Definition:
The explicit depiction of sexual activity in literature, films, photography, or the internet that stimulates erotic feelings.
Statistics:
- the porn industry in is a $57 billion global business, $12 billion of this is in the USA. Total revenues are larger than the combined revenues of all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises in the USA
- child pornography alone generates $3 billion annually and the average age for first internet exposure to pornography is 11 yrs. old
- globally 72 million people visit porn sites each year – 200, 000 every day
- 47% of Christian men say pornography is a major problem in the home
Personal Impact Story
He owns her. One move of his finger and she is his: beautiful, healthy, and young. He owns her, though he has never seen her before. A woman without a name. He likes it that way. Another woman he will add to the harem of his lust. One of many women who wait for him, quietly and patiently, in the dark storehouses of his mind. There they sit on display like bottles of liquor in a cabinet, ready to be poured out into the chalice of his desire and consumed.
She is a stranger to him, and already he feasts on her nakedness, knows every part of her body, the way she is stretched out before him. She pleases him because she is silent, willing, and asks for nothing in return. She does not show him the heart that beats behind her exposed breasts. She does not ask for his name, she does not care to know his age. She cannot demand flowers, ask for diamonds, or say the word ‘love’. She lies before him, exposed and vulnerable. And she will stay there, in the same position, playing his game, pretending to desire him. She will not move until he tires of her and wants the promise of new flesh. He spent his pocket change, and now she belongs to him.
She will be invited onto the movie screen of his mind, loyal to him, as he trains his body and mind to think of her as an object to grope and ravage and touch. And then with a single movement of his finger, the flip of a page, she will be ushered back into the dark room of his memory. With the click of his finger at his computer, she will be filed and stored away. She will wait there until he tires of the other lovers, old and new: a fix, a stimulant. His beautiful lover without a name.
*the above story is based on facts but is fictional, for actual statistics order 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless today
To all of you who want to do something about child pornography and child prostitution.
Please go to http://www.ecpat.net, a worldwide organization who need our support urgently.
ECPAT is a network of organisations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children. It seeks to encourage the world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation.
The ECPAT acronym stands for ‘ End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes’.
ECPAT has Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).