Ex-pornographer Donny Pauling posts on XXXChurch.com:
Last night I was sitting at my computer alone in my room. I decided to click on iTunes and listen to some music. My iCal is directly beside the icon for iTunes and I accidentally clicked it instead. I haven’t opened it for a long time. Since I was producing porn, to be exact. I now use Google Calendar instead.
In iCal I have a “to do’s” list. On that list is a “Model Callback List” where I used to write the name and number of all of the girls who’d call my newpaper ads. I’d also write down the names and numbers of referrals as well. There are literally hundreds of names on this list. I started scrolling through it.
A few of them popped out at me. I decided to type their names into MySpace search and see if I could find a profile for them. These particular names are girls with whom I had a pretty good rapport, almost a friendship, when they were working with me. I decided to tell them what’s happened in my life. I wanted to apologize to them for getting them involved in the adult business, regardless of whether or not they were upset about being involved. It just seems like the right thing to do.
The name of a model from more than 5 years ago popped up. She had a MySpace profile. I sent her a message and requested an add to her friends list. I wanted my first message to be light hearted and simple. And short. I’d apologize later. I wrote:
Hey _______ … How are ya?
This morning I woke up. Here was her reply (click here for the screenshot):
Hello Donny,
I’m sorry, but I can’t be your friend. People found out about the pictures I did and I came really close to killing myself over it. I need to forget about it and move on. That does not mean I blame you or anything, but that does mean I have to cut ties involving it, and that does involve you. You’re more than welcome to write me, etc…I just can’t have you on my friends list. I’m very sorry and hope you understand.
Thanks,
_____
All this girl did was pose for nude photos. She didn’t have sex with another person. She posed. For photos.
Earlier today I posted a very short version of this story on my personal blog. I then posted a myspace bulletin to invite some of those on my friend’s list to read it. That resulted in a discussion between me and an acquaintance of mine who used to hang out with me when I did work for Playboy. This girl asked:
When you look at this story, what contributed more to her nearly suicidal depression? The nude pictures she posed for or the judgmental assholes (her supposed freinds) who made her feel like less than dirt for doing it?
I have not spoken to this model to ask what made her want to kill herself. There are lots of possible scenarios, too numerous to think of.
———-Let’s imagine one (this is based on something that really DID happen with another girl who modeled for me):
A girl is very close to her father. A pure daddy’s girl. She’s the apple of his eye. He dotes on her all her life. She goes to college and he’s proud as can be. He’s busting his buttons.
She meets a guy named Donny who offers her more money for a few hours work than she can make in 2 weeks at Starbucks, working lots and lots of hours. After thinking about it for several days, she goes for it.
Weeks later she’s home visiting her father. Something’s wrong but she doesn’t know what it might be. She can’t put a finger on it. Daddy says nothing.
What she doesn’t know is that one evening after daddy had put in a hard day of overtime, trying to make more money to pay for his baby’s schooling, he was ready to go home and relax in front of the TV with a cold beer in hand. But first he has to give his good friend a ride home.
He and his buddy are walking to the car and he notices something under the windshield wiper, left there by some anonymous person. He has no idea what it is, but he’s curious. As he picks it up, with his buddy looking over his shoulder, he realizes it’s his little girl. His amazing daughter. Smiling and wearing nothing, with her legs open and a porn site URL branded in between them.
He’s humiliated and his heart is broken, but he loves her and doesn’t want to tell her about it. He decides to let it pass, but he’s not a very good actor and his little girl knows something’s wrong. She asks her mom. Her mom tells her about the anonymous “gift”.
She feels so much shame. She let her father down. She embarassed him in front of his friend, and who knows who else? After all, nobody’s come forward to claim laying the photo on his windshield. For all she knows, her whole hometown has seen those photos.
It hurts her even worse to realize that he’s killing himself inside not wanting to talk to her about it. She knows he’s only doing so because he doesn’t want to embarrass her by making her look him in the eye if he were to confront her with it.
He has no idea that she is aware of what happened. Her heart breaks every time she sees him trying to pretend everything is okay.
She wants to die. How could she have disappointed him like this?
———-
I’m not saying that’s what’s happened in this case. But it has happened to models I’ve worked with. That, and worse (one girl even had the “honor” of her nudes posted on trees at the school she attended). And this isn’t the only model that’s contemplated suicide. One former model of mine actually attempted it. I was still in the industry and shrugged it off when someone told me about it. I figured, as did my MySpace messaging friend, that it was the problem of those in her life who are way too judgmental. It wasn’t MY problem.
But how long can an honest person keep that attitude? Seriously, now.
To the message sent to me by this model, I replied:
…I realize how much I was hurting people. I now travel and speak to people all across the country, hoping to make them see the realities of porn. Hoping to make them see that real lives are destroyed by it. Hoping to make them realize that it really isn’t something that is just harmless fun. I don’t want to take away anyone’s rights to consume it by any means, but I want them to see the full picture before they decide to do so. I want them to see that even if they are consumers of porn, they help destroy lives. Like yours.
Supply and demand: if there was no demand, you and I wouldn’t make money producing the supply.
I just wanted to tell you I am sorry. I never told you that. But I really am. I was very ignorant as to how much this hurt people. I thought of myself and my own agendas above you and the other girls we involved. Yes, you made your own choice, as did the others, but I put it out there for you to choose. I really am sorry _____.
She read the message but hasn’t replied. I can only hope she accepts my apology.
Who’s daughter are you looking at when you’re spanking it to porn? Who’s niece? Did she want to commit suicide after filming the scene you’re watching, or the photos you’re browsing?
God, I hope not.
Using that same argument I also penetrated and impregnated someone’s daughter to make my daughter. Every female alive ever lusted after by anyone is someone’s daughter, no?
It could also be said by looking at the suicide rates in the US that ‘because I was in a porno’ is not anywhere near the top of the list of reasons why humans feel compelled to end their lives.
While I salute your exit from porn as a positive thing it’s really just as sad how out of reality you still seem to be. It appears to me your attempts at ‘apologizing’ to former models compares to an alcoholic going to a bar on occassion to revisit trauma and tempation as a form of self-induced anxiety.
I would suggest you just let it go. Just forget the past and move forward with a normal life and get a normal job completely removed from both porn and religion.
Let Jesus run with the crown of thorns.. that’s his gig, not yours.
Porn is only bad when you charge and profit off of it. Its the faggots who are into that aspect of porn who ruin the rest of the country because they want to sit on their ass and do absoluetly nothing and make a profit. Why do you think millions of illegals try to cross the border into the USA, because pussy faggots like the people who attempt to profit off of porn, an industry where there isn’t even one Real Man, aren’t capable of doing anything constructive in this country like cooking and producing food or landscaping and building homes, so that’s why all the illegals have opportunity here. If those lazy fucks actually did something for a living, there wouldn’t be anywhere near as many illegals trying to come into the USA
And when you niggaz want to throw around a positive name that begins with a J, and turn it into something negative or make fun of it we’re gonna find you motherfuckers, dig open your fucking grave take a piss right on your skeleton you fake bullshitters. We run this shit, not you, so if you want to take a word like church and say something brash this is the biggest FUCK YOU you ever read in your life
to Drew Parker personally, shut the fuck up. Crown of thorns? You don’t even know what your talking about. People like you want to flip it and make it look like its something its not. You’re a faggot, who even gave you permission to front in the first place
With out quoting Jesus. I think the real problem is getting people who are in porn for selfdestructive reasons out of porn. Those girl new that porn modeling have consequences. But the human brain is not fully prepared to asses risks at that age. Thats the reason young people make stupid choices. Choices that will haunt them long after the money is gone. The real answer is pornographers have a ethical obligation to ensure that the consent of the model is not influenced by inmadurity or worse by mental illness or drug addiction?
The issue is one of secular consequencialist morality. If a person makes an selfdestrucitive choice, like suicide or self mutilation, shall we stop them? Are we in a secular sense, our brothers keepers and the finders of lost children? That is the question Donny is realy answer. I know the judeochristian answer. I would love to hear the consequencialist answer.
Thank you joerilly the cursin’ christian xenophobe… I couldn’t resist letting you argue with yourself any further. Boo!
THANKS BABY!!!!