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Sexual Behavior Treatment Center Works With Teenage Porn Addicts to Identify Triggers and Stop Addiction

The following article was aired by KCPW on Jan 09, 2009
original link here

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About two hours south of Salt Lake City, troubled teenagers from around the country come to Oxbow Academy in Wales, Utah, one of the few private residential treatment centers in the nation that's exclusive to teenage boys with sexual behavior problems. KCPW's Faroe Robinson visited the treatment center to explore how sexual curiosity turns into addiction.

Oxbow Academy has an online assessment test to evaluate if your teen has a sexual behavior problem.  Click here for a link to the test. 

Full Story

"I started looking at pornography when I was eight, and I started abusing kids after that."

This 13 year old from Little Rock, Arkansas, has been at Oxbow Academy for five months. He says his addiction to porn started after he heard sexual terms from friends, got curious, and then enjoyed looking at it. After that, he says he turned to porn when his parents would fight, or to relieve stress.

"Whenever I looked at it I started getting sick to my stomach, I mean I didn't want to but I, at the same time I wanted to, it was refreshing to me, it would get all the stress off my mind, but at the same time it was putting more stress on me and it gets so addicting that you start acting out, you start abusing people, and it just gets out of hand."

Oxbow Clinical Director Heather Green says most teens first look at porn by accident, then become curious. She says not all those who look at porn will become addicted, but there are teens that may be predisposed to addiction, whether by low self-esteem, emotional or physical abuse, or even just lack of involvement in other activities. As far as when addiction turns to sexual behavioral problems, pornography acts as a trigger, not a reason.

"Literature right now though does not indicate that there is a correlation between viewing pornography and abusing other people. The kids that I have worked with over the year that have abused or have sexual issue, pornography has played a role in terms of, not causing them to do it, but has played a role in their triggers and things that eventually escalated for them."

At Oxbow Academy, teens aren't just treated for their sexual addiction, but with a holistic approach. Addiction to pornography has caused many of the boys to have serious behavioral problems, and they're re-taught how to socially interact with others through group therapy sessions and therapy with horses.

The idea behind this activity is to help the boys learn that they can't individually force the horse to go where they want it to go, but have to work together to lure the horse on the right path. This helps them to change their mindset from being able to force others to do what they want to learning how to work with others to accomplish a goal.

The boys are also given responsibilities. Before lunch, some clean up their dorm rooms, others study a treatment book, and one boy paces by his bed, occasionally peeking outside through the blinds. Green says the good news is that treatment in adolescents is usually very successful. Only about two percent of teens in Utah who commit sexual abuse and are treated for it re-offend. She says one of the reasons treatment is successful is that adolescents often don't realize the implications of what they're doing.

"I think there really is a part of them that when they are offending, or they are viewing pornography, they are not really, really understanding the impact that they are having, on the people that they are abusing. I think that in their minds, they have convinced themselves that its just part of growing up and its kind of normal sexual play, or touch."

Green says treatment is complicated because although teens don't understand the impacts of their abuse, they keep it a secret, which means they know it's wrong. She says sexual addiction is also complex because of the destruction that comes along with it. She says addiction to porn can completely alter a teen's view of relationships and lead to hermit-like behavior. To combat this, Oxbow Academy tries to introduce teens to hobbies like sports and music. The young man from Arkansas says involvement in activities would have made the difference in his addiction.

"Well, I still think about it, and I believe that if I wasn't like just laying in my house and stuff just doing nothing, and I went out a lot, I would not even be here probably."

Green says another thing parents can do is be open with their kids. She says one teen in the program simply heard the word pedophile at school and went home and searched for the term. She says most addiction starts very innocently and an open relationship allows teens to feel comfortable asking their parents about terms they hear instead of going to the internet.

"Communication with parents and kids is critical, I can't tell you how many kids that we work with where the communication between what was really going on with them in their little minds, you know, were not being shared with their families, and Mom and Dad just kind of chalk it up to, well, they are teenagers, they are going through a phase, and so they don't really probe and pry."

The 13-year-old from Arkansas says he has realized that porn isn't real and that the people aren't in love. He says that through treatment he has come to believe that teens have a distorted perception of sex and they need to slow down and wait until they're in love. He says he realized this while he was in outpatient treatment before he came to Oxbow.

"I would go to pool parties and stuff, and they were like just be talking about like sexual stuff, and all this sex stuff, and I would be like holy crappy, they know all this stuff, but they are all teenagers too, but it was just kind of making me upset, because why would they even want to talk about this stuff, and throw away their life like I have. If it wasn't for this place, I would probably be in jail or doing some stupid thing that would get me in trouble."

Green says parents can allow teen's perceptions of relationships to be shaped by the media, or they can be proactive in having conversations with their kids. She says teens will get around filters or find a way to view it, but it is the foundation parents build that will really protect kids.

Oxbow Academy – New Hope, New Help, No Secrets.™

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