A troubling and fascinating murder case is unraveling in British Colombia. Back in 2010, a then 17-year old boy abducted and killed a 15 year old girl in a failed kidnap and rape attempt. Now, 21, the fate of the girl’s killer is up for debate in a Canadian courtroom. A forensic psychiatrist, who has examined the man, wants him indefinitely institutionalized. He believes that the boy, before the murder, was heavily obsessed with scenes of pornographic bondage and sadism. The psychiatrist was additionally alarmed at the rapid escalation by the killer; who, five months before the murder, was also involved in three sexual attacks on women. Furthermore, he found the man’s personality surprising in“an individual of at least average intelligence, of relatively benign upbringing, [and] is well-socialized.” The defense attorney suggested her client was not someone into depictions of bondage and violence. Instead, “he was like other teenage boys who watched mostly ‘conventional pornography.’”
The problem with the well-intentioned therapist and the delusional defense attorney is that neither realize hard-core S&M porn is not a requirement for later deviance and murder; and that so-called “conventional pornography” is just as dangerously mind-altering as the rougher and kinkier stuff; and will eventually led the viewer to seek out more intense imagery. Eventually, the porn fixation plays itself out, and some individuals will take the next step and attempt to recreate porn-scenarios in the real world. Here, it is worthwhile to again reread a portion of the transcript from serial killer Ted Bundy’s last interview:
“I grew up in a wonderful home with two dedicated and loving parents, as one of 5 brothers and sisters. We, as children, were the focus of my parent’s lives. We regularly attended church. My parents did not drink or smoke or gamble. There was no physical abuse or fighting in the home. I’m not saying it was “Leave it to Beaver”, but it was a fine, solid Christian home. I hope no one will try to take the easy way out of this and accuse my family of contributing to this. I know, and I’m trying to tell you as honestly as I know how, what happened.
As a young boy of 12 or 13, I encountered, outside the home, in the local grocery and drug stores, softcore pornography. Young boys explore the sideways and byways of their neighborhoods, and in our neighborhood, people would dump the garbage. From time to time, we would come across books of a harder nature - more graphic. This also included detective magazines, etc., and I want to emphasize this. The most damaging kind of pornography - and I’m talking from hard, real, personal experience - is that that involves violence and sexual violence. The wedding of those two forces - as I know only too well - brings about behavior that is too terrible to describe.”
It’s difficult to believe that Dr. James Dobson conducted that interview way back in 1989; a good 10 years before the internet-porn explosion. Then, Bundy was mainly referring to his childhood exposure to “conventional pornography.” Yet, one day he would become a mass murderer. Like him, I grew up looking at magazines that were, even in the 1970s, considered harmless; I am thinking back to my first glimpses at Playboyand Penthouse. By the time I reached my early-teens, I was drowning in it. After I got into Hustler, nothing shocked me. At that point, I was groomed to become a video-porn consumer. Everything descended in my life, until I became the thing I admired on the screen: a porn actor. But, thinking back, I could have very easily become a killer. There were times, especially towards the end of my existence in porn, that hate and rage oftentimes overwhelmed me. In those moments, I took out my aggression upon the willing participants in sado-masochism. During one particularly brutal session, I heard a voice tell me to kill my partner. The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ saved me. Only, who saves the innocent victims of the monsters we are creating?