Why am I here doing this?...

In 2017, I started facilitating offending behaviour programmes with men who had been arrested for online sexual crimes. The more I came to understand their pathways, the more I saw a common thread. The vast majority of them had been using pornography compulsively. Even for those whose use was less regular, the seeds of using people as functional images had been sown.

In 2019 I did a Level 5 Diploma in Sexual Addiction Counselling, to help me understand our service users and better respond to them. Things started to make more sense in terms of how people come to a point where they no longer believe they have control over their pornography, or indeed illegal image use.

The more I heard about the devastation being wrought on families after a man had been arrested, the more painful it became knowing that this didn't have to happen, that it all could have been avoided if society at large had sensible, fact-based conversations about pornography.

Given that, worldwide, the results of programmes designed to prevent offending or reoffending have mixed results (Gannoni et al, 2023), I thought that at least I could warn people who struggled with pornography use, since hundreds of men have told me that they wished someone had warned them before their use turned into offending.

Creating this website makes me feel like I am at least trying to do something to forestall events that cause ripples that go on and on. If a child loses contact with his father because that father is barred from seeing him on account of having been arrested for indecent image offending, if will affect that child's entire life. If a wife feels betrayed both by pornography use and illegal image or chatroom offending, it can affect her self image, her sense of worth, her ability to earn since she is all of a sudden a lone parent, her life looks nothing like it did before. If a son offends and his mother starts to wonder why, she might spend years wondering what she did wrong.

In writing this, my aim is to help people who want freedom from pornography and what it has brought them. I also hope that professionals, family members, friends who want to help people stuck with their pornography use from a Christian perspective find something relevant. Whatever your reason for being here, I hope that you find something of use to you…whether you are interested in a subject that is proliferating and affecting more and more relationships; or are someone struggling in an area where you wish you had more control; whether you have committed a criminal offence in which pornography as involved; or you are trying to help someone who has difficulties in an area where you’re unsure how to progress; or whether you want to find out more to prepare yourself to help your children or youth group in the future.

Counselling