From moralityinmedia: California- Pornography hurts real people-those who use it, and those who appear in it. We recently came to the attention of one of the latter.

Shelley Lubben found the Morality in Media Web site while preparing her own site, and sent us an e-mail introducing herself and her site.

Today, Shelley lives in Bakersfield, Calif., with her husband Garrett and their three daughters. It was not always like this, though. For many years, she was a call girl, an “adult film” actress-and a mental and spiritual wreck. But the Lord pulled her out of that wreckage-quite literally-and set her on the right path, with a new mission.

What is that mission? She says, “I want to talk to parents, youth, and the Church about the deception of Satan and how subtly his plans are to destroy the family unit. Satan hates families and comes to kill, steal and destroy from anyone who allows him. The good news is we don’t have to allow the enemy into our lives anymore! The Lord gives us great and mighty strategies to fight the good fight of faith and keep our families and children safe.”

Following is an edited version of a conversation between Shelley and MIM’s Patrick McGrath (29 October 2004).

MORALITY IN MEDIA: Could you, briefly, tell us about yourself and what you do?

SHELLEY LUBBEN: I created a Web site with my testimony on it, because I used to be in adult film over ten years ago, and my life has been totally transformed. I speak to families and parents a lot on how to raise their kids, and I speak to those who are already addicted to porn, and who are living reckless lives.

I feel that I’m called to be a voice to this nation, and to help people see the light and the truth about why this generation is so sick, and I’m a minister and I’m also a student of theology–I’m getting a bachelor’s in theology-and I have a great family and a loving husband who stuck by me through everything. I’m a recovered alcoholic, a recovered drug addict and basically, the Lord Jesus Christ has given me a whole new life, so I’m using it now to help people.

I work in high-security prisons where the people are just really sick-lots of people who are [sexually] addicted. I work in the local rescue missions and I also teach various women’s groups.

MIM: Where are you studying?

SL: I’m transferring to Vision University [Ramona, Calif.], where I’ll be getting a bachelor’s in theology, and [I also studied] at Harvestime International Bible College [Colorado Springs and Madera, Calif.], a non-denominational Bible college. I have about another year [of study], then I’ll have my bachelor’s of theology.

MIM: When do you believe that the destructive behavior in your life began?

SL: It began in my childhood. I was always a very strong-willed child, and my mother was completely opposite. It was hard to raise me. Then when my parents stopped attending church and God wasn’t first in our lives-they weren’t equipped to raise that type of child. So it started probably after [I was] nine years old. They could tell that I had those tendencies to be bold and strong and to talk back.

It was when I turned 14 that it got really destructive. My parents-they didn’t know what to do. There was constant yelling and screaming in those teenage years.

MIM: What sorts of things were happening around that time?

SL: I began high school. I was involved in the drill team, and that meant the world to me. Then I had met a boy, and [my parents] freaked out, and they took it out [on me], and that made me really angry, because it was the one thing that made me feel good about myself. So then I just decided to hang out with the wrong crowd.

MIM: How did you become a porn film actress?

SL: The destructive behavior just got worse and worse, and by the time my parents asked me to leave home-I had no money, just clothes, so I ended up staying in the San Fernando Valley, which as you know is the porn capital [of the world]. Then a man came along and said I could make some money and all I had to do was this.

Basically, it starts with prostitution, and then you get “promoted”-sin “promotes” you-so I was an exotic dancer and a stripper, and I worked in all these clubs, and it gets more destructive and more destructive.

Then someone tells you that you can make all this money and work way less hours, and by then I had a child, and so I decided to start doing that [escort service] about 1988.

Then this girl-we ran an escort service together out of our homes-she said, “You really ought to try these amateur films.” As soon as I went there, they saw that I wasn’t a normal dumb blonde-they saw that I knew how to be dramatic. So immediately when I did the amateur film, they said, “Put her with this producer, we want her over here,” and I went straight to pro.

There are three levels in the porn industry-there’s amateur, there’s pro-am, and then there’s pro. So I think I did one amateur [movie] and maybe one pro-am, and all the rest were pro, where I worked with some of the major porn stars, who are still porn stars today.

MIM: Could you describe day-to-day life on set, as you saw it?

SL: I would arrive there, and you would bring a lot of your own costumes. You would have some idea of what kind of shoot-there are all different categories: bi[sexual], anal. Depending on that category, you knew what [costumes] to bring.

I was [even then] Jesus’ little girl, so I had a big guilty conscience, and I would bring a big bottle of vodka before I did any shoots. I could really drink a lot of liquor. By then, I was a raging alcoholic, but I was very functional, as far as not slurring and acting stupid.

A lot of these producers were respectable porn producers, and they would ask all of us to use proper hygiene, which we did-we had to get our AIDS test the day before and bring that. Then they would call you in and say, “OK, you’re up,” and tell you, “This is what kind of shot we want.” And when you were done with your particular scene, you’d be called back maybe 15 minutes later, and they’d say, “Now you have a shot over here.”

MIM: Could you tell us how you were able to escape that life?

SL: I was only in the industry about a year and a half, but I probably did 20 or so movies, because you can do one every week. I had always believed God allows certain things to happen to save your life. We were racing [in a car] one night, and we must have been high, because we were going about 120, and that [semi-trailer] hit me, and my car flipped three times.

I’ll never forget, because my whole life flipped in front of me-I just knew that there was a battle for my life at that moment. And when I landed I just knew that I couldn’t do this any more. And God had told me that you will die if you don’t [stop this]. You have to understand, because I knew God at a young age, I had Him with me, telling me this is not acceptable.

There was a tape playing in my car-my car was totally smashed-and I went to pick it up, and I felt God telling me, “Pull the tape out,” and I did, and the song that was going to play was called “Last Chance.” That’s when I knew that I couldn’t do that anymore. From that moment on I didn’t do porn anymore, and I met my husband shortly afterward. That’s when my life started to change.

MIM: Could you tell us more about how was your husband was able to help you progress?

SL: My husband was raised in Christian schools his whole life, and he had a family tragedy-[his parents] divorced, and for two years he went off the deep end, and got into drugs. I met him in a bar, and he really liked me and wanted to take me out, and I told him I didn’t work for free.

He had drugs, so I thought, if I go out with him I can get high for free, I won’t have to pay for meth anymore. So we would just get high together-but we ended up reading the Bible together! Then we just realized that we’re supposed to be together. He knew exactly what I was doing. He’d come over during the day-because I still did prostitution even though I had quit porn-so I still had men coming over during the day, and I worked, whenever.

He was just a friend to a prostitute, totally. He wasn’t asking me for sex, he really just wanted play games and hang out and just talk, and then we just started sharing our hearts and we knew that we had to get married, and so we got married on February 14th, 1995, Valentine’s Day, and we’ve been married [almost] ten years.

MIM: You write your testimony that you feel a fire burning within you to minister to this generation. When you get the chance to do so, what do you tell them?

SL: It depends on my audience. I tell parents, “You need to tell your kids how great they are, and to spend time with them, and to train them properly, and tough love. I’m 36, and I’ve only been a good parent, in my opinion, about four years. I’m still learning, but God has taught me very quickly.

I tell [the parents], “Your kid’s got spiky black hair, wears black lipstick, his pants are black baggies, sitting there getting high-what are you doing about that right now?” I’m a voice to parents, and I know I offend a lot of them, but I don’t care, because they need to be responsible.

I teach kids about what can happen to them when they start to walk down the wrong path, that the path does progress. The cigarette turns into a joint, and the joint turns to cocaine, and then pretty soon you’re in a bikini bar, saying, “I’ll just dance in a bikini.” Well, I used to dance in those bars in downtown L.A. where you dance with the men, and the next thing you know I’m going out with the men for money …

Sin is progressive. If I go back to drinking, I won’t go back to just a drink. I’ll go back to the whole vodka bottle. It’s progressive-it’s an extremely dark vicious cycle that’s very hard to get out of. Only through Jesus Christ could you get out of it. So I warn the youth right away. I put the fear in them, is what I do.

MIM: When you visited the Morality in Media Web site, you may have seen Dr. Victor Cline’s Pornography’s Effects on Adults and Children. He says that, from the perspective of the user, there’s a four-step process in pornography addiction-addiction, escalation, desensitization, and acting out. Did you see a similar process in your own experience-as an actress?

SL: Yes. There’s definitely a process where you become desensitized, and that’s why it becomes easy-you get a seared conscience, the more you get involved in sin, the less conscience you have.

The problem is that once that sin ends, and you want to go through [healing] … you see, the reason that I don’t have that bad a memory [of being a porn actress] is because I was desensitized. You’re a walking zombie, basically. So people ask, “Well, wasn’t it horrible?” I tell them, “Number one, I was so intoxicated, and number two, I was desensitized totally.

What was horrible was when it ended, and I woke up-I tried to commit suicide several times; the depression you walk around with is horrible, a black cloud constantly, and when you finally come into the light, and you hear the truth, you realize, “I’m totally shattered, I’m totally broken.” It takes years to repair that, but it’s totally worth it, but it took a lot of reprogramming and getting my conscience back.

So I agree with [Dr. Cline].

MIM: Another resource we link to on our Web site is The Psychopharmacology of Pornography Addiction, by Dr. Judith Reisman. She writes, “Because of pornography’s to immediately overpower cognition, reason, logic, and other literate functions, pornography imagery nullifies the meaning and spirit of informed consent, and it also the brain’s ability to monitor and correct unhealthy conduct.” Do you see that as well?Shelley Lubben

SL: Yeah, I agree with that. When you start to get involved in prostitution, first you’ll do one thing. Then you’ll do that, and then I’ll do this, and it all progresses. You’ll start to get into worse fantasy and role-play. I’ve been involved in all types of sexual things, and your brain doesn’t have the capacity to make the decision to say, “Hey, this is wrong, we shouldn’t to this.”

By then … you don’t have the spirit any more. The spirit is totally crucified once you give yourself over to that lifestyle. You no longer have a conscience or a heart to make those kinds of decisions. You don’t have that capacity. That’s why people who are truly addicted to porn or prostitution-they don’t have the ability to stop themselves. I don’t believe their brains have the capacity to stop. It took a semi-truck to hit me [to get me out]. It might take a semi-truck to hit them.

MIM: In that paper, Dr. Reisman calls the mass marketing and mainstreaming of pornography, “literally restructuring the national brain to feel fear and malevolent intent toward women and children.” Could you elaborate on that, as you see it?

SL: It’s destroying the nation’s outlook on what a mother is, on what a child-mother relationship is. It’s one area where I want to get involved in government, and I feel there needs to be a major censorship on the Internet. If I don’t do something now-I totally believe this-in twenty years, my neighbors are going to be having sex on the sidewalk when I walk out of my home.

And it progressively gets worse. First just certain people did porn, and not even twenty, thirty years later, now it’s everywhere. And you know what? Thirty years from now, there’s going to be TVs on top of people’s houses that show it. It’s like a monster, a beast, and I believe if we don’t speak up now and do something about it, this whole next generation, our kids’ kids-it’s going to be disgusting.

Then you have these movies about these children, and that turns on these sickos, and they go out and do it to more children. This whole porn thing, on the Internet, it actually causing more people to hurt more children. It’s advancing. People see a porn movie and get turned on, they think, well, if they can do that I wonder if I can do this, and then they say now I’m going to do this, and another says, now I can do even more than that.

Everything is progressive. It feeds off itself. And you know, it does involve children, because I guarantee you, those people who watch those movies now are saying, I’ll bet I can do that with a child, let’s go out and get one.

MIM: Dr. Reisman further states: It seems like our whole culture is trying to accommodate the pornography industry-breast implants, penile enlargements, Viagra. Is that the way you see it?

SL: Oh, I absolutely agree with that. I can go anywhere and turn myself into a porn star now, and they do. And then they start acting like it. I have implants, so I know this-once those girls get those implants, suddenly you want to flaunt them. Next thing you know-everything’s progressive. I know that anything we do in life is progressive, good or evil. So you get the breasts, and you go hang out in the club and show your cleavage, and the next thing you know you’re sleeping with this guy, and then you think I can do two or three guys.

It all stems back-I really believe this passionately-that people did not receive the proper love that they needed [when they were children]. So that’s why the go out and get these big boobs so they can get kind of the attention and love that they need.

… I just heard that many parents are getting [their daughters] boob jobs for high school graduation presents. What are they going to get them twenty years from now? I really feel strongly that this whole culture, even though it’s subtle, and people are so ignorant and blind, and I really feel that’s why God has raised me up to be a voice, to say, “Don’t you see that?”

MIM: What would you say to tie this all together?

SL: I want to say this: Sin might feel good. Even though I shut away that conscience, it felt good to be worshiped. It felt good to that people spent a lot of money on me, told me how great I could act. It felt good that they catered to me, had these big fancy parties, sin seemed so fun.

The porn stars, some of them were so nice to me, we used to hang out, we were porn stars, we were somebody. There were things done on the set some kind of sex scenes that would traumatize me. That’s why they could do those sex scenes, because most of them were either a) high, or b) desensitized. That’s how we could do those things.

I also believe that when you give evil reign in your life, that it supernaturally empowers you to be able to do sexual things that you can’t do normally. Right now, I cannot do a lot of those things that I was able to do in the movies, because I’m not under that demonic, evil power any more-which is good!

That’s why the first people I go to are the parents. If we can get to the parents of this next generation, then I can do something about it, and tell them: Even if they’re just sitting there watching porn on the Internet … I’m telling [them]: It always leads to death. They’re going to kill themselves, or they’re going to kill their families-how many people have gotten divorced and lost their wives and their children, they’ve lost everything, to porn. Just to sit there and look at these weird fantasies-now reality hits. So you say that it’s fun for a while, then reality hits, and you lose everything. You lose your own life, you lose who you are.

When I teach the women at the rescue mission, they’re all asking me, “Why am I sitting here crying for three weeks straight?” I tell them, “It’s part of the healing process. Do you think you’re just going to heal overnight, when you’ve been in sin for fifteen, twenty years? No.” They’re the ones that are convulsing, they’re the ones shaking, going through this horrible healing time, because they’ve shattered their lives into fragments, and I’m sitting there trying to put the pieces back together for them. But I’ve already conquered that, through Jesus Christ. This is the part that people don’t understand, it’s a very destructive [time]-you will lose everything. And this is why I’m a voice now.