This podcast includes mentions of pornography, rape and abuse. Please be mindful as the content may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Porn sites receive more monthly traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and X combined. In fact, according to researcher and author Jay Stringer, people watched 4.6 billion hours worth of pornographic videos on a single site in just one year. Or roughly 5,000 centuries’ worth of time. What can we do to solve sexual brokenness?
Pornography is viewed regularly by 64% of Christian men and 30% of Christian women.
Porn sites receive more monthly traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and X combined. In fact, according to researcher and author Jay Stringer, people watched 4.6 billion hours worth of pornographic videos on a single site in just one year. Or roughly 5,000 centuries’ worth of time.
What can we do to solve sexual brokenness?
Creating real solutions that are biblically based, scientifically informed, and gospel-centered isn’t just a responsibility—it’s an opportunity for revival and growth.
Join us in October to hear the story of a group of Faith Driven Entrepreneurs and Investors who set out to bankrupt Porn Hub, one of the largest distributors of pornographic material. Learn how these efforts are working to cripple a $97 billion industry.
We recognize the difficult stories shared in this episode. If you are a survivor of abuse and looking for help, please go to justicedefensefund.org/#find-help.
“Note: The audio and story of Laila Mickelwait is sourced from the linked video & interviews.
Joshua Broome This podcast includes mentions of pornography, rape and abuse. Please be mindful as the content may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Joshua Broome The topic of sexual brokenness is hardly new. It's been around since Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their nakedness and all the way back in the garden. But it seems different now that days of lone magazine stands hiding in the corners of convenience stores are over. Adult video stores and curtained off sections and bookstores are gone. The entire Internet lives in our pockets, and that reality is not lost on those making billions from pornography.
Joshua Broome My name is Joshua Broome, and I'm a former porn star turned preacher, author, creator, and one of the leading voices helping the followers of Jesus confront pornography addiction. If you can't tell from that overview alone, my journey to where I am today was hardly linear. My personal experiences have shaped my views of sex, pornography and marriage. And I'll be your host on this episode of Solving the World's Greatest Problems.
Joshua Broome This topic is a difficult one, but it's important. Today we're going to take a hard look at some of the harsh realities, and we're going to talk about ways that Christian builders, investors and givers are combatting darkness in a complex, damaging and growing industry built on humanity's sexual brokenness. Here are the stories of those who are fighting. Here's how you can help.
Joshua Broome Act one. A New Technological Reality.
Joshua Broome Today, the adult entertainment industry is a technologically advanced and high strategic engine. It knows how to prey on the most innocent, the most susceptible and the most unsuspecting among us. And their strategy is working. The average age of someone's first exposure to pornography is 12 years old, and that initial dose of unsolicited supply creates an avalanche of demand. Porn sites receive more monthly traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. That's all the movies watched on Netflix, all the shows streamed on Amazon and all the tweets. All of them combined received less traffic and attention than pornography. 28,258 users are watching pornography every second. Over $3,000 is spent on porn every second on the Internet. 35% of all Internet downloads are related to pornography. 40 million Americans regularly visit porn sites, 4.6 billion with a B. Hours are spent watching pornography videos on a single site in just one year.
Joshua Broome But what does that even mean? These are statistics. You've probably heard versions of them before. And while they're wildly unsettling, it's hard to know just what to do with. The truth is that according to the Journal of Sex Research, 64% of men and 30% of women are viewing pornography. And 100% of those people don't want to listen to a podcast about the damage caused by porn. Let's be honest. If you're in the group that doesn't view pornography, you don't really want to hear about it either. It's a problem that has long existed as part of the underbelly of society. It once lived in the fringes of our psyche like a shadow you'd occasionally see out of the corner of your eye. And while there's a very real temptation to keep treating it like that as something that is someone else's problem or not something that affects me. The reality is that it isn't someone else's problem, and if it doesn't already affect you, it's going to come. This is a problem that if Christians don't start taking it seriously, is going to continue to have massive downstream implications that we're only beginning to understand. So if your opinion of pornography is simply that it's a moral wrong and something an Internet filter can solve. Buckle up. The reality of this problem is worse than you think. And then even worse than that. But if you clicked on this podcast, you already know we aren't hoping to solve the easy problems. We're staring the world's toughest challenges straight in the face, and we're talking to the people who are tackling them head on.
Joshua Broome Act two staring the Problem in the face.
Joshua Broome Jay Stringer is the author of Unwanted How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing. It's based on a multi-year research project that Jay did into the stories of 3800 men and women to address the key drivers of unwanted sexual behavior. And then why people remain in a place of shame in their journey towards a new sexual story. His research is one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject, and it provides both a personal and a statistical approach to the subject.
Jay Stringer So when I talk about sexual brokenness or unwanted sexual behavior, that could be the use of pornography, that could be infidelity, that could be buying sex hookups. And the size and scope of it is massive. One of the things that we know is pornography use is now one of the best metrics of cultural attention that we have. So if you want to know what people are doing at any given moment in time, you can actually check porn rates across the country. So one example of this was during the 2017 NBA finals between the Cavs and the Golden State Warriors. Porn use was down about -6% in the Cleveland area. And then after it became really apparent that Cleveland was going to lose Game five and then therefore, the whole NBA finals, poor news goes up about 34% in the Cleveland area. So you can actually track what people are doing with their disappointment, with their boredom just on porn rates. We also know that about 57% of our pastors, 64% of our youth pastors are using or have used porn. And we know that porn use doubles the rates of divorce. About a third of all marriages in this country will be impacted by infidelity. So it is a dangerously ubiquitous area that when we do talk about it, we don't talk about it well at all here.
Joshua Broome Jay's research points out many other wrong ways to approach the subject of pornography.
Jay Stringer The primary Christian approach to addressing sexual brokenness has been through the lens of lust management. And you all, I mean just know the story all too well about it could be slapping a rubber band around your wrists when you're having a sexual thought, trying to bounce your eyes, dart your eyes from someone that's attractive. We've encouraged people to get accountability software, some type of surveillance on their computers. That gives an alert to people, your accountability partner that you're struggling. And yet, as one of my friends said to me recently, Sanjay, when I've been having the same conversation with my accountability partner for 15 years and trying to bounce my eyes from one type of pornography preference, something isn't working. And so that's what I think we have to really begin to step into, is that this less management approach does not lead us to the freedom that we desire and deserve.
Joshua Broome Jay goes on to explain just how we can do this.
Jay Stringer Actually, pornography is such a drug to me because nowhere else in my life am I able to get what I want when I want it. We're going to keep sabotaging. So that was part of what I realized, is that unless we radically change this conversation, we're going to continue to consign marriages and individuals to a lifetime of futility with this issue. And so that's why I wanted to do the research, is to say, if we could just understand someone's whole story, not just the story of their sexual brokenness, then we could get insights from the data that we could then return back to people that were struggling. And that's exactly what we found, is that sexual brokenness, even the specifics of what we search for on the Internet are not random at all. They were a direct reflection of the parts of our life that have known a lot of pain, that have known a lot of misery. And so the implication is really huge. It's that if we study our sexual brokenness, we can actually learn so much about how to find healing.
Joshua Broome From the outside looking in. There's not much new to say about the depravity of the adult entertainment industry. But the view from the inside is worth examining, which is why I'm here. My career took a drastic turn when three girls walked into a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
Joshua Broome So grew up in a small town in South Carolina and started modeling and acting when I was like 13, 14 years old and initially went to school to study acting, you know, theater, all that good stuff. And then I thought, well, if I put myself in closer proximity to the industry, then it would make sense for me to have a career in acting and modeling. So I moved to Hollywood. And while I was in Hollywood, I'm, you know, mediating my expenses like most people do. You know, most people are working in a coffee shop, restaurant, whatever. So I was doing that and three girls came and I sat down on this table and they invited me into the industry.
Joshua Broome That industry was pornography. Over the next six years, I starred in more than 1000 adult movies, which sounds uncommon, but the truth is, my background is not that different from many others.
Joshua Broome And this agent asked me three questions. He was like, Tell me how you grew up. What are you hoping to accomplish here in Hollywood? And, you know, like, what do you want to be? You know, like, what do you want to do and what do you want to become? And I really didn't have a grasp on that, but I was like, well, I want to do acting and I guess I want to be famous. And just how I grew up is just like me. And my mom grew up in a, you know, single family home. No, Dad. Yeah, just like really unique situation. So my mom had me when she was 16 and living in a really small town. He was in proximity of where we lived and we lived in a town so small that I would literally see him in the grocery store at a gas station. So, you know, I knew he's there, but he was just never in my life. And that was just never the case. And there was a few, like failed attempts on his end, on my end, just like trying to, like, have conversations but never ended up with anything. But for me specifically, like I was thinking about this yesterday other than basketball coaches and just like coaches like football, basketball, baseball. Like other than that, like I didn't have a man like, speaking into my life, like all my teachers were women. Like I grew up like just like me and my mom. So I didn't have any, like, male role models whatsoever. Like, no, like depiction of like, this is what it means to be a man. This is what, you know, you need to strive for.
Joshua Broome My experience inside the industry is exactly as non romantic as you'd expect. I mean, you take.
Joshua Broome Something that's supposed to be intimate, that God designed to be beautiful within the marriage bed. But, you know, for me, like from the jump is not what I thought it would be like. You know, I'm taking erectile dysfunction medication, like the girls are like, you know, taking this stuff and like a director's there and it's like, you know, I thought I was just going to have like, a camcorder and they go in a back room or something, but there's camera like a, B and C, and there's someone shooting beats and there's someone, you know, holding a C light by me directing you, telling you what to do. Just stopping. Hey, stop. No, we got to do this. Change this, move this. Yeah, yeah. And just think about an act of intimacy, you know, like, you think about it being private, you think about connection, you think about all these things. And it's trying. Like porn is trying its very best to create a fictitious reality that looks like intimacy, but it's so far from it because you have two people who are you probably don't want to be there like you don't say, I want to be a prostitute when I grow up. Like no one's saying that. Even when they're doing it, you know, no one's laying their head on the pillow. It's like, I'm proud of what I'm doing. This is what I wanted to do with my life. So you have these two people that really don't want to be there. They're being paid to do this thing, which becomes transactional, which, you know, you just become numb to and like somehow, like something so sacred becomes arbitrary.
Joshua Broome Through repeated engagement in something so broken. I found myself in a place that no one wants to be in.
Joshua Broome My worst mistakes are now tangible and easy to find on the internet, and my phone stopped ringing and there's nothing else that I'm good for. And 30 people that I knew and loved and knew on a personal basis have died from either suicide or overdose because either they were trying to medicate the pain or they saw life and they didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. And so it's really a.
Speaker 4 Shocking amount of people. 30 that's that's.
Joshua Broome It's far more it's far more people that these are people that I knew and were in the industry with me but an astronomical amount of people far more than 30 and it's it's murder it's you know because you'll end up it's even sadder is like people never got out of the industry that they compromise and they fight like it's essentially they're still selling themselves. It's like they found someone that was okay with their past but they don't really want to be with. But they have the financial means of them living a life where they don't have to do anything else. I was at that point where I had won like all the awards. Made the money and it's like, okay, it didn't work. And, you know, you go from this peak to this valley in my valley was, okay, I'm depressed. There's anxiety. The things that I wanted to do, which I wanted to be creative in a way that impacted people in a positive way. And I was like, No one's going to take me seriously. I'm never going to be married. I'm never going to be a father. Like, sure, I could get married. Sure, I could get someone pregnant. But I'd lost all the credibility that I would ever have. I'd never impact the world in the way that I wanted to.
Joshua Broome So life just seemed meaningless. I'd done everything. It didn't work. I had everything that I thought that would make me happy and I wasn't. So I made a plan to take my life and for some reason is interesting how God wires you where I'm like super particular about a few things and I'm just like crazy about checks. And like, when I get a check, it's like I got to get like, praise God for like, mobile deposits. Like I go get that bad boy in the bank because I feel like I'm to lose it or something. But I had a check and I was like, I'm going to go deposit this check and then I'm going to go and take my life. And I go in this bank and it be a great point to like, just touch on accountability. But I go to this bank and I'm going to go to this bank because, you know, I got to get this check in the bank. And at this point, I had removed myself for probably well over a year from talking to my mom, talking to like I was in a fraternity for, you know, while I was in college. So some of those guys became my best friends, like taught me how to tie a tie because I didn't have a dad to do some of those things, like some of these people I was really close with.
Joshua Broome But anyone in my life that wasn't cheering me on into the direction that I was going, I removed from my life anyone that said, Joshua, I love you, but you're better than this. You're confronted to do one of two things. You either say you're right and I need to do something else or I push you away. So I push away all of my family, all of my people who actually were my friends. And I only had people who were cheering me on to my detriment. And those people didn't call me by Joshua. They call me by the stage name. And so I say that to say I had not heard Joshua in well over a year. I go into that bank, I slide this check across the counter and someone looks me in the eye, says, Joshua, are you okay? And it wrecked me, man. Like. Like the banker or. Yeah, whatever the banker, like, looks me in the eyes. Is Joshua. Are you okay? Joshua? Is there anything I can do for you and for me? What it did, it just. It shattered this plausible reality that it created based on guilt and shame. And I was hiding from myself. And what I thought of immediately is like, you know, my mom, who was 16 when she had me, like, it's like I got Jase on right now. I just remember that's like like my mom. I would get one like, I had like one basketball, like I had I had to take care of my basketball shoes, you know, like and I got to go to camp and I got one pair of shoes. I remember those days and it was like my mom had to fight so hard for the things that I did have. And what I was robbing my mom of is just knowing that I was okay. Like she like, yes, she wanted me to leave the industry. Yes. You want me to do something different with my life. But really, all that she needed was to know that I was okay and I was taking that away from her. So in that moment, I felt the guilt and the weight of that. So I just I bolted to my place and I called my mom in like, had like a, you know, a snot filled, you know, conversation with my mom. And she said, you know, I love you. Just like, why don't you come home? So I pick up the phone and I call my agent and do everything I needed to do. And I quit and I was out of there.
Joshua Broome After leaving. Building my life was not easy. I struggled. I took two jobs and I'm cleaning bathrooms and I'm doing everything but living the life that I used to live. And I'm still carrying shame and anxiety and depression. But my redemption story started when I met a girl named Hope. She invited me to a church. She told me that I wasn't defined by my worst mistake. And in that church, I start a relationship with Jesus. And today, I'm blessed to be a preacher who travels the world telling people about the goodness of God. And he is using my story to serve as a vocal anti-pornography advocate. And where I get to help others escape the harmful effects of that industry and learn about the reality of how dark it actually is. The shame and regret is my battle to fight. And yes, those old videos continue to circulate online. But because of Jesus, what you'll find on Google is not the most true thing about. But that leads us to our next guests. Someone who has dedicated their lives to fighting online pornography.
Joshua Broome Act three Bankrupting the Business of Pornography.
Joshua Broome What we know about pornography is that it touches us on a deep personal level. We can't ignore the psychosexual reality this industry is creating. But let's not also forget that it is an industry.
Joshua Broome Pornography is what happens when moral bankruptcy makes for good business. The numbers are nothing short of astonishing. In 2023, the pornography website Market in the U.S. is projected to surpass 1 billion U.S. dollars in value. That represents a growth of approximately 58% between 2018 and 2023. Globally, the porn industry's annual revenue is $97 billion. While it isn't a direct comparison for the concept of size, that is more than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball combined. Again, remember that this is a modern business to not just magazine stands and video rental stores, for example. Only fans, content creators. These are independent contractors working for themselves on their own channels with their own marketing strategies, brought in $6.6 billion in 2023. For context, the combined payroll of the entire NBA was $4.9 billion in 2023.
Joshua Broome So while there's clearly plenty of attention given to the demand side of things, what about the supply? Who is providing the pornography and how are they profiting off? Laila Mickelwait is the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund. She's the founder of the Trafficking Hub Movement and she's the bestselling author of Takedown Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape and Sex Trafficking. She has been researching and combating the injustice of sex trafficking since 2006 and is the leading expert in the field. Her story begins with an article that kept her up at night.
Joshua Broome Laila had read a story of a 15 year old girl from Broward County, Florida, who had been missing for a year but was finally found when a user of Pornhub tipped off her mother that he had recognized her daughter on the site. The mother found 58 videos of her child being raped, uploaded by an account named Daddy Slut. The filmed assaults were being monetized with advertisements placed next to before and after the videos and offered as a way to download content to the 130 million daily visitors to the site. As Laila tells it, she sat there, rocking her newborn darkness, exhausted, yet unable to sleep, asking herself one question How in the world did these videos of criminal abuse end up on the world's largest and most popular porn site? What came next was an idea she would simply test the upload system herself. So she uploaded a video that I wrote in her darkroom and discovered all that was needed to upload content to Pornhub was an email address. No consent form was required to prove the video didn't contain rape. No driver's license or I.D. was required to ensure the video didn't contain a child in moments. She had a message from Pornhub. Congratulations. Your video is now live. She quickly realized that because of this non verification process, Pornhub servers were potentially the largest collection of sex crime in North America, if not the world. Legal porn was side by side with videos of real rape, child sexual abuse, trafficking and nonconsensual uploaded sex videos all hiding in plain sight. While it's easier to hear this and want to turn away, Leyla had the courage to stand in and take the advice of Jay Stringer, whom we heard from earlier, and look directly at the darkness she had uncovered.
Laila Mickelwait So I would think often, you know, if I think this is hard, I then think about how hard it is for these victims who experienced the immortalize ation of their trauma, something that they will never be able to have completely removed from the Internet. I am a witness to these crimes. Again, that was one thing that I tried to kind of highlight in the book is something that really helped me along on this journey was this idea that these crimes needed a witness to be able to say this happened. It was wrong. Every abuser has to pay for what happened. And so considering myself as a witness who could then bring this information to the public, to people in power, to then press for change was one way that I was able to kind of continue to be able to watch this very traumatic content, but then also to realize, again, I have the power to press pause. Victims don't. And in some cases, you know, when I felt like it was too much or I felt like and I described that these feelings in the book, as you kind of watch this content with me and this feeling of like, it's too much, I don't think I can watch anymore. But then even a feeling of guilt, even thinking that that thought because again, these victims can't stop. They have to live with this nightmare for the rest of their lives.
Joshua Broome It was work as an advocate for the victims of abuse is one thing. But she's doing more than just talking. She's taking action, starting with fighting back against Pornhub as well as the financial institutions tangled up in this business.
Laila Mickelwait They have made some changes, you know, in extreme duress, right under extreme pressure, losing credit card companies, you know, losing Visa, Mastercard, Discover, being forced to delete 80% of the site, 10.6 million videos and over 30 million images because they were unverified and infested with illegal content. They were forced to take down a download button that they had intentionally placed on the site where people actually had the ability to download and possess these crime scenes and be able to re upload them not only to Pornhub but to the rest of the Internet for the rest of these victims lives. So they had to remove the download button. They were also pressured to change their upload process where they began to verify the uploader of those who were actually uploading this video. So previously it was completely anonymous when the story started, you know, anybody anonymously and under ten minutes with only an email address could upload homemade sex videos to the site with no verification of age, no verification of consent. And finally, they were pressured to have to change the upload process. But that wasn't enough because as one example I give is there was a 12 year old boy in Alabama who was drugged, overpowered and repeatedly raped by a man named Rocky Shea Franklin. And 23 of those rape videos were uploaded to Pornhub and Rocky Shea. Franklin was a verified uploader, so he had gone through that process, but they hadn't verified. And even to this day, the site is awash with content that the individuals in the videos have not been reliably verified for age or consent. So they have taken steps, but they're not sufficient to eliminate illegal content from the site.
Laila Mickelwait So even to this day, there's illegal content on Pornhub because as a mom, you know, I had I have two young children and they didn't sign up for this. And at times it felt like there were real threats against myself and my family, including my children. And so that was a real struggle to, you know, make that decision that I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to shut the petition down. I'm not going to be quiet just because I'm in I'm scared or because there's intimidation or threats and things like that. It wasn't just happening to me. It was also happening to others who were speaking out and to victims. And, you know, at the end of the day, I just said there's no choice. I am not going to back down to intimidation, to threats, to all of these things that were happening because justice is too important.
Joshua Broome Laila's story isn't just a story. Her actions have resulted in several significant changes in the pornography industry's regulation and accountability. In December 2020, Pornhub removed over 10 million unverified videos from its platform, dramatically reducing their content library. By 2023, Pornhub was forced to take down 80% of its site, in addition to losing their social media accounts and major advertisers. Following that, Major credit card companies, including Visa and Mastercard, cut ties with Pornhub. Further shedding light on how these companies were indirectly profiting from illegal content on the platform. These things have combined to lead to a heightened government scrutiny and involvement in regulating online pornography platforms. Lawmakers continue to push for tighter regulations and enforcement of the anti-trafficking laws, focusing on how sites like Pornhub handle user generated content. All because one person did something. That is, after all, how the world's greatest problems get solved by action.
Joshua Broome Act Four, Build. Invest. Give.
Joshua Broome So what do we do? That's the next question, right? We hear these stories and at least a part of us feels overwhelmed. But there are actions we can take right now. In business, we can look to things like the Freedom Fund, which is part of an equal venture fund. They're investing in technology companies that are combating human trafficking. While most of us think of human trafficking as a problem for the government to solve, last lines and his team are looking at this problem through the lens of a private sector. There's a whole wave of amazing technology companies that are scalable, building solutions to solve the pain points of real business. JP Morgan had to pay $290 million for being the bank that Epstein used for his sex ring. Every other bank is looking for ways to avoid that exact situation. Or there's 40 hotel brands in court because they're not dealing with human trafficking. And there's a lot that can determine if there's an advertisement for sex involves that hotel. The Freedom Fund is dedicated to investing in businesses that are coming up with creative solutions to serious problems
Joshua Broome If investing isn't your first thought, there are even more immediate actions to take, such as joining the movement. Laila started by signing the Trafficking Hub petition to be a part of shutting down Pornhub, holding its executives accountable for distributing and profiting from rape and criminal abuse, or donating to her work with a Justice Defense fund where every dollar helps bring justice to survivors of online sex trafficking, child sexual exploitation and image based sexual abuse.
Joshua Broome If you or someone you know is struggling with pornography, I'll just say this what is always going to be true is we're only going to be as free as we're willing to be honest. The way that you own your past and not allow it to own you. As you surrender it. You say the thing that you have not said out loud to someone you trust. Find someone you trust and tell them that you're struggling and there's tons of resources available to you as you take your next step in your journey. You can visit Joshua Brown Dot me where I've compiled resources that can help you. And on my website you'll find that we've created an eight part documentary style podcast called Unmentionable. That tells my story in great detail and en masse. This industry that is so dark. And when we understand the darkness in which we're consuming, we can find the light that will lead us out.
Joshua Broome You can find links to these solutions as well as so many others that we are continuing to find and add at solving the world's greatest problems.org. Thank you for listening to this episode of Solving the World's Greatest Problems. We'll see you next time.