My Story
By Jan Villarubia
I was raised in a broken home. My mother and father divorced when I was only three years old. My mother was very poor and partially disabled. Being raised by a single mother and a weekend only father, I struggled to find love and support in an environment that seemed predestined for failure and hardship. My mother was very independent and raised me to be strong and self-sufficient and to seek God and my father taught me to stand out academically. However, I was consistently torn between two parents who fought all the time and failed to see how much I needed them, so I sought love elsewhere. Because we were very poor, we moved around a lot and were homeless more than a few times. We found shelter in women’s homes and with family.
When I was about 10 years old, we moved in with my godparents, god sister, and god brother. Not too long after we moved in, my god sister began to molest me, and my world began to spiral downhill. This went on for about two years before I finally mustered the courage to threaten her with telling my mom and her mom. As a teenager I found wisdom and insight on the lonely streets of the inner city of Chicago. You see, my mother had found love with a man from Europe who started whisking her away on trips for sometimes six months at a time leaving my sister, who is only three years older than I am and me to fend for ourselves. Forced to deal with things on my own, I sought safety and escape through gang affiliated friends. I was thrown into a world of house parties, marijuana, and underage drinking. I was viciously raped and robbed of my virginity at the age of 13 by a gang member I thought I trusted. But I was too scared to tell anyone out of fear of retaliation.
At the age of 15 I met my high school sweetheart. He was homeless, his mother kicked him out, she was an abusive alcoholic. I felt a kindred spirit with him and wanted to love him the way I longed to be loved. I got pregnant at the age of 17 and became an emancipated minor. We lived in a rat-infested basement I rented with him for $200 a month. He was very immature and irresponsible and wouldn’t keep a job. I had to move back in with my mother, but she wouldn’t allow us to stay with her unless we got married. Begrudgingly, I married him because I did not want to be homeless. I knew my marriage was doomed before I said I do.
A year of marriage and another child later I was desperate. I began escorting and doing dominatrix work while my husband ushered me around john to john like a glorified pimp. I struggled to go back to school and work legitimately, but it was never enough. Time marched on, we had another child and stayed together another eight years before I finally divorced him for constantly cheating on me and even marrying someone else while we were still married. I found myself on the brink of homelessness again. With no support from my ex-husband, I took measures into my own hands. My journey into the porn industry was driven by my desperate need to feed my three children. I was a destitute single mother who would have done anything for my children.
I was an actress in the porn industry for about a year and a half from 2006-2007. During that time, I suffered tremendously at the hands of porn producers. I was coerced and forced to do scenes that I never agreed to. I was given drugs and alcohol before being filmed and then the porn producers would also record me saying that I was NOT under the influence of any drugs or alcohol prior to filming. I was forced into doing “privates” which is just prostitution. The porn producers would send me to their friends or a location of their choosing so I could sleep with them under the guise of it being a film. I gladly accepted the drugs and alcohol. I didn’t want to feel the pain of penetration from an over-sized man or from being told to hold poses for still camera shots while being penetrated and choked. Every scene was at least two hours or more because of the need to do freeze frame pics and get good angles and lighting. I was degraded on camera and had to like it or else no pay! I was called horrible and degrading names, and because I was in the BBW (big, beautiful women) niche, my weight was consistently used as a form of exploitation and insult. I was told not to lose weight or that I would never make it in the industry.
I later performed a brutal gang-bang for a porn movie. The porn producers lied to me and told me that it was only going to be about 10-15 men and that I was not going to have sex with all of them. They offered me more than I had ever made in any other film, and I believed that this could be my ticket out. I tried my best to prepare mentally and physically for this shoot. I was so sick to my stomach at the thought of it I couldn’t eat much leading up to the day of shooting.
When the day came, the producer came to my dressing room and offered me drugs and alcohol. After taking some, he told me that I was going to have to sleep with 25 guys and do some anal. I vomited. He told me I had to or else they would find someone else. During the scene I briefly blacked out, but they kept filming. After the film was done, the men who filmed with me started coming up to me asking me for my autograph. I was so confused and then found out that these were men were not all but actors but most of them were fans who answered an ad to be in a film with their favorite porn star. I was beside myself emotionally, mentally, and physically. I had no idea what I just exposed myself to.
Industry testing standards are a farce. They only made performers get tested every 28 days. During that time, most performers are doing at least two films a day three times a week and that’s not including their own personal websites or other streaming platforms and their private sex lives. They are constantly being exposed to chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, and at risk for HIV and AIDS but the industry makes you believe that their testing protocols are the end all to protecting you.
Porn preys on the desperate and destitute. I was coerced into doing unspeakable things that I never agreed to but if I didn’t, my children would not have been fed, clothed, and sheltered. I almost took my own life but cried out to God instead and in His great mercy God heard me and sent me someone to help redirect my life and be a mentor to help mold me into the activist I have become.
For almost 15 years since leaving porn, I have fought to shine the light of truth behind the killer porn industry. I have traveled abroad and been on radio and television shows, and in magazines. In 2012, I aided in getting Measure B, also known as the condom law, passed in LA County. I have boldly spoken out about Christ’s love and salvation and the harms of pornography inside of porn conventions, and I voluntarily consult with other organizations to help publish books and articles.
I was raised in church, but I let life’s circumstances get the best of me. I have worked relentlessly to not only turn my life around and become a licensed marriage and family therapist intern, ordained chaplain, and activist since leaving the adult industry, but I regularly advocate for youth, especially adolescent girls, and young women.
I want people to understand that people are dying in the porn industry. Actresses like Olivia Lua, 23, Shyla Stylez, 35, Olivia Nova, 20, Yuri Luv, 31 and August Ames, 23, all died within just weeks of each other. They had mental health issues; performers are negatively affected by the sex work stigma complicated by any preexisting mental health issues. Porn actor Bill Bailey died attending a sex festival in Mexico City with his girlfriend, he plunged to his death during the event. It’s not just within the states either. Just seven days ago, a missing Japanese porn star was found dead, naked, and tied to a tree in a remote forest.
Steve McKeown, a psychoanalyst, founder of MindFixers and owner of The McKeown Clinic said that “Nearly 90 per cent of women in the sex industry said they wanted to escape but had no other means for survival and also experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at rates of nearly 70 per cent equivalent to veterans of combat war.”
My story isn’t the exception, it’s the industry standard. Porn isn’t glamorous! There isn’t anything real about it. It is a sick industry filled with broken people.
How can you help end the demand? Get informed!
If you’re a father, your love, instruction, and attention are desperately needed to help prevent young girls from a life of sex work. Statistics show that when fathers are present and actively engaged in raising their kids, their children, on average:
- Have better, healthier relationships
- Make wiser decisions about relationships
- Less inclined to have sexual relations too young
- Seven times less likely to get pregnant as a teenager
- Have better emotional health and control
- More likely to be non-aggressive toward others
- Four time less likely to be prone to anxiety or depression
- Less likely to have behavioral and emotional difficulties
- Less inclined to use and abuse alcohol
- Less prone to use and abuse drugs
- Less likely to become depressed, which sometimes leads to addictive behavior
- Ten times less likely to suffer physical or emotional abuse
- Six times less probable that they will suffer neglect
- Less like to engage in risky behavior
(National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, 2019)
If you or a loved one are struggling with porn addiction and sexually maladaptive behaviors first know that you/they are loved by Christ Jesus, and He has so much more for you/them than this. Secondly, you/they are not alone. Lastly, there are a lot of resources to help you/them overcome this, NOTHING is impossible with Christ!