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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The Observer

Former pornography star, married couple discuss effects of the industry

Former pornography star Crissy Moran, said that for her, working in the industry was “very much acting and pretending that you love it.”

“To me, I liked ... the glamorous part of it and that they were doing my hair and my makeup and that people wanted to see the pictures, but the part that was a struggle for me was when it would go past the point of having to take clothes off,” she said.

A panel featuring a former porn star and a married couple whose relationship was affected by porn, discusses the effects of the industry.
Kat Robinson | The Observer
Crissy Moran, left, and professor Leonard DeLorenzo speak about the effects of pornography at a panel discussion Tuesday.


Moran spoke on her experiences in “Porn — On Both Sides of the Screen,” a panel sponsored by the McGrath Institute for Church Life and Students for Child-Oriented Policy on Tuesday night. The event — which was part of White Ribbon Against Pornography (WRAP) Week — also featured Traylor Lovvorn, a former pornography addict, and his wife Melody Lovvorn.

Leonard DeLorenzo, a theology professor and director for Notre Dame Vision at the McGrath Institute for Church Life, moderated the panel and said that he wanted the panel to focus on the stories, rather than the numbers of pornography.

“When we talk about statistics, we don’t see these people. The sheer volume of it all drowns out their voices,” he said. “… What we want to do tonight is focus not on a topic, actually, but on stories — stories from people, people who come from both sides of that screen where pornography is projected.”

Moran discussed her childhood, which included being molested for the first time at the age of four. Moran said when she started dating at 17, she became sexually active, but her boyfriend took her to get an abortion when she became pregnant.

After they broke up, Moran said she went from boyfriend to boyfriend.

“I felt like in order to feel loved, I had to have a man in my life,” she said. “ … It became a pattern. When a relationship didn’t work out, I felt like I needed a new one.”

After a stint at Hooter’s and these various boyfriends, Moran said she began to think that she “wasn’t worth anything unless [she] was sexy.”

Moran said she entered the industry after breaking up with her fiancé and moving back home. She started chatting with men online and was contacted by someone who shot for “Playboy.” While initially hesitant, she said she agreed because she had hit rock bottom.

“It was the next best thing to having someone say they loved me,” she said.

Some of her boyfriends used porn, Moran said, but she had never seen a full episode before she entered the industry.

“I hated it. I hated porn. I hated that my boyfriend wanted to look at other women. I felt competition. I felt like I couldn’t measure up because they were so perfect,” she said.

Moran was prompted to leave the industry when one of her boyfriends cheated on her.

“The realization that I became the perfect fantasy girl and was still not enough, that was what crushed me,” she said.

At that point, Moran said she began to pray to God again and disentangle herself from the industry.

The Lovvorns shared the story of their marriage and pornography’s effects on their relationship. Traylor said with the amount of time people spend on pornography, “we’re circling an epidemic, if not a pandemic.”

His first exposure to pornography began with magazines when he was eight years old, but, since he grew up in a Christian town, Traylor said, he wanted to be a witness for God and was ashamed. Traylor said people also only talked about sin in the past tense.

“I was a present-tense sinner in a past-tense sin culture,” he said. “… Pornography became my go to medicine to numb the emotions.”

When Traylor and Melody started dating in college and considered marriage, Traylor never told Melody about his addiction because he thought marriage would fix the problem. After marriage, the problem remained unresolved, and Traylor said he felt even more intense shame than he had previously and was isolated from God.

“I didn’t know how to bring God into my struggle,” he said. “I thought he was angry and very disappointed in me. … I thought to know better was to do better. … Looking back, I now realize it was my framework that was wrong.”

Traylor said his struggle with pornography also hurt his marriage with Melody.

“I was sucking the life out of Melody, trying to get her as a female to tell me I was a man,” he said.

When Melody found out about Traylor’s struggle, he said it was “the best worst day of [his] life.” Their divorce started his journey of recovery where he said he eventually realized God was enough.

After six years of divorce, Melody and Traylor remarried because Traylor said he identified his root problems.

“Think about a tree,” he said. “For years, I had all these branches of behavior I wanted to do away with … The only way we ever found the branches are dealt with is first and foremost to deal with the roots. Like with my story, the branches kept growing back.”