Roger Marsh: Well, welcome back to another edition of Family Talk. Thanks for making us a part of your day. I'm Roger Marsh, and what you're about to hear is part two of a conversation that Dr. Dobson had back in 2017 with his good friend Patrick Trueman. In today's program, they'll continue discussing the damage pornography is causing in our culture and across all walks of society. In 1986, Dr. Dobson served on the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. The issues and the materials that he and the committee members reviewed were quite challenging and gut-wrenching as they calculated the magnitude of pornography within our society. It was difficult for Dr. Dobson and the committee to learn that this problem touches the lives of our children.
Patrick Trueman: Dr. Gail Dines talked about pornography as the wallpaper of our children's lives, and that's really what it is. It is everywhere. Kids today can use the internet to go anywhere in the world. They know how to go anywhere, and they know how to go to porn sites, and the porn industry knows that about them. So they have all these free porn sites out there and parents may not be aware of it, but it's just unlimited amounts of free pornography in every paraphilia. Whatever you are looking for and stuff you'd never know existed. I mean, an adult can't handle this. I wouldn't want to look at this.
Roger Marsh: That was our guest for today, Patrick Trueman. Patrick serves as president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and today you're going to hear part two of this two-part conversation Patrick had with our own Dr. Dobson on the issue of pornography. Remember, you can access part one and part two of this conversation in their entirety by going to our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. In a moment, you'll hear Dr. Dobson and Patrick Trueman discussing some of the successes that came from the work the commission did. Just a brief reminder, once again, the content in today's program is not meant for younger listeners, so parental discretion is advised. Let's join Dr. Dobson and Patrick Trueman right now in part two of their conversation that we're calling "Pornography: A Public Health Crisis."
Dr. James Dobson: When you and I were talking before the program today, you made reference to something that happened during the Pornography Commission, 1985 and '86 that I had forgotten, and it had to do with 7-Eleven.
Patrick Trueman: People don't know that 7-Eleven was probably the leading distributor of pornography in America at one time. And the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, which you were a part of, before you finished your work, sent the corporation that owns 7-Eleven, it was called Southland Corporation at the time. Sent them a letter saying that the Attorney General's Commission is wrapping up its work and we are about to name you as the number one distributor of pornography in America.
Dr. James Dobson: Got their attention, didn't they?
Patrick Trueman: Got their attention, and they jumped at that. They did not want to be called a pornographer, but certainly didn't want to be called number one. And they got rid of pornography in all 7-Elevens. And you know Jim, as you recall, the magazine racks in 7-Elevens are right there at a child's eyes.
Dr. James Dobson: Oh yeah.
Patrick Trueman: And what a sweeping victory for the commission before you even ended your work.
Dr. James Dobson: Let's talk about another aspect of that. There was a time, I'm not sure now, where the military base stores, the PXs and so on, were high-volume carriers of pornography and you guys jumped on that.
Patrick Trueman: We did. A couple of years ago when there was a sexual assault crisis in the military that came to light because of a survey across all military branches and the Armed Services Committee and the Senate held hearings on why is there sexual assault in the military. And we took pictures of the PX magazine racks and we brought those to this committee and waved it in front of them. Jeff Sessions took our brochure showing the picture of those porn magazines sold in the PXs to the committee and made an announcement, and the committee wrote to the Pentagon demanding that they get rid of the PX form.
Dr. James Dobson: And what happened?
Patrick Trueman: The Army and the Air Force immediately got rid of it. I'm not sure if the Navy has gotten rid of all of it. We understand that there's still a problem with the Navy, but most all of it disappear. And it shows you one thing, the citizen action counts. You can make a difference.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, let's talk about hotels because at the time of our commission, almost every hotel had the most wretched hardcore stuff. We're not talking airbrush nudity. We're talking about hardcore obscenity.
Patrick Trueman: On the TVs.
Dr. James Dobson: Yes.
Patrick Trueman: And you'd go in those rooms, Jim, and you'd turn on the TV, and of course the first thing they want to sell you is the movies. And many of them said there's this kind of movie drama, action, and adult.
And then you could click on the adult and you see all these terrible images, et cetera. Well, we put Hilton Hotels on our Dirty Dozen list. It's a list that we produce annually of 12 corporations engaged in pornography or sexual exploitation. Every year we do this. We put Hilton on, put the list out to all the pro-family groups in America. A lot of the people wrote then to Hilton and called Hilton. And Hilton asked us in for a meeting and said, "We're getting a thousand emails a week to our top executives and we've decided to get out of the porn business worldwide." Every hotel across the world that's a Hilton hotel or a Hilton managed hotel got out of that business. And then we turned our attention to Hyatt, InterContinental, and the Starwood brands, and all those within six months agreed to get out of the porn business as well.
Dr. James Dobson: That's progress.
Patrick Trueman: Great progress. So now when you check into a hotel, your kids don't turn on the TV and see that sort of thing. And the businessmen and women aren't tempted when they go there. That's very important.
Dr. James Dobson: Some of my data are old because they go back to the pornography commission, but I remember that the research showed that the number one users of obscenity, of hardcore stuff are teenagers.
Patrick Trueman: I think that's still true today. And when you look at how available we make it to them, it's not only on their cell phones and on their computer, but so many of them have HBO or these other channels and they carry now hardcore pornography. There's a show called Game of Thrones that intersperses incest and full nudity and sexual acts. They're not actual acts, but they appear to be actual sex. So these teenagers see this all around them. So it's a small step to just spend an hour or two a day on the internet looking at them.
Dr. James Dobson: You know a boy between 16 and 26 is set on fire by that step. I mean, eye is wicked for all of us and it is easily corrupted.
Patrick Trueman: What they don't understand, and you're better at this than me, of course, Jim, but I've sat through a number of these lectures, is that as you look at pornography, it's not like looking at a sports magazine. A porn movie is not like watching a basketball game. You develop pathways of the brain, new pathways that demand to be fed then, so you don't just walk away from it and you're done with pornography. No. It draws you back. Your own brain says, "Come back. I want more. I want harder, I want more deviant." And that's what you talked about yesterday.
Dr. James Dobson: There's a hormone call epinephrine that stamps those images into the brain. Others leave you. You don't remember what the weather was like when you were eight years old. You remember what you've seen of a sexual nature and it stays with you.
Patrick Trueman: So this refutes the notion that many dads have that boys will be boys. They'll say, "Oh, I saw a Playboy when I was their age." What effect did it have on you? The far more deviant material the kids have today, what effect does that have on them? So the boys will be boys; that's nonsense.
Dr. James Dobson: Patrick, are the parents in a state of panic over this?
Patrick Trueman: Not enough. They should be because if a kid is getting involved in pornography, as you said in yesterday's show, they can become addicted and the parent may not know about it. Their grades go down, their social network, they turn away from it, and porn becomes their life. Parents should be very, very concerned about it, but too many are not. And one thing I heard a prominent speaker say that does not seem to work in stopping kids from getting involved in pornography is just educating the parents. Because too many parents, it just goes in one ear and out the other.
Dr. James Dobson: They don't even know it.
Patrick Trueman: Yeah. The kids know how to get pornography even if you have blocking software. Parenting is a 24/7 job, and this is why.
Dr. James Dobson: And so many people have heard me say this that I'm reluctant to say it again, but I want to make sure everybody has heard it.
Ted Bundy was convicted of murdering several women, but the record shows that it was probably a hundred or more in the most brutal way, and he kept it up for years. He had a system that was foolproof. He would attract these girls on campus. He looked young. He was in law school and he looked like the safest guy ever. And he would invite these girls out to his car and then immediately disable them and kill them and throw their bodies where animals would find them and there'd be years before anybody would even locate them. He did that over and over and over again, and he discovered our pornography commission. I mentioned yesterday, there were 2000 pages in it. He read the whole thing. He saw himself in it, and he realized that he had been addicted to pornography from 13 years of age.
He had gone to a dump near his house. And in those days, they were relatively mild by today's comparison, detective stories of women bound up and with the gags and blindfolds and tied up. And that appealed to his violent nature. And at 13 years of age, he got hooked on sadomasochism, which is sex combined with violence. It walked him through that path we were talking about yesterday toward harder and harder and more violent and more exploited deep stuff until it eventually came to a little fire trail. And at the fire trail, you've seen everything that a man or woman can do together. You've seen everything that photography can tell you. And there is a moment there where some, not all, will jump the fire trail over into the actual act and not just the visual act. And he did that.
He took his first woman and was absolutely shocked, he told me, that he could even do such a thing and the next morning he couldn't even believe himself. And then a month would go by and the pressures would grow and he would do it again and do it again and do it again. Well, he read those 2,000 pages and he knew that I was the only one who would tell his story. And so he had his lawyer call me and the lawyer called and said, "Ted is going to be executed. So he can't talk about it now, but when he has been cleared for execution, he wants you to come down to the Florida State Prison and witness to him and talk to him about his experience and encourage him because he's going to confess."
Roger Marsh: You're listening to Family Talk, the radio ministry of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh, and if you're just joining us, today's guest is Patrick Trueman. He serves as president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Today's program is the second half of Patrick's conversation with Dr. Dobson. Let's return to the conclusion of their conversation right now here on Family Talk.
Dr. James Dobson: Two years went by and he invited me to come to Florida the night before he was executed. It's the most surreal thing I've ever been through Pat. I went through seven locked doors, so sensitive, you had to take off your shoes because the nails in your heels would set off the alarm. And they ushered me up to where Ted Bundy was. And on video I interviewed him. There were six guards around us all standing out of sight. We talked for 45 minutes and that video is still available. And he said, "I'm telling you that kids are going to be dead. People are going to die because people are not aware of this danger. It ruined me." He said, "I don't want to be self-serving about it because a lot of people died." But he said, "This is what happened to me." And he confessed the whole thing there on that video and the media would not touch it.
I walked out of there with that tape, the only interview he gave to anybody, and there were 300 members of the press there. CBS offered me a million dollars for a 24-hour exclusive for that tape. And I said, "No, we're giving it to everybody and anybody who will show it without editing it can use it." I was out there at 10 o'clock at night with strobe lights in my face and microphones all over the place doing an interview with these 300 members of the press. And then they began to attack me. They said that I was making it up because of my bias against imagery and said that I'd done it for money. The Denver Post said that I had done this to exploit the situation and make money. Here in Colorado Springs, Steve Rabey wrote a horrible big full-page expo say of me about how I've exploited things. I've never taken a dime salary in 40 years of this work.
I've written 35 books and I was accused of being too political. Not a one of them is really political. I mean, that's what they've done to me. And I don't mind that. That's a honor to carry the banner, but I can tell you that the media would not allow that story to be told.
Patrick Trueman: And it's an interesting thing, Ted Bundy, Jim Dobson tape is still available on YouTube. Anybody can see it. But what would Bundy have to gain when he is dying the next day? I mean, truth is truth. The video was there for everybody to see. He wasn't under-
Dr. James Dobson: They made it up, Pat. They said that he was trying to justify himself. Man, listen to the tape.
Patrick Trueman: Yeah, you have to hear the tape.
Dr. James Dobson: How can you say that? I've done this horrible thing. I just confess this.
Patrick Trueman: And what we know is the deathbed confessions are more truthful than most any other confession.
Dr. James Dobson: A man usually doesn't lie on his deathbed.
Patrick Trueman: No, that's right. That's right. And we know from other studies today what pornography does to the brain. It destroys your empathy for any other individuals. It leads to sexual violence, the rape myth you're more likely to buy into that, and thinking that women enjoy sex with violence. Why? Because you've been watching-
Dr. James Dobson: That's one of the messages.
Patrick Trueman: Yes, of course.
Dr. James Dobson: They say no, but they really mean yes.
Patrick Trueman: Then this is what you learn from watching pornography. So Ted Bundy really represents... He's the exception. Not everybody kills several people, but what he is saying about the profound influence is real.
Dr. James Dobson: Yeah. Well, I want talk about your organization, NCOSE?
Patrick Trueman: Well, National Center on Sexual Exploitation. And the acronym is NCOSE. NCOSE we call it.
Dr. James Dobson: Okay. Explain what you're doing.
Patrick Trueman: Well, our goal is to create a movement to help build up groups around the country who are willing to fight this. And we work in a coalition with Family Research Council, other different groups on projects, but the main thing is we have to get people to understand that pornography is influencing every family, every child in America and it leads to so many other problems. We can't solve sex trafficking in America unless we solve the pornography problem. Can't solve child pornography unless you solve the adult pornography problem. So we develop project after project for people to partake in. We're a citizen activist group. And on our website, people can go there and you can right now contact a dozen different companies that are involved in pornography, some of which in the last few weeks have gotten back to us and said, "All right, we're getting lots of emails. We see your point. We're willing to meet with you." So this is something that hadn't been done in years, Jim, getting citizen activists to stop the proliferation of pornography. And it's in our interest. Every family's interest.
Dr. James Dobson: And it's in the interest of every mom and dad.
Patrick Trueman: That's right.
Dr. James Dobson: Because I'm telling you, your kids are targeted. And your boys especially are easily manipulated, and the boys then exploit the girls.
Patrick Trueman: That's right.
Dr. James Dobson: It's a no-win deal.
Patrick Trueman: It is a no-win deal. And we never used to say that girls are at all interested in pornography. I remember 30 years ago, that was what people said when we were prosecuting pornography. Women are not interested in pornography. Today they are because of the peer pressure from the boys and the availability on the internet.
Dr. James Dobson: And that leads to putting sexually explicit imagery on cell phones. It goes to every corner of culture.
Patrick Trueman: Sure. And the sexting culture, kids trading these pictures. And actually when I bring up sexting, think about what that is when these high school kids are doing it. It's mostly they're trading pictures of themselves under the age of 18. So that's child pornography. We're now trading among teenagers, child pornography. This is where our culture has gone with this.
Dr. James Dobson: And once you put it on there, can never get out. You can never eliminate it.
Patrick Trueman: That's right.
Dr. James Dobson: Yeah. Well, tell me more about your organization because I want people to understand.
Patrick Trueman: We're 55 years of age and we've got Washington D.C. Headquarters right on Capitol Hill. Recently, we put on an event on Capitol right in the US Capitol building, invited members of Congress, staff, members of the administration. We had the Department of Justice there, other departments, Department of Defense come where we could talk about the influence of pornography on the military, on the culture, on child's sex abuse, et cetera. So we act as a think tank also to try to get people to understand the influence of pornography. And our number one goal this year is to get the US Justice Department to prosecute illegal pornography.
And Jim, most people don't even know that it's a violation of federal law punishable by five years in prison to distribute hardcore pornography on the internet. Yet it's all over the internet. And it's a violation of federal law to distribute hardcore pornography by cable or satellite. Comcast, Verizon, they all violate that law. It's a violation of federal law just to be in the retail business of distributing pornography.
Dr. James Dobson: Patrick, where does your passion for this come from? Your family's not involved in this and you're not addicted to it.
Patrick Trueman: No.
Dr. James Dobson: You have not, as I can see, ever been dragged into it. The Lord spared you from that. Why this? You could have fought a thousand things as an attorney at the Department of Justice.
Patrick Trueman: Well, actually, I used to head Americans United for Life, the national anti-abortion group. But I combination of circumstances ended up at the Justice Department and was in a Bible study in the Attorney General's office. And the Attorney General announced he was going to have a special strike force of prosecutors and named one of the fellows from our Bible study to head it. And that person turned to me and said, "Well, if I'm going to head it, I want you to be my deputy." And so I became the deputy and then he left soon thereafter and I became the chief of it. And what I saw was the harm and the devious nature of these pornographers and what they were doing to our children and to husbands, wives, et cetera. I just gained a passion for it and God's never let me get away from it. 30 years now and I've enjoyed my stay.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, you've been steadfast and you've been my friend and I am grateful for you Patrick Trueman. We're talking to an attorney, heads up this anti-pornography organization, and if people forget how to reach you, they can contact us and we'd be glad to pass that information along. I'd love to work beside you on this issue for the rest of my life, and maybe, maybe the Lord will grant us some success because it's been an uphill slog.
Patrick Trueman: That's right.
Roger Marsh: The problems of pornography cannot be ignored. Progress has been made, but there still is much work to be done to protect our children and our families. As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:9, "How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word." Wise words indeed.
That was the conclusion of a two-part conversation featuring our own Dr. James Dobson and Patrick Trueman. If you missed any part of today's program or if you missed part one, remember you could listen to both parts in their entirety on our website when you go to drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. That's drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. If you'd like to reach out to us with any questions or comments or prayer requests you might have, remember you can also give us a call as well. That number is 877-732-6825. We love hearing from you over the phone lines, 877-732-6825. Thanks for listening to today's program, and be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for listening.
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