This made the print edition of the Eureka Reporter yesteday but not online for some reason so I thought I’d post it:

Symptoms

Hopelessly trying to avoid recent headlines surrounding the Duke Lacrosse incident and doing my best not to dwell on the issue I finally succumbed and asked myself a few questions in order to process, and hopefully forget about the depravity of the young men involved. Like many people I asked how someone could do what has been alleged. What would cause a man to treat a woman in this way? How could someone be so full of lust?

I recently asked myself similar questions after watching a Dateline special on NBC several weeks ago. The special focused on minors that had been solicited online for sex, with the majority of the footage coming from inside a house that Dateline had set up in cooperation with local law enforcement. Through the course of the show, dozens of men from all walks of life showed up to have a sexual encounter with someone they thought was a minor. I was astounded at the type of men who showed up: teachers, law enforcement, fathers, and husbands. How could this many men show up to have an anonymous sexual encounter with a teenager?

Sex crimes are increasing, even in our own small community. These crimes are only symptoms of something that has the potential to destroy lives and absolutely crush the concept of trust in our society. This statement may sound a bit exaggerated, but it’s very true.

How can someone you think you know, molest or rape? The answer is that they have a secret addiction to something that has perverted their mind so much that things aren’t as they should be anymore. Most guys already know what I’m talking about – Pornography. In the last 10 years access to pornography has gone from a physical act of walking into a store and buying it to nothing more than a click of a mouse. Now all you have to do is open your e-mail inbox. Log on. Say you’re 18 and older – it’s as easy as that, even easier really.

Serial killer Ted Bundy admitted some years ago that the beginning of his depravity started with pornography. Pornography has taken a wonderful, emotional, private, and powerful act like sex and made it marketable and twisted…very twisted. In the world of pornography women (and men for that matter) become little more than an object, a commodity. Nearly every depraved sex crime is acted out hundreds of times online before it happens in real life. The most searched for content on the internet is “Adult” in nature. So how can you blame the 20 year old kid whose only sexual interaction has been modeled for him online in the most unnatural way? Why should it be a surprise that a man would want to have sex with someone he doesn’t know when he’s done it online for years?

As long as virulent images and fantasies continue to be played out online, the lines between the real world and the cyber world will become less and less blurred. People you thought you knew will be caught doing acts that you would never have imagined. The reality is that they had been committing them over and over in cyber space. This is a major issue and if it goes unchecked, the symptoms of it will continue to dominate our news headlines.

The odds are pretty good that nearly every man that’s reading this right now who has an internet connection knows exactly what I’m talking about. The only way to overcome this addiction like any other is to seek help. Find a friend and ask for accountability, chances are he’s struggled with the same thing. Unless a light is shown on the darkness of the porn industry sex crimes will become a hallmark of our society.