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Expert calls SEC porn users ‘addicts’

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WASHINGTON (BP)–An author of two books about Internet pornography says recent reports about porn usage by Securities and Exchange Commission employees likely is only the “tip of the iceberg” and is an example of a larger problem of porn addiction in workplaces nationwide.

Michael Leahy, who describes himself as a recovering porn addict and has written “Porn Nation” and “Porn@Work,” said fixing the problem at the SEC “won’t be easy” and “won’t happen overnight.” Leahy travels to churches and colleges throughout the year, warning about the consequences of porn usage and porn addiction. Often, his college appearances are sponsored by university Campus Crusade for Christ chapters.

Leahy’s porn addiction cost him his marriage and several jobs.

An internal SEC memo detailed shocking policy violations, including a finding that one senior attorney in the D.C. office looked at porn for up to eight hours a day. As reported by the Associated Press, the accountant stored images on his hard drive but ran out of space, so he burned files on CDs and DVDs. The employee resigned, but some others who viewed porn are still employed after facing disciplinary action.

The SEC memo said 33 employees had been investigated for looking at porn in the past five years, including 31 who were doing so when the financial system was tanking, AP reported.

Leahy said he, too, once spent eight hours a day viewing porn.

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“I think it’s safe to say these blatant offenders are addicts,” he said in a statement.

Leahy said other employees likely used porn but weren’t caught. All of them, he said, need help.

“We do that today for alcoholics and drug addicts through [employee assistance programs] at work,” Leahy said. “Why shouldn’t we offer the same level of support to sex and porn addicts who want to get well?”

Among the other findings as detailed by AP, one accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times one month by his computer’s Internet filter from visiting pornographic sites. The accountant, though, still managed to find porn by bypassing the filter.

Other government agencies have had similar problems. The Washington Times reported that in 2006 two employees at the Environmental Protection Agency were suspended for viewing porn. An employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs also was caught looking at porn, The Times said. Additionally, AP reported, in 2009, employees at the National Science Foundation were caught looking at Internet porn, with one employee during a two-year stretch spending as much as 20 percent of his time looking at sexually explicit material.

Leahy said he’s been asked frequently about the SEC employees, “What were they thinking?” His answer: They weren’t. They were looking for an escape and for a sexual “high,” he said.

“At the end of the day,” Leahy wrote on his blog, “the ONLY way anyone can explain the seemingly insane behavior of those in the SEC who are being investigated is to think of them as addicts — sex or porn addicts — who will do things in pursuit of the next high, the next buzz, that ordinary citizens think and know is totally illogical and even insane. Only addicts would continue trying to access porn from their computer at work, knowing all too well that they’re probably being monitored and could lose their job.”

Often, Leahy said, users of Internet porn are looking to escape stress, boredom, anger or hurt. The Internet, he said, has escalated porn addictions because porn is now easily accessible and — its workplace usage being an exception — anonymous.

Leahy on his blog outlined a five-step process to porn addiction, which includes the “neurochemistry” of the brain changing.

“As tolerance builds up to these increased levels of dopamine production, sexual stimulation and sexual pleasure decreases,” he wrote. “The result is desensitization and the need to discover ever more arousing material in order to experience the same level of sexual stimulation.”

Soon, he said, the person is feeling shame and guilt over their behavior, and so they turn back to pornography “to numb the pain and disappointment.”

“An addict is born,” he says.

Leahy is founder and CEO of BraveHearts, and organization that seeks to educate the public about pornography, prostitution and sex trafficking.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, previously told Baptist Press the problem of Internet porn addiction is very real among Christians. He called Internet porn “perhaps the greatest challenge Christians face today.”

“I am convinced that millions of men and boys are being destroyed by pornography, and statistics show that women and girls are joining their numbers,” Land said. “Their abilities to be godly marriage partners are being warped by it, and it is one of the major causes of divorce. Pornography is an evil that thrives in silence and proliferates in the dark. And the sad truth is that believers are not in any way, shape or form impervious to its lure.”

Earlier this year more than 50 scholars from The Witherspoon Institute released a 53-page report, “The Social Costs of Pornography,” that called pornography “one of the great social diseases” and labeled it an addiction.

“There is evidence that more people — children, adolescents, and adults — are consuming pornography — sporadically, inadvertently, or chronically — than ever before,” the report said.
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Michael Foust is an assistant editor of Baptist Press. For more information about Michael Leahy visit BraveHearts.net. In early April Baptist Press posted a four-part series of stories about Internet porn addiction. To read the stories, visit www.bpnews.net and search for “Internet porn addiction” (with the phrase in quotes).