Rachel Robison, a survivor of pornography exposure abuse, who was shown porn at a very young age, recently recalled a time when she was looking at herself in a mirror after having been sexually assaulted, to examine the many bruises that spotted the inside of her mouth. While telling the story, Robison said that she felt torn by what happened because watching pornography had conditioned her to believe that giving consent wasn’t relevant.
A report from The Christian Post reported that Robison shared her story during a recent briefing, along with several supporters, that was held at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation headquarters. During the event, she said that if pornographic websites had been required to actually verify the age of users, what happened to her might have been prevented. And she’s not just talking about her sexual assault, but the addiction she had to porn that lasted for decades.
Robison, who is now happily married to the love of her life, said she was exposed to porn at 7 years old during a play date, leading to a 13-year-long battle with a pornography addiction. As a result of the pornographic content she was exposed to as a minor, the young woman said she struggled with a distorted view of sex and various mental health issues.
“There is no place for children in the porn industry,” Robison told the crowd of attendees. “If these sites would have had age verification, then my life would have looked extremely different, and I would not have endured the pain and suffering that I did growing up.”
“I should have never had the access that I did to porn,” she says.
The event was focused around support for House Bill 1181, which requires age verification to view porn sites in Texas, had went on up to the Supreme Court a week prior. Many of these smut sites, such as PornHub, have been accused of not protecting minors in many lawsuits, along with accusations the company actually profits from child sex abuse material.
Under House Bill 1181, any website with more than a third of “sexual material harmful to minors” must implement age verification measures. After the law was passed in 2023, pornography distributors challenged it, claiming that a law requiring them to verify age violated the First Amendment and user privacy rights. That same year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a victory for House Bill 1181 in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which stayed a district court’s injunction against the law. The appeals court ruled that the state attorney general’s office could enforce the law while litigation continues.
After she easily accessed porn at the age of 7, Robison said she eventually found and watched pornographic videos depicting abuse. To illustrate the type of content she had access to, the advocate listed titles of videos on Pornhub, such as “Little Girl Tied Up For the First Time” and “Woman Raped: She’s Not Allowed to Say No.”
“The porn industry taught me that I was an object,” the survivor explained. “That being hit, degraded and used is not only normal but a turn-on in my place as a woman in the world. And if I did not consent, then that is OK because I am just an object of pleasure.”
By the time she turned 8, Robison revealed that she felt as if something was “deeply wrong” with her. Growing older and more mature, she realized the feeling she had was shame. A few years later, at age 11, the young woman began to harm herself purposefully and soon had to be hospitalized for attempting to kill herself. She attended several therapy sessions. Each time, the therapist would ask her why she wanted to hurt herself.
"*" indicates required fields
“I felt way too much shame to admit that I had a porn addiction, so I always responded with, ‘I don’t know, I just want to die,'” she recounted to the audience. “But it was porn. Porn caused me to hate my body, question my worth, isolate myself from others and consume violent graphic content until I often felt sick to my stomach.”
In her preteens, Robison was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She also struggled with an eating disorder starting from the age of 12 and lasting until she was 20.
“The mental health issues I was facing were rooted directly in my pornography addiction,” she said during her talk. “Porn stole my innocence and polluted my mind, creating a dark reality that almost took my life.”
Robison was sexually assaulted when she was 16, recalling that as she examined herself in the mirror, she thought, “This is just like porn.”
She cried and asked her assailant to stop, but she remembered feeling conflicted, as watching pornography conditioned her to believe she was supposed to enjoy experiences like the one she endured.
“This mindset was brought on by porn and had desensitized me to abuse and sexual violence,” she stated. “And it was this mindset that told me to stay in my relationship with my abuser because my no can actually never mean no.”
“This is what the porn industry teaches us,” she emphasized. “That I am an object. That my opinions have no real meaning.”
It wasn’t until she started attending college at the age of 18, where she took mandatory Title IX training, that Robison realized she was being abused. While the advocate says she still suffers from nightmares and hypersensitivity to sexual content, Robison told attendees she is now “10 years clean from self-harm” and “four years sober from porn.”
“Porn preys on the minds of children and young people with no attempt to protect them, but rather to make a profit despite their innocence,” Robison concluded. “And I stand here today on the right side of history, choosing to fight for age verification on porn sites for my younger self and the children of the upcoming generation.”
I say we go further than age verification and just ban the garbage altogether.