This poor girl survived abuse that she couldn't categorise until later:
In a candid interview, the daughter of a famed pornographer about the abuse she underwent as a child through early exposure to pornography. Liberty Bradford Mitchell was the daughter of Artie Mitchell, whose life ended when he was shot by his brother and business partner, Jim, in 1991.
The brothers ran a strip club and a pornography studio in San Francisco throughout the girl’s life. She was present at the location many times, with her earliest memories of the place dating back to when she was four-years-old.
“I saw [the customers] all sink into this disgusting depravity where every woman in the room becomes a target. It became this entitlement that the men had and it made me sick,” she said in an interview with Salon.com.
“I experienced firsthand how confusing it can be to be exposed to sexual imagery as a child.”
She explains that even as a child, she found the activity "distubing" and "weird," which attests to the natural law written on every human heart. I would imagine that she was named "Liberty" from her father's misunderstanding of the concept, perhaps thinking that freedom is the license to do whatever he wanted. Praise God she found the true meaning in stepping beyond the childhood hell (where was her mother?!) into a place where she could describe perversity for what it is.
According to the National Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse and Exploitation, exposure to pornography on young people can have many negative side-effects, including objectification, fostering positive attitudes towards violence against women and other types of sexual aggression, cynicism, sexual uncertainty, and other sexual and relational dysfunctions.
we must remember that it doesn't take a porno palace now to bring such exposure to children -- they can find most of the same material on the internet, in many movies, and described in a plethora of song lyrics. Even many sex education programs expose youngsters to such imagery at a very young age. Shame on our culture and on those who don't treasure and guard the innocence of children (or the persons abused in the making of such vulgar things.)
Kudos to Salon for publishing her interview, which ought to be a wake-up call for at least some of the readers there.
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