Posted on 05/12/2011 8:17:19 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
Crystal Renaud's eight-year addiction to pornography began at the age of 10, when she inadvertently found a titillating magazine in her brother's bathroom. Later, masturbation, phone sex and cyber sex insidiously escalated out of the loneliness in her life and continued a cycle of social isolation and shame.
"Pornography became my closest friend. My only friend. Consistent, reliable," she said.
Renaud, now 26, had heard sermons at her Kansas City megachurch condemning pornography, but none had ever mentioned women. It wasn't until she met another Christian woman with the same addiction that she realized she was not alone and began a ministry to help others.
Now, Renaud has written about her journey in a new book, "Dirty Girls Come Clean," which she hopes will help others find the compassion and resources she didn't get until she was nearly 19.
When she arranged a dangerous encounter in a hotel room with a man, Renaud knew she had hit rock bottom. At the last minute, she backed out of the liaison and turned to God for inspiration.
In 2009, she launched a website, DirtyGirlMinistries, choosing the name to capture the attention of women searching for pornography online. In less than a week, she received more than 300 responses to her surveys and countless emails from women.
"When you have the church and their nearly silent stance on pornography even as it affects men, paired with women in the congregation being the ones who are addicted, you have a hot soup of silence, isolation and shame," said Renaud. "Who are they going to turn to when the world says it's okay, and the church is silent?"
She said the church eventually did address the issue in 2000 and today, Renaud counsels other women at the Westside Family Church in Lenexa, Kan.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Some of them are completely hard core. Really really dirty.
Those books with Fabio on the cover?
“They’re soft core porn in words”
Used to crack me up when I was in college. The girls who railed against porn were big fans of those type books.
My wife made me buy her porn 36 years ago.
The abstinence programs I had in middle and high school only minimally discussed pornography, and didn’t mention masturbation or fantasy at all. It might be different in Catholic schools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.