakes.
• 1:53:09
  So we, we help the two of them separate, get their stories
• 1:53:12
  together and maybe even do a legal separation or a temporary
• 1:53:16
  separation so that there's focus on self personal development and
• 1:53:21
  then coming back and then talking about to the couple how
• 1:53:26
  they come back together. And then give them some basic
• 1:53:28
  foundational core principles, terms of conflict resolution,
• 1:53:34
  boundaries, listening, responding to each other, and
• 1:53:40
  just the basic foundational relational health tools and
• 1:53:44
  forgiveness and reconciliation. And not just saying forgive, but
• 1:53:48
  to actually work through the goodness process, which means it
• 1:53:51
  takes sometimes six months to a year to work through
• 1:53:53
  forgiveness. And it's, and it's, if it's a
• 1:53:56
  deep wound, there's no quick fix.
• 1:53:58
  And then what does it mean to reconcile?
• 1:54:00
  And so all of those things are key.
• 1:54:02
  And I've, I've got tons of stories that have walked through
• 1:54:06
  that process. And then I have others who did
• 1:54:08
  not walk through the process that he just gave up.
• 1:54:10
  And so you can't say everybody can recover.
• 1:54:15
  The only thing, well, I can say that everybody can recover if
• 1:54:18
  they're willing to do the work. But there are those who say no,
• 1:54:21
  this is just too bad. I'm hard.
• 1:54:23
  How about I start over? Is that typically the man
• 1:54:26
  actually, or would you say half the time it's the woman?
• 1:54:28
  It's just, it depends on the couple.
• 1:54:31
  And sometimes they're just one of them or neither of them want
• 1:54:34
  to even do the work. It's just they're not.
• 1:54:36
  It's, it's, it's too daunting, too painful.
• 1:54:39
  The, the typical thing for when marriages are in the tough spot
• 1:54:44
  is the guy usually goes to porn or he goes to a club or you
• 1:54:50
  know, prostitution or whatever, or he gets into an affair.
• 1:54:55
  The female has to have a sense. Most of them don't just jump.
• 1:55:00
  There's a lot of people there. There are some women and who are
• 1:55:03
  doing the same thing as men do, is they just jump from
• 1:55:05
  relationship to relationship with no connection.
• 1:55:08
  But what many women are doing is looking for a man who'll listen,
• 1:55:12
  who hears her story, respects her and gives her time.
• 1:55:16
  She feels treasured. She feels like she matters.
• 1:55:19
  And so she's looking for that. And it actually grows into
• 1:55:23
  something more. And she doesn't recognize until
• 1:55:25
  it's her heart's already there that she's got another man in
• 1:55:29
  her world just doing everything her husband's not.
• 1:55:32
  And that's the hard thing to turn around, right?
• 1:55:36
  The and so that I find that the hardest piece because when she's
• 1:55:41
  already when she finds somebody that actually has given her what
• 1:55:44
  her longings are in the moment that she's always had and the
• 1:55:47
  marriage has never been there or a rare or has moved away from
• 1:55:51
  that, then it it actually sets her up for trouble.
• 1:55:56
  But the one I'm thinking about, she did some really hard work
• 1:56:01
  and she faced it and they worked through all of it and their
• 1:56:05
  marriage is amazing. That I I cannot.
• 1:56:07
  This is five years later and I, I cannot believe how well
• 1:56:11
  they're doing. I want to ask you and I
• 1:56:15
  obviously want people to tell people how they can get in, you
• 1:56:19
  know, watch buying her and learn about Exodus cry.
• 1:56:22
  But I, I, I want to ask you about one more thing.
• 1:56:23
  We were talking about this before we got into this
• 1:56:25
  conversation on the podcast and it's very controversial, but I
• 1:56:29
  think it is also sort of in our culture today.
• 1:56:32
  And and myself, I've been very open about this, how
• 1:56:36
  contemptible child sexual abuse is, how horrific it is and how
• 1:56:40
  child sexual abusers, I think are not held high, high enough
• 1:56:43
  accountable in our culture. I know stories of sexual
• 1:56:47
  offenders who are, you know, consuming child sexual assault
• 1:56:51
  material and like trying to make arrangements to meet with
• 1:56:54
  children to abuse them and they get a slap on the wrist.
• 1:56:58
  You know, they maybe get a three-year prison sentence and
• 1:57:01
  it's commuted to 18 months or something and then they're out,
• 1:57:04
  they're out in public and who knows about any rehabilitation.
• 1:57:07
  I mean, often there are repeat offenders.
• 1:57:09
  You use that term earlier about getting that label of you're an
• 1:57:12
  offender, you're a sex offender, repeat offender.
• 1:57:14
  Often they are repeat offenders. You hear these horror stories.
• 1:57:18
  What is your view of especially how we should look at pedophiles
• 1:57:25
  in our culture? I think that, you know, there's
• 1:57:30
  some in the conservative space, especially saying death to
• 1:57:32
  pedophiles. If you commit one offense as a,
• 1:57:35
  you know, a pedophile, you should just get the death
• 1:57:37
  penalty right away. Can of pedophiles be
• 1:57:40
  rehabilitated in your view and whatever else you want to share
• 1:57:43
  on that time? So let me separate it out a
• 1:57:45
  little bit. So you have a pedophile is
• 1:57:48
  somebody who's committed to the lifestyle and believes that
• 1:57:51
  they're at loving and helping the child and they don't see
• 1:57:54
  anything wrong with what they're doing.
• 1:57:56
  They think that their actions are truly nurturing and loving
• 1:57:59
  the child. Pedophile is really hardcore.
• 1:58:04
  This is good. So pedophile is much more
• 1:58:08
  difficult to change than a molester.
• 1:58:11
  And there's a big difference between those two.
• 1:58:13
  So someone who has molested a child, there's one color you
• 1:58:16
  call a situational molester, which in the moment a bad
• 1:58:19
  pressure, a situation comes and whatever and opportunistic and
• 1:58:24
  they do it. It's a one time shot and they
• 1:58:26
  are sorry about it and they wish they'd have never done it again.
• 1:58:29
  And that's it. That's it.
• 1:58:30
  And then you have the one who sees himself.
• 1:58:34
  This is the one that's more typical, is the one who is a who
• 1:58:39
  sees himself emotionally at the age that they're molesting.
• 1:58:47
  And this one is the is the bigger, bigger one to address.
• 1:58:50
  And it's the one that is more redeemable because they're still
• 1:58:53
  in the they still can change. They still don't have the full
• 1:58:57
  thinking that that I am this is who I am.
• 1:59:01
  So I'll come back to that thing in a moment because there's a
• 1:59:04
  political movement that wants to say that that that the pedophile
• 1:59:07
  is is just born that way. And we'll go there in a minute,
• 1:59:10
  but I'm going to stay on this. So what we find is, is that when
• 1:59:15
  a when there's some kind of violence or harm done to the man
• 1:59:21
  or the woman because there are molesters on both men and women
• 1:59:25
  like. You're babysitting.
• 1:59:26
  Right. So that when they've been, when
• 1:59:29
  they see themselves as the age of when they were harmed.
• 1:59:34
  So in other words, something happens that causes them to
• 1:59:37
  emotionally shut down in the moment.
• 1:59:40
  So if that was at six years old, for instance, they they stop,
• 1:59:44
  they're stunted. They're emotionally, not every
• 1:59:46
  other part of their life just inside emotionally they're
• 1:59:49
  stunted. And what that means is they see
• 1:59:53
  themselves, their emotional self still at 675.
• 1:59:58
  So they are attracted to kids that age.
• 2:00:03
  So it is they have an appetite to be loved and to.
• 2:00:10
  Be and to care for and to nurture.
• 2:00:12
  Quote UN quote that age so. And love for them is sexualized.
• 2:00:17
  Sexualized is sexualized. Do you think that's the I mean,
• 2:00:19
  I don't know if you know the case with your babysitter.
• 2:00:22
  Yeah, yeah, I believe that's true.
• 2:00:23
  I don't know her story. But that she was sexually abused
• 2:00:27
  maybe around. That age, there's no question.
• 2:00:29
  Oh, do you think so? I think so.
• 2:00:31
  She was sexualized, There's no question.
• 2:00:33
  She was highly sexual and you know, kids don't grow up with
• 2:00:39
  that. They don't come.
• 2:00:40
  That doesn't that is not in closeness, doesn't have sex
• 2:00:43
  connected to it. When sex gets connected to
• 2:00:46
  children in children's activity, it's because somebody got
• 2:00:49
  sexualized and now they're acting out on all the others.
• 2:00:52
  What happened to them? So I don't have any question
• 2:00:57
  that that's the case. Like the person who molested me
• 2:01:00
  at 9 found out that he was being molested by a priest who was
• 2:01:06
  supposed to be counseling him through than the family through
• 2:01:09
  what was happening to them. So he was acting on me what was
• 2:01:13
  happening to him. And that is of common thread
• 2:01:16
  throughout the stories. And so for for me to go, you're
• 2:01:20
  a molester, I would say more like, you know what, no, you're
• 2:01:24
  not. You're a young man hurt and you
• 2:01:27
  passed on the same damage to me that was done to you.
• 2:01:32
  So I don't, I mean, obviously I was angry at the time and I had
• 2:01:37
  to be confronting him later in life.
• 2:01:39
  I confronted him and we worked through it and he owned it and.
• 2:01:43
  You got in touch with the with the older boy who had molested
• 2:01:46
  you at 9 and you guys had a conversation.
• 2:01:49
  Yep. And we're friends now.
• 2:01:51
  Wow. Yeah.
• 2:01:53
  And if and they see what's interesting in that.
• 2:01:56
  I don't want to go too far down that track, but what?
• 2:01:59
  What to see His tears and the pain he had for what happened to
• 2:02:07
  what he did to me. And then after we worked through
• 2:02:10
  that, he said, are you curious as to what was going on in me?
• 2:02:14
  And I said, boy, absolutely. And he said he told the story.
• 2:02:19
  And I had tears for that. And so my heart moved from anger
• 2:02:24
  to empathy because I saw that he was a little boy, too.
• 2:02:30
  Somebody took advantage of his innocence, and in a time of
• 2:02:33
  need, somebody took advantage of him.
• 2:02:36
  And so I don't see it the same. Does it lessen the fact that he
• 2:02:40
  hurt me? No.
• 2:02:41
  No, absolutely not. And he owned that.
• 2:02:44
  But at the same time, my heart has room for that's what happens
• 2:02:47
  when you start healing, is your heart moves from anger and
• 2:02:50
  resentment and bitterness to a place of of empathy and
• 2:02:56
  compassion and forgiveness. Yeah, but it didn't do without
• 2:03:04
  him owning it. So anyhow, come back to this.
• 2:03:09
  The molester needs to work through because we're every time
• 2:03:13
  that wipe at all sex offender stuff, it makes me so stinking
• 2:03:17
  mad. Sorry.
• 2:03:17
  It just infuriates me because they they want them to own their
• 2:03:23
  stuff and to see what they've done to the child and they want
• 2:03:26
  to punish them to the hilt and they're not looking at what
• 2:03:29
  happened. And so all they're doing is
• 2:03:32
  asking them to jump through hoops to make everybody happy,
• 2:03:35
  but they're not really addressing what was going on and
• 2:03:39
  why did he do what he do? Does it make it any less?
• 2:03:43
  Does it justify what he went through so that he now he did
• 2:03:46
  this? No, but it helps us not only
• 2:03:49
  understand what happened, but they actually arrested so it
• 2:03:52
  doesn't happen again. Because molesters, once they
• 2:03:55
  molest their they can say that they get up to 50 victims before
• 2:04:00
  the first time ever being caught and then in a a molester can
• 2:04:05
  have 3 to 400 victims in their lifetime and so.
• 2:04:11
  A child molester. A child molester and so then you
• 2:04:15
  want to arrest that, not just punish them.
• 2:04:20
  Punishment is important and don't get me wrong, I want them
• 2:04:22
  I. Think that's where most people
• 2:04:23
  would say put them in jail, put them in jail like politely like
• 2:04:27
  don't like, don't torture them, throw away the key.
• 2:04:31
  I think that's what a lot of people would say because they
• 2:04:33
  they're there's a repeat molestation that seems to occur.
• 2:04:38
  Yeah, but you don't. You can't.
• 2:04:41
  You can't legislate or arrest away the problem.
• 2:04:47
  Do you realize how many kids are molested?
• 2:04:50
  Think about this for just just do the just just just talk
• 2:04:53
  openly for a minute. One in three girls and one in
• 2:04:56
  five to seven boys will be sexually assaulted before the
• 2:04:59
  age of 18. How many children is that?
• 2:05:03
  Millions. And, and every child that's
• 2:05:05
  molested has a potential of remolesting.
• 2:05:09
  So how many is that? So we going to throw every junk
• 2:05:13
  in one in the jail and throw away the key.
• 2:05:16
  We're we're, we ain't going to have enough prisons for it, and
• 2:05:20
  I did. I'm not saying that everybody's
• 2:05:22
  a molester because it's not true, but there is a ton out
• 2:05:24
  there under the scenes, under the under the radar.
• 2:05:28
  Meaning you're saying there's a lot of molesting that's
• 2:05:30
  happening that we're not detecting.
• 2:05:32
  No, we're not dying. Not till later, no.
• 2:05:34
  They die and finally find out. Or they never talk about it
• 2:05:38
  ever. You know my grandma, before she
• 2:05:42
  died she said I will. I was molested, she says.
• 2:05:45
  But I will go to my grave and never tell who did it and I'm
• 2:05:49
  going holy crap ma grandma that's.
• 2:05:53
  Why? What was what was her reasoning
• 2:05:54
  did you say? She just said that it's
• 2:05:55
  disrespectful. Of the person of the person,
• 2:05:59
  right? And so I, I, we never knew.
• 2:06:02
  We never know. It's, it's the, it's, we'll
• 2:06:04
  never know. And The thing is, is that she
• 2:06:07
  went to her grave holding it. And the thing the the thing I'm
• 2:06:11
  going to get to is that if we can arrest that, if we can turn
• 2:06:17
  that around. And I have tons of stories, but
• 2:06:20
  that's true. And.
• 2:06:23
  Turning around. So that they're not molesting
• 2:06:26
  children. Turning around people that have
• 2:06:28
  committed sexual molestation of a child, but you're saying they
• 2:06:32
  are redeemable and you're able to, with the right recovery
• 2:06:35
  program, they're able to be rehabilitated.
• 2:06:37
  Exactly. I'd say that that most systems
• 2:06:40
  out there are terrible and they don't work and we want to know
• 2:06:44
  why they keep going back and they never get help.
• 2:06:47
  It's, it's mostly because they're not giving them good
• 2:06:50
  help, to be honest. I know when I went through it
• 2:06:53
  that it wasn't my molesting. I never molested a child.
• 2:06:56
  I never touched a child. So it wasn't my thing.
• 2:06:59
  But it doesn't make me holier than them.
• 2:07:02
  Just means that mine's different.
• 2:07:04
  And that fact that they, that when I was trying to go through
• 2:07:09
  the system and the, the level of shame and the level of punish in
• 2:07:13
  the name of, in the name of trying to bring healing, that we
• 2:07:16
  just shame them and we just punish them and thinking that we
• 2:07:19
  can punish, legislate and throw them in jail and it'll all just
• 2:07:23
  go away. No, they go to jail and then
• 2:07:26
  they talk to other molesters and then they learn how to do it
• 2:07:28
  better the next time. Meaning more secretive.
• 2:07:31
  More secretive and then you know, I guess I'm going to, I'll
• 2:07:35
  just take one more topic that goes into this and that is the
• 2:07:38
  child porn. So a child pornography is a
• 2:07:44
  crime scene photograph. For a child to be in a picture
• 2:07:49
  means a child had to be harmed. You can't have child porn
• 2:07:55
  without harming a child. So when you talk about molesters
• 2:08:00
  who pass child porn like boys would do trading baseball cards,
• 2:08:06
  and they tell stories and they keep, you know, the memories of
• 2:08:10
  some something about, you know, a ribbon or a pair of panties or
• 2:08:15
  something to remember that child.
• 2:08:17
  But the child porn getting passed on is, is is sexualized
• 2:08:23
  child abuse. But it's not only it's not only
• 2:08:27
  harmful to the child in the moment and so it's a crime scene
• 2:08:31
  happened, but now they have to live with that going all over
• 2:08:34
  the world and not knowing who all is getting their stuff off
• 2:08:39
  on their picture. So it never ever ever.
• 2:08:43
  It's like repeat molestation. Totally over and over and over
• 2:08:46
  again why it's so important to have felony around a child porn
• 2:08:51
  picture. And we think, Oh well, they only
• 2:08:53
  had a few hello, you're going to say you only had a they only
• 2:08:56
  molested 2 with repeat kids and that's no big deal.
• 2:08:59
  Are you kidding me? You had to harm the child to
• 2:09:01
  take that picture. Well, that's stories that I've
• 2:09:03
  heard and I've seen these cases, child sexual assault, material
• 2:09:08
  trading use and the prison sentences are a complete slap on
• 2:09:12
  the wrist, right. But to your point, you're
• 2:09:15
  saying, well, prison sentences aren't enough.
• 2:09:17
  You could put throw them all in jail and and throw away the key.
• 2:09:21
  But that's not the in your view. The solution there needs to be
• 2:09:24
  what? What is the?
• 2:09:26
  What is the path forward? The path forward is to have
• 2:09:29
  places for people to change and heal and and for future
• 2:09:35
  potential molesters as well. Why do we wait till they molest
• 2:09:39
  before we do something? So that means having safe
• 2:09:43
  environment for people who are we're going to.
• 2:09:48
  I hate this language, but because this is how the the the
• 2:09:53
  left is kind of the extreme left is verb or framed it, but it's
• 2:09:59
  child attraction. So if you have a child
• 2:10:01
  attraction or that you have, you're born with a child
• 2:10:05
  attraction as the way they look at it so.
• 2:10:07
  Minor attracted. Person yeah.
• 2:10:08
  Minor. Yeah.
• 2:10:09
  So it's like and. It's like this fun LGBT
• 2:10:12
  identity. Totally, and it's ridiculous.
• 2:10:14
  And you're saying it's a it's a deeply wounded, broken state,
• 2:10:18
  likely to do with your own experience of being molested
• 2:10:21
  yourself as a child that needs deep therapy before you would
• 2:10:24
  even want to offend, or before you have the opportunity to
• 2:10:27
  offend and God forbid. Some people who are molested
• 2:10:30
  never do never pass it on. So not every person who's been
• 2:10:34
  molested. I would say most.
• 2:10:35
  Would you say that's fair? Most people who are molested
• 2:10:37
  don't molest. But they, some of them may stay
• 2:10:40
  in the child attraction world where they, they fantasize and
• 2:10:44
  they see imagery and they consume video.
• 2:10:47
  And so they play with it up to the line of never doing it.
• 2:10:50
  But they think that they're getting away with it.
• 2:10:51
  But every video they see they're that's they're they're paying
• 2:10:55
  for a child to be harmed. So they contribute to the mess.
• 2:11:00
  They're not free and clear. So the idea is if we can arrest
• 2:11:04
  that, if we can help people in that framework, Do you know how
• 2:11:07
  many people will come forward and say, I have a I'm I have a
• 2:11:12
  minor attraction fantasy? You think that they would?
• 2:11:15
  Nobody. No, you know.
• 2:11:16
  Why say that today? Yeah, you know why?
• 2:11:18
  Yeah, right. So then how in the world are we
• 2:11:20
  helping them? Well, the only people talking
• 2:11:24
  about it are these kind of far left propagandists who want to
• 2:11:28
  sort of make that a OK entity. Like they want to affirm it.
• 2:11:32
  Well, they say as long as they're not acting on it, we can
• 2:11:34
  affirm it. Like it's not innate.
• 2:11:36
  It's not inherently a bad thing to be let it just be.
• 2:11:40
  That would be this horrible, you know, viewpoint.
• 2:11:43
  But to your point, you're saying it's a real wounded state that
• 2:11:45
  many people find themselves in. And there's no, there's no
• 2:11:49
  outlet. There's no way outlet is the
• 2:11:51
  wrong word. Excuse me?
• 2:11:52
  There's no path to healing and freedom from that.
• 2:11:54
  And. Especially if you're saying that
• 2:11:56
  they're minor attracted, that they're born that way.
• 2:11:58
  So that's normal and that's okay.
• 2:12:01
  Just play with the imagery and play with the fantasy.
• 2:12:04
  But just don't, just don't do harm.
• 2:12:05
  Well, wait a minute. As soon as you view an image,
• 2:12:08
  you're harming. Well, there's this very now
• 2:12:10
  infamous interview that happened with Dennis Prager.
• 2:12:15
  I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a radio talk
• 2:12:17
  show host. And I understand he's not doing
• 2:12:19
  well physically right now. So we should pray for him to
• 2:12:21
  feel better, but he to do to be recovered.
• 2:12:24
  But apparently he said on a show that, you know, as long as it
• 2:12:28
  wasn't real children, if it was kind of cartoons of child porn,
• 2:12:32
  it wouldn't be innately wrong. Well, now you too.
• 2:12:37
  We could spend a whole week in session about child porn.
• 2:12:43
  And because I worked with LAPD for years, I I didn't.
• 2:12:47
  I feel like. Gene, we got to do a follow up
• 2:12:49
  episode about about preventing and protecting children
• 2:12:52
  specifically. I know sex trafficking anti
• 2:12:55
  sexual trafficking work includes this but I think this is its
• 2:12:57
  own. Where they're getting away with
• 2:12:59
  where they're getting, I'll just say this real quick without and
• 2:13:01
  know that we need to have more conversation, right?
• 2:13:03
  Because otherwise we'll be here another five hours for sure.
• 2:13:07
  Is that when the the reason why they get away with online child
• 2:13:12
  porn is, is that they take ahead of a child and they put
• 2:13:16
  something else in its place or they don't or it's digital
• 2:13:20
  messed with. And so you don't know whether
• 2:13:22
  that's a real child or whether it's not they blurred the lines
• 2:13:25
  so that you can't prosecute because right now.
• 2:13:28
  Now it can't be prosecuted. Well, you can't prosecute
• 2:13:31
  something is because the whole basis for the law is that you
• 2:13:35
  have to have a victim. So who's the child?
• 2:13:40
  And if you don't have a victim, then what do you do with it?
• 2:13:43
  And so it's very dark and it's very purposeful.
• 2:13:47
  And you know, groups like NAMBLA and NAMBLA, you know, Love
• 2:13:52
  Association and Renee Gaian Society and some of those that
• 2:13:56
  are pedophile organizations that are that are trying to get
• 2:14:00
  league everything legal are pushing in that the way you push
• 2:14:04
  is you start with cartoons. Cartoons is the entry level.
• 2:14:08
  So, so evil. It is so, anyhow.
• 2:14:12
  It is its own topic. And thank you for, you know,
• 2:14:16
  going with me down these different paths.
• 2:14:17
  I know there's so much more to talk about here in terms of
• 2:14:20
  solutions. You've been spending now decades
• 2:14:23
  on solution, first for yourself and now for others.
• 2:14:25
  You've got this documentary film buying her out.
• 2:14:29
  You have multiple organizations you're affiliated with that
• 2:14:32
  you've been working with. Tell me about the solutions and
• 2:14:36
  why you have hope. Because we are The Walking
• 2:14:39
  wounded in this country, sexually speaking, and there's
• 2:14:42
  so much brokenness and perversion.
• 2:14:44
  What would you say are your top reasons for hope that you've
• 2:14:47
  seen? Since 1985, I worked in the anti
• 2:14:55
  turn out trafficking and anti pornography work and I got all
• 2:15:00
  kinds of awards and got all, you know, kind of accolades and for
• 2:15:05
  shutting down businesses, closing up shop, stopping the
• 2:15:09
  porn and shutting down those clubs and getting them
• 2:15:13
  regulated, getting the strongest possible laws in place.
• 2:15:17
  And we'd And then I was hired by the National Coalition against
• 2:15:21
  pornography and asked me to come and do the same thing in other
• 2:15:25
  cities that I did in LA. And so I did that.
• 2:15:28
  So for for several years in Ohio, the organization was
• 2:15:34
  helping build coalitions in other cities across the nation.
• 2:15:38
  I'm getting to this point with saying we did all that work.
• 2:15:42
  We should. We did a lot of, we did a lot of
• 2:15:45
  work to impact the business. Because you understood the
• 2:15:48
  buyer. Right.
• 2:15:49
  But at the end of the day, all those people that I work with,
• 2:15:54
  we got all those businesses regulated and, and got them to a
• 2:15:58
  place. Some of them got closed down
• 2:15:59
  because they were just fronts for prostitution and all that.
• 2:16:03
  Anyhow, we got them all closed down and then the Internet comes
• 2:16:07
  and everything that we had done literally went sky eye double
• 2:16:12
  tripled and, and everybody had this.
• 2:16:15
  It's like you poured your heart in to changing this and it just
• 2:16:19
  got way worse just by the Internet becoming so that now
• 2:16:23
  you can't. How do you even, how do you even
• 2:16:26
  do this? So what it did was it made me
• 2:16:29
  think, we're not changing this. We're we're not by just doing
• 2:16:34
  the legislation, law enforcement, judicial process,
• 2:16:38
  community awareness, We're not stopping this.
• 2:16:42
  It's important to do. It's necessary to have guards,
• 2:16:45
  safeguards and punishment and consequences, but we have to
• 2:16:49
  change this. And so I did a, a re evaluation
• 2:16:52
  and I said, OK, So what was it that made me change?
• 2:16:56
  And I'm going, well, I already knew it was wrong for years and
• 2:16:59
  I didn't stop. So it isn't going to be
• 2:17:01
  awareness that's going to stop it.
• 2:17:03
  It actually has to get to the heart of this.
• 2:17:06
  It has to get to the heart of the buyer.
• 2:17:08
  In other words, the why, What's the appetite?
• 2:17:11
  What drives a man to to think and and consume?
• 2:17:16
  So they're the mind and the heart, the thinking and then
• 2:17:20
  what causes the heart to want. So the idea of how what drove me
• 2:17:25
  to want to think or to think that I could buy a woman, pay
• 2:17:29
  for her and have no remorse. And that's going to change.
• 2:17:35
  That's what's going to change things when I change the heart
• 2:17:38
  of the consumer. And it just hit me and going,
• 2:17:41
  well, what's going wrong is we're not really getting to the
• 2:17:44
  heart of this. We're we're just doing
• 2:17:46
  manicuring everything and it yeah.
• 2:17:49
  Is it good work? Yes, Heck yes.
• 2:17:51
  It's good work. And I would never downplay
• 2:17:53
  anything that's been done that's a do more of it.
• 2:17:56
  It's great. But we're missing the element of
• 2:17:59
  what drives this. And when you're looking at the
• 2:18:02
  second largest income for organized crime is trafficking.
• 2:18:10
  Versus drugs. Versus arms, firearms.
• 2:18:16
  And so drugs is third. You think about how much money
• 2:18:21
  is being spent on that and it's unbelievable amount of money.
• 2:18:26
  And So what that means is, and that this is something that it's
• 2:18:29
  really important. That means there's a dedicated
• 2:18:32
  consumer. So it's like apple pie in
• 2:18:36
  America. We're not getting the, we think
• 2:18:39
  this is over in a corner somewhere.
• 2:18:41
  We think this is over in some kind of a backwoods or dark part
• 2:18:45
  of the web. It may be there, but there's so
• 2:18:50
  much more to this than in the dark.
• 2:18:54
  This is being done right under our nose.
• 2:18:56
  We're consumers. We have the Internet.
• 2:18:58
  A person can be consuming pornography right in front of
• 2:19:02
  you on their phone and you wouldn't know it.
• 2:19:04
  How many people in churches, your average church right now
• 2:19:07
  would you say is well, using porn?
• 2:19:10
  I know that can be up in the 90 percentage profile potentially
• 2:19:13
  depending on on the given group. What about prostitutes?
• 2:19:18
  There's not any real. And I shouldn't say 90%.
• 2:19:21
  I know there's numbers that say that.
• 2:19:22
  I, I wouldn't put it that high, but it's, it's, it's too high.
• 2:19:25
  It's high. I'm going to, I'm just going to
• 2:19:27
  say that the in the conservative number is that in the upper 60%
• 2:19:34
  of men and medium range of 40% for women, the women is
• 2:19:39
  increasing big time. That used to be way back in like
• 2:19:43
  18 percent, 20% for porn. Users.
• 2:19:45
  For porn users and also the clubs and so the the women are
• 2:19:50
  becoming consumers and so we look at that and we're going OK
• 2:19:56
  the the appetite to that is the why and to answer that is the
• 2:20:01
  important because when we look at the Christian community alone
• 2:20:06
  we're saying that there's men who are saying they're they're.
• 2:20:11
  Practicing practicing their Christianity, which means
• 2:20:14
  reading their Bible, going to church, doing their spiritual
• 2:20:17
  stuff and pay their ties. And those people, there's a
• 2:20:24
  large percentage that are actually consuming and some of
• 2:20:27
  them actually think that it's OK that it's.
• 2:20:32
  Sex is a need, right? And so we have some who see it
• 2:20:36
  as bad. And so when you're looking at
• 2:20:38
  church and you're looking at, you know, you have the the the
• 2:20:41
  liberals framework of church and you have the conservative frame
• 2:20:45
  and they see things differently. But the idea is that there is a
• 2:20:47
  large consumer. And so the appetite is so, so
• 2:20:51
  big that we must if we're going to be a church and then just
• 2:20:55
  going to get to this whole thing of hope.
• 2:20:57
  Sorry to kind of get around, but the, if the, if the church, if
• 2:21:04
  the church wants to be relevant to the people that are attending
• 2:21:09
  and the people that are in their culture, then we have to address
• 2:21:12
  this issue. But we're not.
• 2:21:16
  There's only 10% of the church is actually doing something like
• 2:21:21
  a small group or some kind of a workshop.
• 2:21:25
  Sex recovery 10% at the Max. But you're saying every parish
• 2:21:29
  and church in America should have some sort of program?
• 2:21:32
  We say we want to be relevant and we want to and help the
• 2:21:35
  people, I mean literally help the people sitting in our
• 2:21:38
  congregation. Then we've we've got to address
• 2:21:40
  this. This is not a small baby.
• 2:21:43
  What if you said that that 50% of your congregation struggles
• 2:21:47
  with some kind of fantasy and some kind of porn consumption?
• 2:21:50
  What are you, what are you going to do with that?
• 2:21:51
  You're going to just deny that it's there.
• 2:21:53
  You're just going to not pretend like it's not important.
• 2:21:58
  It it's a perfect opportunity for the church to actually have
• 2:22:00
  impact in the and become relevant in this culture by
• 2:22:04
  providing and backing up their word that says, hey, this isn't
• 2:22:08
  healthy. So here's what we're going to
• 2:22:10
  do. We're going to provide resources
• 2:22:11
  for you to get help. We're going to give you a safe
• 2:22:13
  space to heal and to change. And we're going to get you on
• 2:22:16
  your feet. But we're not doing that.
• 2:22:18
  Well, I think, you know, I, I think about it, we are the
• 2:22:21
  church, you know, people. I'm a Catholic and so we have,
• 2:22:25
  you know, churches worshiping God.
• 2:22:27
  It's the Mass that's receiving the Eucharist.
• 2:22:29
  But it's like the lay people, we're the church.
• 2:22:31
  So you doing a mission to serve and help these people, you know,
• 2:22:36
  pro-life mission, whatever the mission is like this is part of
• 2:22:39
  God's. Church.
• 2:22:40
  It has to be and it's in service of not just his people, but in
• 2:22:44
  certain service of the other souls even that are not in the
• 2:22:47
  Church yet. When you talk about, you know,
• 2:22:51
  this kind of a program that the church could have, what would
• 2:22:54
  you say are the top three best practical resources that any
• 2:22:59
  Christian should be aware of that they that can be used to
• 2:23:02
  help somebody who is struggling with porn use or with other
• 2:23:08
  sexually immoral behavior or activities?
• 2:23:11
  The one that's most equipped to handle the numbers across the
• 2:23:15
  board is a group called Pure Desire and they have programs
• 2:23:19
  and counselors that actually help in the church, men and
• 2:23:23
  women and they're really good at it.
• 2:23:27
  The and that the Mint when I was one of my one of my mentors is a
• 2:23:32
  guy's name is Ted Roberts. He wrote a book on it called
• 2:23:36
  pure desire. I'm in his book.
• 2:23:38
  He's a good guy. I like him.
• 2:23:40
  Very brilliant, smart, good program.
• 2:23:43
  Our work we do, we retreats, workshops, conferences,
• 2:23:46
  counseling retreats. So, and we're authentic
• 2:23:50
  relationships, international. And, but The thing is, we're
• 2:23:54
  still in the middle of trying to get, you know, the funding the
• 2:23:59
  get the, so we can get ourselves online better and to, to put up
• 2:24:02
  systems that people can get help.
• 2:24:04
  Because it's not going to just be doing a retreat somewhere
• 2:24:08
  where I have 60 people show up and then you do the hard work.
• 2:24:11
  Hallelujah for that. But I, how many, how many?
• 2:24:13
  You know, millions are struggling and I'm only doing 60
• 2:24:16
  at a time. So we have to do some some out
• 2:24:19
  we have to grow this but it but there are other organizations as
• 2:24:23
  well and you just kind of look at there's some online.
• 2:24:27
  What is that? Oh, OK, come.
• 2:24:30
  It comes to me in a second, you heard?
• 2:24:32
  Of covenant eyes. Covenant Eyes is a computer
• 2:24:36
  software program, right? And there are a lot of Organism
• 2:24:40
  software programs out there that provide real accountability for
• 2:24:45
  for the person who's consuming. And so that's really good and
• 2:24:50
  they have some good information. But the people who are actually
• 2:24:53
  doing the work with people in the trenches is where I'm.
• 2:24:58
  So that's where pure desire is. Yeah, so.
• 2:25:01
  They're different kinds of tools.
• 2:25:02
  Yeah, Covenant Eyes is not necessarily doing that.
• 2:25:04
  They're an informational piece and they're a software company
• 2:25:08
  and they're great. I love them.
• 2:25:09
  We, we love them for, you know, just it's a good thing for
• 2:25:13
  anyone to have on their phone, their computer.
• 2:25:15
  It's a way to protect your family.
• 2:25:17
  Yeah. And so you, you having having
• 2:25:22
  good software, There's other programs out there and I don't
• 2:25:25
  have them in front of me, but there are programs out there
• 2:25:27
  where you can actually know what your children are consuming and
• 2:25:31
  what they're doing on social media and all that.
• 2:25:34
  It's it's necessary because right now if you look at only
• 2:25:38
  fans, right and we're seeing kids, you know, so dark.
• 2:25:44
  It's dark and. We're all becoming pornified
• 2:25:46
  together. I, I, I know I'm taking a
• 2:25:48
  different route. So thank you so much for kind of
• 2:25:50
  going these different directions back to that question of hope.
• 2:25:54
  You were talking about how you were doing all this work in the
• 2:25:56
  90s and making all this progress and all these other groups,
• 2:26:00
  coalitions fighting, trafficking, fighting
• 2:26:02
  pornography, and then bam, Internet.
• 2:26:06
  And it's just a complete insanity today, like the
• 2:26:08
  proliferation of child sexual assault material.
• 2:26:11
  There is obviously the rise of not only fans, everyone's job
• 2:26:14
  pornifying themselves directly. I think I don't know if child
• 2:26:19
  abuse rates have gone up. My guess would be they they
• 2:26:21
  would have in the in the in the wake of all of this.
• 2:26:25
  There is it is complete. You could say Sodom and Gomorrah
• 2:26:29
  if you want to use a biblical reference, but it is The Walking
• 2:26:32
  wounded out there. Yeah, the that there are two two
• 2:26:37
  things, two ways to look at this.
• 2:26:39
  The one is, is that we're going to hell in a handbasket, right.
• 2:26:43
  And that this is worse than we ever dreamed.
• 2:26:45
  This is our worst nightmare of those who have been in this
• 2:26:47
  battle for a long time are going Oh my gosh, this is way beyond
• 2:26:51
  anything that I could have ever imagined.
• 2:26:52
  Who could think that a child could sell herself at 14 online
• 2:26:56
  in a privacy of her bedroom and make money?
• 2:26:58
  And sometimes their dad's. Giving them, well, they don't
• 2:27:00
  know because the kids are doing that while their parents are at
• 2:27:02
  work, right? Or they're doing it at bedtime
• 2:27:05
  when the nobody is up. So that the whole idea of
• 2:27:08
  monetizing because how would you, how would you even how, how
• 2:27:12
  would you even prosecute? You wouldn't even know How do
• 2:27:14
  you get that? It's so hard to go after.
• 2:27:16
  So anyhow, so you have that like, Oh my gosh, we're at the
• 2:27:19
  word, this is a disaster. Or we can look at this and say
• 2:27:23
  this is the greatest opportunity church has ever had to have
• 2:27:27
  impact. Christians I've ever had.
• 2:27:30
  Yeah, and the what do we need to do?
• 2:27:32
  Well, first, this is absolutely necessary.
• 2:27:36
  So if my people who are called by my name will humble
• 2:27:39
  themselves and pray. So the first step is face your
• 2:27:42
  own stuff. So how are you tied to this?
• 2:27:46
  And I have so many people who want to be in the anti porn
• 2:27:48
  world that actually just came out.
• 2:27:51
  They're still in it and they want to fight porn.
• 2:27:54
  And I'm saying no, I want you to fight porn here first.
• 2:27:57
  I want you to deal with it here first.
• 2:27:59
  Because if you don't deal with it here, you're just going to go
• 2:28:02
  right back in the hole. It's just a matter of time.
• 2:28:04
  I'm not going to set you up. It's like asking somebody to to
• 2:28:08
  go to combat alcoholism. And I have them work in the bar.
• 2:28:11
  It's, it's just not wise, right? So deal with your own stuff 1st.
• 2:28:16
  And so a lot of the women that are in the anti trafficking
• 2:28:19
  world are in it because they've been wounded and they've been
• 2:28:21
  harmed and they've been victims of it.
• 2:28:23
  Hallelujah that you're using your efforts for good.
• 2:28:27
  But if you don't heal too, then you're putting your venom and
• 2:28:32
  your harm on everyone. You're, you're not helping
• 2:28:35
  anybody. You're anger about that helping,
• 2:28:38
  because helping means that you actually help people heal, not
• 2:28:43
  just get them out. That's great.
• 2:28:46
  You know how many people we've gotten out of the industry and
• 2:28:49
  they go back because we give them nothing to really follow up
• 2:28:52
  with? Well.
• 2:28:52
  We were just talking with Brittany de la Mora again.
• 2:28:56
  It was born again, went to a church, had this born again
• 2:28:58
  experience, went right back in afterwards.
• 2:29:02
  It was like her way she made money, the guy was involved and
• 2:29:06
  it took years totally to really get fully out.
• 2:29:09
  So do the inner. Is amazing, you know, speaking
• 2:29:11
  out about this, but it was, it was a year's process.
• 2:29:14
  So you do the inner work 1st, and it doesn't mean you can't
• 2:29:17
  help, but you help at the level that you're capable in your own
• 2:29:22
  heart to handle. So you help as you feel
• 2:29:27
  healthier to do so, but do the personal work first.
• 2:29:31
  So the thing the biggest mistake I made was I got into the anti
• 2:29:34
  porn fight before I did the anti porn fight here.
• 2:29:37
  Yeah, I'm curious about the timeline.
• 2:29:38
  You made a comment earlier about 44 years in the work and you he
• 2:29:42
  can't be that old. So I was thinking you must, you
• 2:29:45
  would you got involved in this in your 30s at minimum.
• 2:29:48
  OK. But you said you were still
• 2:29:50
  falling, still falling. So you got involved in the work
• 2:29:53
  even while you were not clean yet, and you're telling people
• 2:29:57
  don't do that, don't do that, do the work even if it takes a
• 2:30:00
  decade? Because I it it, I had great
• 2:30:03
  intentions because I absolutely hated what that was that did to
• 2:30:07
  my world. But what I was doing is putting
• 2:30:10
  all my unresolved stuff into the fight.
• 2:30:12
  And it makes me, I, I, I'm, I come across judgmental, I come
• 2:30:18
  across angry. I come across as non relational.
• 2:30:23
  I it's because I'm still still undone here, right?
• 2:30:27
  So I'm trying to do the fight out here.
• 2:30:29
  And so I start fighting people when I really want to fight the
• 2:30:33
  system, but I want to fight this first.
• 2:30:35
  So it's do their personal work and then and doing the personal
• 2:30:39
  work, then you bring other men along, other women along, start
• 2:30:43
  helping them heal. And then as you feel healing
• 2:30:47
  you, you can step into the fight, but you're actually
• 2:30:50
  stepping in the fight already when you help others start
• 2:30:52
  healing, you're actually stepping in the fight when you
• 2:30:54
  actually resolve your own stuff because you're 1 less consumer
• 2:31:00
  or one less victim. So do the work personally 1st
• 2:31:05
  and we want to jump in the fight because we know how damage it is
• 2:31:08
  and how it's hurting people. But take a step back and give
• 2:31:14
  yourself space and get into it, and then find groups and
• 2:31:17
  organizations that you can volunteer for.
• 2:31:20
  And your favorite for doing the work when you keep saying doing
• 2:31:24
  the work you have, you have authentic relationships,
• 2:31:27
  authentic relationships international.
• 2:31:31
  Would you say connect with me? I can I can I can help provide
• 2:31:34
  that template for that for you. So we've skipped around the,
• 2:31:39
  the, actually the, the heart and soul of what we do.
• 2:31:41
  We haven't talked about and it's not anybody's fault this we have
• 2:31:44
  a lot going when we're talking. But the heart and center of this
• 2:31:48
  is the scriptures teach that, that everything in scripture is
• 2:31:54
  dependent on 2 scriptures. What are they to love God with
• 2:31:59
  all your heart, soul and mind. And they'll love your neighbor
• 2:32:01
  as yourself. So it's relational.
• 2:32:05
  So everything depends upon relationships.
• 2:32:09
  And so when someone says I have sobriety, I say, OK, that's
• 2:32:13
  cool. You're so bright you've but
• 2:32:14
  you've been away from your drug or whatever for for five years,
• 2:32:18
  five months, three weeks, whatever.
• 2:32:20
  Good for you, glad for you. But I want to ask the more
• 2:32:23
  important question, how are your relationships?
• 2:32:26
  Because that's what's going to take to change.
• 2:32:29
  If you still have the big messes and you're free of your drug or
• 2:32:34
  free of porn or free of whatever and you're still, your
• 2:32:39
  relationships are hell in a handbasket, then you are still
• 2:32:42
  going to go back. Why?
• 2:32:44
  Because it's those broken relationships that got you
• 2:32:47
  there. And so you'd begin to, to
• 2:32:51
  restore and rebuild your relational world.
• 2:32:55
  And so that means I want, so to help somebody heal, I want to
• 2:32:59
  first of all, look at the things that sabotage your ability to
• 2:33:02
  connect, your ability to have close relationships.
• 2:33:06
  And when you look at anyone who's gone through trauma, has
• 2:33:09
  gone through hurt and pain, they got walls that are a mile thick
• 2:33:12
  and they're not letting anybody in.
• 2:33:14
  So they're relating from like me standing behind the wall over
• 2:33:17
  there and trying to talk to you. You're not going to get the fool
• 2:33:20
  me. You're it's, there's distance
• 2:33:21
  there so everybody can see that. So the only way we hit that
• 2:33:25
  brings healing here is I'm going to use the word intimacy into
• 2:33:30
  me. See that you see into my life.
• 2:33:34
  You see me for the struggles and you see me for my strengths and
• 2:33:38
  you still love me. That's what I need.
• 2:33:41
  Both men and women need intimacy, not just for sex, but
• 2:33:46
  because intimacy and sex are not the same thing.
• 2:33:48
  So I need intimacy, I need closeness, I need connection.
• 2:33:52
  I am a relational being. And if I have good connections,
• 2:33:57
  it gives me the life that I need to be able to say no to the
• 2:34:01
  dark, to the to the dark stuff, to, to the unhealthy stuff, to
• 2:34:03
  the superficial stuff. So the, the goal is rebuild the
• 2:34:08
  relational world and what are the things that are getting in
• 2:34:11
  the way will help you deal with those the pain that you're
• 2:34:14
  carrying that you don't trust, you don't want to be vulnerable,
• 2:34:17
  you don't want to risk. Well, let's get into that.
• 2:34:19
  Let's look at the shame and then we heal and begin to learn and
• 2:34:22
  get the tools and then we begin to look at what are our needs
• 2:34:26
  relationally. And as we learn to do healthier
• 2:34:29
  relationships, the healthier we become and the healthier choices
• 2:34:35
  we make. So this is not about stopping
• 2:34:39
  something. This is about becoming
• 2:34:40
  something. And so I know that sounds really
• 2:34:44
  like pretty simple. No, it's, it's amazing.
• 2:34:49
  It's it's spot on. It's spot on.
• 2:34:51
  Well, because what is moral law? It's about it's about rightly
• 2:34:54
  ordered relationships, the 10 commandments.
• 2:34:57
  It's all about how do you relate to God and each other and also
• 2:35:00
  yourself. And that's the, that's the whole
• 2:35:03
  question about how do we order our behavior.
• 2:35:06
  And it, you know that, I mean, I don't want to go too far down
• 2:35:08
  this, but it's like when Jesus says, hey, you know, just talk
• 2:35:12
  to the people. It says, you know, haven't we
• 2:35:14
  done all these things in your name?
• 2:35:15
  And we've accomplished all this. We've cast out demons, we've
• 2:35:18
  healed the sick and we've changed the lives.
• 2:35:20
  And Jesus says, I don't even know you.
• 2:35:24
  And what is he doing? He's separating what our doing
• 2:35:27
  from who we are in connection. What is important is it's
• 2:35:31
  relational connection because connection brings life,
• 2:35:35
  connection brings joy, connection brings hope.
• 2:35:39
  And when we have that, we have everything.
• 2:35:43
  And when we, we sacrifice it, we get hurt.
• 2:35:48
  So I, I want to focus, if you don't mind one second around the
• 2:35:52
  draw to pornography. I kept talking about the why So
• 2:35:57
  the, the whole idea of looking at the what drives, what is the
• 2:36:05
  need 1st. And the first thing is that I
• 2:36:08
  longed for connection. I longed for intimacy, but I was
• 2:36:12
  too afraid to do so because I was afraid that if you saw the
• 2:36:16
  real me, it would be the end of me.
• 2:36:19
  So I have walls up. I had, I didn't let anybody in.
• 2:36:22
  And so the draw to porn was that this woman positioned herself in
• 2:36:27
  the pictures that said, here I am, I want you, welcome to my
• 2:36:31
  world. And that was that was I felt
• 2:36:36
  wanted, I felt desired, I felt important.
• 2:36:39
  It doesn't mean I am going to get that it's the thirst that
• 2:36:42
  it's touching, right? Welcome to my world.
• 2:36:45
  I want you. You matter to me and I'm wide
• 2:36:48
  open. There's no clothes.
• 2:36:50
  Everything is there's no hiddenness.
• 2:36:52
  It has the sense of the illusion that there's, you know, intimacy
• 2:36:57
  because so, But the truth is then that no matter how much I
• 2:37:01
  go to that image, it's going to walk.
• 2:37:04
  She's not going to be in my world.
• 2:37:06
  She's not going to hug me. She's not going to cry for me or
• 2:37:09
  be sad for me. She's not going to celebrate
• 2:37:11
  with me for the world. She doesn't know me.
• 2:37:13
  I don't know her. So there is no intimacy.
• 2:37:16
  So it's the illusion of intimacy that drew me to the material,
• 2:37:21
  but it's real intimacy that changes it.
• 2:37:28
  That is a huge deal. It's not small because what I
• 2:37:33
  see is we keep going back to the dry well.
• 2:37:35
  When Jesus went to the woman at the well, he's saying the three
• 2:37:39
  men you've been with, none of those are going to quench your
• 2:37:41
  thirst. You're going to still keep going
• 2:37:43
  back to that well because you're going to always end up thirsty.
• 2:37:47
  What I bring brings life. What I bring quenches your
• 2:37:50
  thirst. And the idea is that he's
• 2:37:52
  offering her relationship and that's the point is that we're
• 2:37:57
  intimacy is the need. It's not sex.
• 2:37:59
  So it's when two people know each other inside and out.
• 2:38:04
  You see me, I see you, and there's, there's no hiddenness,
• 2:38:09
  no secrets, no pretending, no hiding.
• 2:38:12
  And you see the real me. You see my struggles, you see my
• 2:38:15
  fears, you see my mistakes, you see my strength, you see my
• 2:38:18
  gifting. And you're still attracted to me
• 2:38:22
  and I see yours. And I'm still attracted to you,
• 2:38:26
  to my wife. I'm attracted to her.
• 2:38:28
  So the so the two of us are fully seen and fully loved.
• 2:38:33
  That's our need right there. Fully seen and fully loved.
• 2:38:38
  So when we get that, then sex becomes an outflow of intimacy.
• 2:38:46
  You can't have intimacy from sex because I paid for that, did
• 2:38:51
  that, been there all over. And sex with somebody and they
• 2:38:54
  didn't know me and I didn't know them.
• 2:38:57
  So it's all an illusion. It's all empty.
• 2:38:59
  They walk away. They're not in my life.
• 2:39:02
  And so, yeah, for the moment, it's, it feels great, but it
• 2:39:06
  actually, it just creates even a greater whole.
• 2:39:09
  So they have intimacy where two people are seen and know each
• 2:39:13
  other and love each other. That's the need.
• 2:39:15
  That means that I don't need sex to have the relationship work.
• 2:39:20
  I need intimacy and sex becomes a celebration of that
• 2:39:24
  connection. And so it's not about needing to
• 2:39:27
  learn about sex and behaviors and and different positions and
• 2:39:30
  different styles. It's about learning how to
• 2:39:34
  connect and learning what is getting in a way so that we have
• 2:39:38
  better connection. So intimacy is our sex.
• 2:39:42
  The way God created it to be is meant to be an outflow, a
• 2:39:46
  celebration of connection. It's never meant to be
• 2:39:49
  experienced outside of connection.
• 2:39:51
  Connection is always the the groundwork that makes sex work.
• 2:39:56
  Well, it's so wild I have to. Just note that our entire sexual
• 2:40:00
  sexual education system, all our sex Ed today.
• 2:40:04
  Is about the physical feeling. Is it safe?
• 2:40:07
  Do I like this? It's not about a relationship,
• 2:40:10
  and the only relationship sex belongs in is a marriage,
• 2:40:12
  because that's the only set. Up where you are.
• 2:40:15
  All in one flesh for life, total commitment, total trust, total
• 2:40:19
  intimacy, and then sex is the one flesh union to show the
• 2:40:24
  spiritual emotional thing that's happened.
• 2:40:27
  But we don't we? Our culture, we, we brainwash a
• 2:40:30
  generation of children. I mean, this gets me worked up.
• 2:40:32
  We brainwash a generation of children to think that sex is
• 2:40:35
  about a touch. Right.
• 2:40:38
  As opposed to our relationship. And when a couple comes in and
• 2:40:42
  they say our sex life's a mess, I'm saying, OK, stop for a
• 2:40:46
  second. It's not your sex life that's a
• 2:40:49
  mess. How are you connecting?
• 2:40:53
  And 100 percent, 100%, they're not connecting.
• 2:40:59
  So we do the work to help them get reconnected.
• 2:41:03
  And believe me, when you get them connected, you don't have
• 2:41:06
  to talk about the sex part because we figure it out.
• 2:41:10
  They can figure that out. You know, it's just the reality
• 2:41:13
  of that and that if sex was the need, then children would need
• 2:41:17
  it at birth and and and grandparents would have to have
• 2:41:20
  it too to survive or a paralegic would have to have it.
• 2:41:23
  Some or somebody in the hospital would have to have it.
• 2:41:25
  We. Know that.
• 2:41:27
  Yeah, yeah, right. Because food need is eating,
• 2:41:31
  drinking, breathing air, right? I, I, I know I'm preaching to
• 2:41:34
  the choir, but it's it I need is something you cannot live
• 2:41:38
  without. So why is it that we can live
• 2:41:41
  without sex and survive? And the truth is, is that some
• 2:41:45
  people are called to live celibate lives.
• 2:41:49
  And how in the world does God call on them to a less than
• 2:41:52
  perfect life because they're not doing sex?
• 2:41:54
  No, not at all. No, sex is meant to be a gift to
• 2:41:58
  us to celebrate their connection in the right scenario, which is
• 2:42:02
  the marriage, the man and woman and coming together in a in a,
• 2:42:05
  in a marriage. But I still need intimacy with
• 2:42:08
  everyone, the different ones, not everyone, but to have safe
• 2:42:11
  individuals that I build friendships with.
• 2:42:13
  And I have people that walk alongside of me and know me and
• 2:42:17
  I know them. And intimacy happens.
• 2:42:19
  And the more connection happens, the more alive I feel, the more
• 2:42:25
  purpose I sense because I'm impacting their lives and I'm
• 2:42:28
  seeing that I have. There's a reason for my world to
• 2:42:30
  be and my gifts and all that, that it makes me feel alive and
• 2:42:34
  it makes me feel like I'm full and the more full I am, the
• 2:42:38
  better choices I make. So scripture says and, and that
• 2:42:42
  of Ephesians, it says that if you're full of the spirit, you
• 2:42:46
  will not fulfill the lust of the flesh and simply meaning get all
• 2:42:49
  the spiritual language out of it.
• 2:42:51
  And is you're so full of full of what is good for you that you
• 2:42:54
  won't do the bad. So it's giving you the strength
• 2:42:58
  to say no to the things that are unhealthy.
• 2:43:01
  So the focus is to actually help you fill your life for what got
• 2:43:05
  intended. And whatever is in the way of
• 2:43:07
  that. Hey, let's face it, let's work
• 2:43:10
  through it. It ain't easy, but we can do it
• 2:43:12
  because your purpose is to walk out something different than
• 2:43:15
  what you're experiencing. And you have walked it.
• 2:43:19
  Yeah, I mean incredible. And it it makes the difference.
• 2:43:22
  It makes all the difference in the world because I've been
• 2:43:24
  there, done that, and I know that stuff is junk compared to
• 2:43:29
  what I'm tasting in this world. And in my relationship right now
• 2:43:32
  with my wife is by far beyond anything I could have ever
• 2:43:37
  dreamed about because she knows me fully.
• 2:43:40
  No, there's no secrets. I know her fully.
• 2:43:43
  She has my passwords, she can go on anytime she wants to.
• 2:43:47
  We talk about things, we work through things.
• 2:43:50
  We we have the tools to to deal with conflict and every
• 2:43:53
  relationship has it. But the more we connect, the
• 2:43:57
  better our life is and the better our life is, the more we
• 2:44:02
  move together to have impact. And I'm so excited about our
• 2:44:06
  journey together because we are moving in the same direction on
• 2:44:10
  the same path, and we're doing it.
• 2:44:12
  She's just amazing and the way she loves right now, which is
• 2:44:16
  beyond anything I've ever experienced.
• 2:44:18
  And what I want to go back to the old world.
• 2:44:21
  Excuse me, but no. No way.
• 2:44:27
  And so it, it makes all the difference in the world when
• 2:44:30
  you're hitting on what you need and facing the things that have
• 2:44:34
  created pain and then living life in a whole place.
• 2:44:40
  Yeah. Jean, thank you.
• 2:44:43
  This has been amazing. Where can people find the film
• 2:44:46
  and find your work? So Buying her is still being
• 2:44:51
  premiered and it's not out fully yet, but if they you want to
• 2:44:55
  contact me, I can get them connected with the the places
• 2:44:59
  that they can get it. But we're premiering it in
• 2:45:03
  Anchorage at the August 1st. And there is other places, New
• 2:45:07
  Hampshire, there's Florida, there's Texas that are also
• 2:45:09
  premiering it coming up in the next several months.
• 2:45:13
  And so they, they've been fighting this for about a year
• 2:45:17
  and a half or so to get it actually out there.
• 2:45:21
  But it's just been, you know, they'll, they'll get it, but it
• 2:45:25
  will be sometime this year so that they can go on a website
• 2:45:28
  and, and view it and see it. Great.
• 2:45:30
  How can people find your work? Well, I'm an authentic
• 2:45:34
  relationships international and we're on the web.
• 2:45:38
  They're on and we're in the middle of revamping our work and
• 2:45:42
  and growing, but there's plenty of stuff there for people to to
• 2:45:46
  check into and if they want to contact us and see what we're
• 2:45:49
  doing in retreats or workshops, they want some counseling or
• 2:45:52
  they want to do some couple stuff, we do that online and
• 2:45:55
  Zoom, no matter where you are, we just help you in any way we
• 2:46:01
  can. And if we can't help you, we'll
• 2:46:03
  pull point you to people who can, especially if you want to
• 2:46:06
  face to face in their area. We can do that.
• 2:46:09
  Thank you so much, Jean. Thank you.
• 2:46:11
  Thank you for being so vulnerable and willing to not
• 2:46:15
  just share on this podcast, but I know, share again and again
• 2:46:18
  your story, including the darkest moments of your life and
• 2:46:22
  the opportunity that every person has for redemption.
• 2:46:25
  Well, thank you for having me on.
• 2:46:26
  It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to
• 2:46:28
  this episode of the Lila Rose show.
• 2:46:30
  Make sure to check out Gene McConnell work.
• 2:46:32
  It is LinkedIn the description and check out the amazing
• 2:46:34
  mission of Exodus cry. Let's pray for each other and
• 2:46:36
  pray for everybody who is struggling with lust, sexual
• 2:46:39
  addiction or any kind of sexual dysfunction.
• 2:46:41
  Let's pray for freedom and healing and for a renewed
• 2:46:44
  culture. And a huge thank you to EWTN
• 2:46:47
  Eternal Word Television Network, which is the largest religious
• 2:46:50
  broadcaster in the world. You can get access to Lila Rose
• 2:46:53
  Show episodes 24 hours in advance at ewtn.com.
• 2:46:58
  Slash on demand. And a big thank you to EWTN and
• 2:47:00
  their incredible mission to bring souls to Jesus.