We went back to his apartment where he played a pornographic video of a teen having sex while he raped me. We agreed to a coffee date, except we never grabbed that coffee.
As much as I believed I could change, that ended shortly after I met Cody, a 36-year-old man I met online. Shortly following this altercation, I moved in with my aunt, 4 hours away from home. I responded with, “Please, move me somewhere new, somewhere I can start all over and I will change.” He asked how I was going to be fixed-questions that I asked myself-hoping I could one day change. This will be fun and it will feel good.”Īt the age of fifteen, my parents went through my cell phone and read texts that revealed I was gay, and in response, my father violently physically assaulted me. All he told me was, “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. But at that age, you don’t understand what is happening. The ideas already in my head were toxic and unhealthy examples that were engrained in me from a very young age when a teenage family friend would molest me at the age of five. Listen: Jose’s interview on Consider Before Consuming, a podcast by Fight the New Drug I needed someone to tell me that it was okay to be who I was and show me the proper way to explore my sexuality. I needed to determine if I was normal, or if something was “wrong” with me. Most of all, I feared what I was taught would happen to me.Īs I began to experiment sexually, I would spend countless hours searching online for naked photos of men, as well as develop connections and initiate online conversations. As I grew older and began to realize that I could not change who I truly was, despite my efforts to suppress that truth, I began to fear what others would think of me if they learned that I was gay. Neither of my parents was accepting of the fact that I’m gay.Īs a young boy, it was hard to be myself around my father, fearing I would be punished, which happened often, because of my effeminate personality. I grew up poor in the countryside with a father who was physically and mentally abusive. I grew up in a small conservative town in Texas. These are his own experiences, in his own words.
Jose's story shows what it's really like to be groomed for abuse and groomed for sex trafficking. We consider these personal accounts very valuable because, while the science and research is powerful within its own right, personal accounts from real people seem to really hit home about the damage that pornography does to real lives. Many people contact Fight the New Drug to share their personal stories about how porn has affected their life or the life of a loved one.