Dr. Jameson Taylor: I want parents to wake up here. 11 year old boys are in counseling for porn addiction. We basically have no regulation of pornography anymore.
Heidi Olson: I'm a sexual assault nurse examiner. I took care of a five year old and she had been sexually assaulted by her 12 year old brother and we found violent porn on his phone. If 90% of pornography is showing violence towards women and pornography is setting the arousal template for children today, what are we creating as a society? It's really not if a child sees porn, it's when parents have to start
Dr. Jameson Taylor: to demand that this content be shut down.
Heidi Olson: Pornography absolutely 100% is demonic. I also know that the God we serve is way bigger than this. And he is actively involved in bringing healing and hope and salvation to us.
Dr. Jameson Taylor: Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. All God asks of you is faithfulness.
Heidi Olson: Then conquer we must for our cause it is just and this be our motto in God is our trust. We need desperately to have men and
Dr. Jameson Taylor: women of courage and discipline, for courage
Heidi Olson: and discipline are contagious. M My name is Heidi Olson. I'm a sexual assault nurse examiner. I'm also the founder and president of a company called Paradigm Shift Training and Consulting. So I actually grew up in southern NewSong Mexico. I currently live in Kansas City. So when I moved to Kansas City, they were hiring forensic nurses, or sane nurses. And I thought this would be a great way to be able to work with vulnerable populations. And so I applied, they hired me, and I loved it. As soon as I started working as a forensic nurse, I just knew this is the job for me, this is something I want to grow in. And so I actually ran the forensic program at a children's hospital for several years before stepping away to start my business. Sexual assault nurse examiners, or SANEs, as we are commonly called, are a very unique niche type of nursing. So most people have never heard of sane nurses unless you've interacted with one. but our entire job is to collect evidence after someone's experienced a crime, in this case, sexual assault. So if you think about it, when someone's experienced sexual assault, evidence is left on their body, whether it's, skin cells from a perpetrator, hair cells, saliva, semen. And so our job is trying to collect that evidence for law enforcement, for prosecutors, so that we can corroborate a victim's disclosure. And it's more than that, of course. We know that sexual assault is traumatizing. And so we want to hold space and be empathetic and provide care holistically for people who have experienced tr. And so sane nurses are trained specifically to work with victims of a crime. And so that's what I've been doing for the last 10 years, specifically with children. When m I went through orientation to become a sane nurse, I had no training on anything related to kids sexually assaulting other kids. We didn't talk about it. There wasn't a formal name for it. I didn't have any resources at my disposal. And so I didn't really consider this as something that I would be encountering. I think I thought most perpetrators are going to be, you know, the stereotype that we have, like these old men who live in a basement and lure kids down there with like, you know, kittens and candy or you know, whatever the stereotype is. And what I realized very quickly after finishing orientation is the perpetrator. And I know perpetrator is a really strong word. I'm using kind of what we say in the criminal justice system. The offender, the kid with problematic sexual behavior, they're really young. So we write down the offender's ages because we're keeping different data sets within the hospital. And I'm writing down the offenders are 10, 11, 12, just over and over again. And so I would say within months of being off orientation, I was like, something is happening that we're not talking about. And I think where the light bulbs really like went off. For me, dots were connecting. And the moment was I took care of a five year old and she had been sexually assaulted by her 12 year old brother. The dad had walked in and seen what had happened. So there was no question about what had occurred. It was absolutely violating and inappropriate. So I'm taking care of the five year old. The parents are devastated, of course. And as the parents are talking to me, the mom says, you know, he's had a lot of changes in his behavior. The 12 year old, he's, you know, been isolated. He's just in his room with the door shut all the time. He's now, you know, failing in school. He used to love playing soccer. He doesn't want to play soccer anymore. And we found violent porn on his phone. M. Do you think these things are connected? And it was just like this moment of like, yes, of course this is all connected. And it makes so much sense that he's watching this material now he's acting this out his sister. And so I think once I started to make that connection and then hear other people around the country making the same connection, I started to see it all the time.
Dr. Jameson Taylor: Hi, my name is Dr. Jameson Taylor and I am director of the center for Government Renewal with AFA Action. I think we need to, as a culture, we really need to think about why is pornography even legal. Throughout most of American history, pornography was illegal. Actually in many, many countries pornography is still illegal. India, throughout the Middle East, Indonesia, Singapore, lots of countries, pornography is still illegal. And in America, pornography is also illegal in a certain kind of way. At the time of the founding, until basically the 1950s, the court said all pornography is obscene and it can be illegal, the states can regulate it. 1957 we get a new Supreme Court decision, it's called Roth and it fundamentally changes the way that the courts began to think about pornography. Basically they start to make a distinction between pornography and obscenity. And what they said in the Roth case was this is pornography, but it's only pornography if the people in this community think it's pornography. That's called the community standard. Very confusing. A, prosecutor looks at that, a police officer looks at that and it's like, I don't really know what I should do, so I'm not going to do anything. So because of the missteps of the U.S. supreme Court since this Ah, Roth decision in the 1950s, because of what the court has done, we basically have no regulation of pornography anymore. And that's why kids are getting access to extreme pornography and hardcore pornography online. I want parents to wake up here. 11 year old boys are in counseling throughout the country for porn addiction. We're not talking about initial exposure. Now they say that the age of initial exposure is roughly age 12 worldwide maybe, but we know it's very early. Whatever it is, kids are getting exposed to very hardcore pornography at earlier and earlier ages. One study said that 100% of 15 year old boys had seen not just pornography, but hardcore violent pornography. 80% of girls at age 15, hardcore violent pornography, they've been exposed to that. So that suggests they're being exposed to other things even earlier.
Heidi Olson: Pornography online is nothing like the print based porn of Playboy from 30 years ago. It is extremely violent, it is very degrading. And so what they're thinking is normal sex is strangulation, gagging, people watching. So this is setting their context for this is how I should have sex. So then say they are having consensual sex with someone, they're acting out a porn scene which is very violent. So for boys what we're teaching them is hey, you should be violent, dominating. If a girl says no, you just keep going because she actually wants you to keep Going because in porn she's saying yes, you know, or she's saying no, don't do it. But smiling, she's acting like she enjoys the violence and the degradation. And for girls, what it's teaching is you should like sexual violence and if you don't, there's something wrong with you. And so it's extremely confusing. I do believe there are kids I've taken care of that have been sexually assaulted. And the offender probably did not understand they were committing an assault because they're acting out the porn scene. Watched thousands of times at this point in time. And it's been so normalized. I took care of a 15 year old girl who had a brutal assault at the hands of 15 year old boy. I mean, her assault was so terrible she could barely sit down because she had such awful genital injuries. And I remember asking her, were you strangled? Did he ever put his, you know, hands around your throat? And she said, I think he was trying to be sexy. I was like, whoa. When did we conflate strangulation with sexiness? But there is such a high prevalence of strangulation in pornography. So many kids are strangling each other even during consensual sex, not realizing it can cause brain damage, it can be lethal. And so this has become a norm. When you think about it, say 20 years ago, strangulation is terrifying. You can't breathe, you can't speak. It can do awful things to your body. Now we have kids who are doing this to each other all the time. I think if we follow this to its logical end, if we're thinking about this being a public health crisis and we are not doing anything to protect kids from the trauma around porn exposure. It is traumatic to see sexual violence when your brain is still developing and you have no idea how to make sense of it. I would actually argue it's traumatic to watch sexual violence and be an adult, honestly. But imagine a kid who has no context and no one is helping them understand what they've been exposed to. And then for children who have been acted out against, also highly traumatic. And we are not offering resources or having healthy conversations or teaching kids what healthy intimacy looks like. So we follow this to its logical end. What does this look like in 20, 30 years when these are the people taking care of us in hospitals and our police officers and our lawyers and judges and juries, do we have a healthy understanding of consent? A colleague of mine recently told me about a high school in rural Mid America. The school monitored their school issued the students, school issued laptops. For one month, they only had 140 students. So this was a tiny high school and in one month there were 13,000 hits to Pornhub. That is every student going to Pornhub three times a day, every day for a month on their school issued device. It's mind blowing the amount of pornography that kids are watching every day. A recent study showed that when kids view porn, they think that what they're seeing is a realistic portrayal of sex. And many boys in the study revealed they wanted to imitate this behavior. So let's think about this. I, recently heard a therapist say a sexual psychopath can only be sexually aroused when someone is being harmed. If 90% of pornography is showing violence towards women and pornography is setting the arousal template for children today, what are we creating as a society? I think some parents probably who are watching this are like, not my kid. This is not my kid. This is not relevant to us. I hope this is not right. I don't want any parents to be experiencing this. It's awful, it's heartbreaking, it's traumatic. But the reality is even good kids, even kids where there's a lot of supervision, are still being exposed to this content. Because wherever there is a device, there is a potential for pornography to be shown to your kids. So your kid, maybe you are vigilant about their device. You are checking it. They don't keep it in their bedroom overnight. You're doing all the right things, but then they go to school and guess what? They're being shown in the locker room or at lunchtime or on the bus or at a sleepover, wherever it may be. It's impossible to keep kids from, being protected from every facet of what's going on online. It's really not if a child sees porn, it's when. Which means having conversations about this is so crucial because they need to know what to do when they see it. We also have to think about artificial intelligence and how that's going to start to affect generations that are growing up. And so things like chatbots, where you can have these fake relationships, you can look at pornography. So there is no need for human connection, you know, quote, unquote, no need for human connection, or intimacy that's going to affect us as a society for sure.
Dr. Jameson Taylor: The United States Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to conduct age verification of its users. This ruling is one of the final decisions of the term handed down by the nation's highest court earlier today. Finally, we're getting that first Piece of regulation, which is just going back to where we were 20, 30 years ago, which said, hey, you have to verify age before you give someone pornography. Just as if you went into a bookstore or, or whatever it may be to buy an adult magazine, they would verify your age. Just as if you went into, an NC17 movie, they would verify your age. That's just square one. There's more that we need to do. And the exciting thing about the Supreme Court Paxton case is the court has opened the door to say, hey, we realize this is a problem. We realize that our previous jurisprudence on this, our previous decisions on this, it's not working out too well because, I mean, again, we're saturated in porn as a culture. We realize we made some mistakes here. So they're opening the door for states to think more creatively about how to regulate porn. So, for instance, one bill that we've been working on at AFA is it allows people to sue websites that harm children by either producing and distributing csam, which is child sexual abuse material, otherwise known as child pornography. Or parents can sue websites if their kids are exposed to pornography and harmed by that pornography. So let's say an 11 year old starts to watch, not see Sam, but just pornography. Ah. And that child becomes addicted and has problems. Well, now there's an avenue for parents to sue those websites to hold them accountable. That law has passed in South Carolina, Oklahoma and Mississippi, and we're hoping to get that passed in other states. Parents have to start to demand that this content be shut down because it is so harmful for kids, it's harmful for families. And when they do that as voters, as activists, then state lawmakers will listen and then the courts will listen. And at AFA Action in particular, we have solutions for you. We have model bills, model policies that you can use to bring to your lawmakers, to bring to your school board members. We also have I voter guide where you can learn about where do your school board members stand on these particular issues. So there's a lot that you can do, but there's nothing you can do if all you do is sit in front of the television and watch news and complain about it all day. Now, yes, sit in front of this video and share this video, but after that, we want you to get to work.
Heidi Olson: I started my business several years ago just with the intent that I could see. Healthcare workers are positioned in such a unique place to speak into the lives of kids about these issues about sexual assault, exploitation, trafficking, safety online. We're already doing assessments with them. we maybe are already asking questions about sexual health. Why not add in components about are you being exposed to pornography? Is there anything that I can help with? Do you have questions for me around this? we did implement certain questions like that where I previously was working in Kansas City. And it was amazing the conversations that came out when kids felt safe with us and we were able to ask questions around pornography and provide guidance or resources. And so I started my business with the intent that I wanted to equip other professionals and healthcare workers with this information around recognizing trafficking, the role that porn is playing in the lives of kids, sexual assault, kind of all the things that we have talked about. So I have been doing that the last couple of years. I also have been consulting with different groups. So I worked with a group to create resources for, specifically for healthcare workers that are free, that they can access around pornography that you can hand to a patient, that you can hand to a parent, that you can hand to a colleague to help get everyone on the same page about how pornography can be harmful to kids brains and their bodies. I also have been working with different groups to help with legislation. So I wrote an amicus brief that went to the U.S. supreme Court, for the hearing that was in January. I have been on different podcasts, different, had different interviews, just trying to raise awareness and sound the alarm. And so I'm always happy to talk about this topic and, and help people connect the dots in their own lives. You know, I think what has been really stabilizing for me in doing this work is Psalm 91. So thinking through spiritual warfare and just praying that over myself, praying it out loud, praying it as I'm entering into environments where maybe I know there's going to be a lot of pushback or I can even feel the spiritual darkness. There have been, state houses I've walked into to testify at podiatry where I can feel the spiritual oppression as I'm walking in to talk to legislators. And so I think just praying that protection, I also have been praying through the armor every single day from Ephesians, every day, because the Lord has put that on my, my heart so many times of like, put on your armor, put on your armor, put on your armor. Because this is, a much deeper fight than just, you know, I'm raising awareness about porn. There's some truly evil spiritual darkness around it. On my side of working in this realm. I have never experienced so much spiritual pushback and darkness as I have entering into this realm. Pornography, absolutely 100% is demonic. I presented to a group of therapists one time, and they gave me the harshest feedback I've ever had in my life. It was extremely cruel and, like, just very attacking, my intelligence kind of saying that I was just making things up. And one of the people wrote in there, I'll never forget, because I was like, wait, what? And I was just presenting the facts. There was no, religious component, nothing like that. Just here's the trends I'm seeing. Here are the facts. And one of the counselors said she felt like she got dragged to a Southern Baptist convention against her consent. And I think, for me, again, it's okay. I hit a nerve, right? What trauma is this hitting in your world that feels so threatening? So, absolutely, I've gotten pushback from multiple groups, multiple people. And I think for me, I can kind of let it roll off my back saying, I think this is hitting something painful, something maybe they don't want to address. And that's where the pushback comes from. That being said, I'd say 90, 98% of the time, people are so receptive, they're so kind, men and women alike who are like, yes, thank you. How can we help? We're, totally on board. So most people respond well, and they really care about protecting kids.
Dr. Jameson Taylor: So people might say, oh, you're a prude, or you're a religious zealot or whatever it may be, because you want porn to be illegal, because you recognize how harmful pornography is. But people on both sides, on the left and the right, are increasingly recognizing the harms that pornography produces. It harms kids. It harms women. you have folks on the left that say there should be no pornography because pornography is so harmful to women. It degrades women. It turns them into sexual objects. So this is not about religion. This is about common sense. This is also about recognizing the dignity of who we are as people.
Heidi Olson: The best thing that people can do is if you have kids in your life and you are the trusted adult for them, whether it's your niece, nephew, kids, grandkids, whoever it may be, is to start to have conversations with them. And it's going to vary age by age. And there are lots of great resources out there that can help you figure out how to have these conversations. But we have to talk to kids about this. We cannot assume that they're going to be able to navigate their way through this extremely traumatic, sexually violent world that they're being inundated with. And so the conversations don't have to be this huge ordeal. It can just be little touch points here and there, saying, you know, have you ever seen something like this? Do you have any questions for me? It may be a little bit awkward at first, but it's so worth it.
Dr. Jameson Taylor: Ask for God's protection for your kids. The devil in particular uses images. The devil's playground is the imagination. Ask Jesus precious blood to come upon the imagination of your kids to protect your kids when they go to school. Protect your kids when they are online. Protect your kids when they're doing their homework. Be mindful that they are going out into a sinful world. Also, though, you know, hey, Rome was a sinful situation as well, but that's where the Christian church thrived. The light shines brighter in the darkness, so don't be discouraged. There's all this crazy stuff out in the world. There's always been all this crazy stuff out in the world. And, you know, where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.
Heidi Olson: I love kids. They are amazing. They are just so full of joy and life, and they just bring so much beauty into the world. And I see that with kids, even when they experienced something hard, even when they've been exposed to pornography, there is hope for them. I think I would have burned out a long time ago if I did not have the hope, that the Lord sees all of this, that his heart breaks for kids that are being traumatized and abused. And he sees them. And he is a God of redemption. He is a God of healing. He is a God of hope. I've seen that in my own life. So to know in m my own life, he can heal. He can bring wholeness. I absolutely believe that for these kids that are experiencing trauma as well. And so I think for me, it's really grounding to say, okay, the thing I'm seeing in front of me is really hard. I also know that the God we serve is way bigger than this, and he is actively involved in bringing healing and hope and salvation to us. It.
