Feature
By Michael Hernandez, 5-13-24
REDDING, CA—Exodus Cry CEO and filmmaker Benjamin (Benji) Nolot honored moms with his 6-minute “Existence: A Film for Mom” celebrating motherhood before sharing a Sunday Mother’s Day message on “Protecting Our Children at Stirring Church in Redding, CA. We need to protect our children and not porn,” said Nolot. “Our fight needs to be for our children. The (Exodus Cry) battle that exists for our children goes back to 2007 when we began fighting (sex) trafficking and travelled the world investigating for our first documentary “Nefarious: Merchant of Souls” released in 2011 that offers an in-depth look at the adult entertainment industry.
Exodus Cry based in San Clemente, California has gone on to release other films: “Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution” (2017), “Raised on Porn” (2021) which has had 3.7 million views, and “Buying Her” (2023) which premiered at the Newport Beach, California Film Festival; along with nine film shorts from 2 to 10 minutes as well as two series each with four episodes: “Beyond Fantasy: Barely Legal” (2022) which had 900,000 views in 2022 and “Liberated: After Spring Break” (2022). See Exodus Cry films: https://exoduscry.com/watch/.
Benji Nolot is an American film producer, director and writer born in 1976 in Huntington Beach, California. He started his career as a filmmaker at Saddleback College, a public community college in Mission Viejo (Orange County), California.
“There is a deep brokenness in relationships between men and women that simmers below the surface of our culture. There is a battle that exists for our children.
“In 2010, while in Missouri, the Lord began speaking to me about building an armada of ships against the porn industry and in the next eight years, I began investigating, writing on this subject when I came to realize that Jesus teaching on the end times said: ‘On the last days, darkness will permeate the earth. It will be like the days of Noah with people’s minds filled with only evil, with no thought of good, or light or truth but only darkness, deception and evil.’
“During the end of 2019, going into 2020, the Lord told us to dispatch the armada of ships to fight porn—a $100 billion industry. We were to take on Pornhub—the world’s largest porn site” which is a video-streaming website owned by MindGeek and is the 10th most trafficked website in the world and the third most-trafficked adult website.
The results: Age Verification Laws to access graphic material (online porn) in 17 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Pending Age Verification Laws in 17 more states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Louisiana Leads Way: Making Online Porn Industry Retreat Due to Age Verification
Rep. Laurie Schlegel, a Louisiana State Representative introduced a bill requiring age verification that passed the Louisiana House 96-1 and then the State Senate 34-0 according to a Politico magazine article written by Marc Novicoff (Aug. 8, 2023), a freelance writer and an associate editor at the Washington Monthly. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148
“Pornography is creating a public health crisis and having a corroding influence on minors,” said Schlegel. This bill holds pornography websites liable unless the websites “performs seasonable age verification methods”—in short, requiring users to show government ID to prove they are 18 or older.
“In Utah and Arkansas, the bills passed unanimously. These laws have passed by overwhelming margins in legislatures controlled by both parties and signed into law by Democratic and Republican governors alike. In just over a year, age-verification laws have become perhaps the most bipartisan policy in the country, and they are creating havoc in a porn industry that many considered all but impossible to actually regulate.”
Pornhub, the YouTube of pornography gets more global users than Amazon or Netflix. In some of these states, Pornhub is stopping its operations. The expert Schlegel used was: Gail Dines, a radical feminist, sociologist and anti-porn crusader from England who has lived in the United States for 37 years.
The Louisiana law states “Pornography may also impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
Pornhub verified the age of the half a million people who upload contents on its site. Now, rather than asking users to upload their government-issue identification, Pornhub is simply choosing not to offer service at all (in states with age verification laws), citing issues of unconstitutionality, ineffectiveness and privacy risks with The Free Speech Coalition, the trade group for the adult industry. They have also started to sue states.
Major wins against Pornhub:
- Pornhub has been compelled to delete 10 million videos (most of its content).
- Pornhub’s CEO and COO stepped down after leading the company for the past decade.
- Pornhub instituted mass layoffs “in an attempt to cut costs after suffering revenue declines…following a series of revelations that MindGeek had allowed child sexual abuse material and other nonconsensual videos to be posted.
- Pornhub was kicked off of Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
- A judge denied Visa’s motion to dismiss a major case against Pornhub, finding that Visa ‘intended to help’ Pornhub monetize child porn.
Exodus Cry: Is Porn Harmful?
“More and more often we are seeing the mainstream media push a narrative that describes porn consumption as empowering, liberating, and health. The messages are everywhere.”
According to Exodus Cry, “Child Exposure to Porn Is an Epidemic.”
- The average age of exposure is between 7 and 13.
- One study shows that 10 percent of 12-year-olds think they’re already addicted.
- A 2016 Barna study revealed that over two-thirds of 13 to 24-year-old males and one-third of 13 to 24-year-old females are viewing porn a least monthly.
- A 2020 research study showed 51 percent of kids 11-13 exposed to porn.
To read an article on porn by Benji Nolot go to:
Exodus Cry cites the following about pornography:
- Alters the Brain Pathways.
- Promotes Abuse: A content analysis published in 2010 of 304 of the most popular heterosexual porn films showed that 88 percent of them included physical aggression by men against women, which included mostly choking, gagging hitting, kicking, closed fist punching, biting, and bondage; 70 percent of high school boys who were frequent viewers of porn, including that which features violence and sexual abuse of children and animals, reported that porn made them want to try out what they had seen; a US survey revealed 58 percent of female college students had been chocked by a partner—with nearly 65 percent of that group saying they experienced it during their first-ever sexual or kissing encounter.
- Porn is Detrimental to Relationships.
“The porn industry has deceived an entire generation into believing porn consumption individually and with a partner is a healthy, normal act that increases relational and sexual satisfaction. This is far from the truth. Sex is a means for intimacy. When someone turns to porn, they are actually rejecting intimacy with their partner and instead opting for a relationship with a screen.”
To sign the Exodus Cry porn petition requiring age verification on all porn sites go to:
https://exoduscry.com/pcnp/petition/. Currently, the petition has been signed by over 91,000 individuals—with these petitions delivered to the Office of the Speaker of the House after a Washington, D.C symposium on “Toxic Online Criminality” which influenced Utah Senator Mike Lee to introduce an age verification bill in the U.S. Senate to protect kids from porn exposure. A campaign to #EndTeenPorn has gathered over 10,000 signatures.
More on Exodus Cry
An Exodus Cry Annual Report of 2022 states: “Exodus Cry is committed “to abolishing sex trafficking and sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims.”
The 2022 Annual Report states: “As an anti-trafficking organization, some may wonder why we target porn. Simply put, it is at the epicenter of sexual exploitation. Its consumption fuels trafficking, because most sex buyers began as children hooked on pornography. Child sexual abuse material (“child porn”) has exploded in recent years, and porn is used to groom children into performing sex acts. Even mainstream porn companies and websites often use force, fraud, or coercion—i.e. trafficking—to produce and distribute the content they profit from in the billions. Our modern society wants to believe porn and trafficking live in separate worlds, but they’ve been woven together.”
Exodus Cry Messaging Impact:
- 14.2 million social reach and views.
- 6.3 million YouTube views in 2022 alone.
- 50+ podcast/radio interviews and speaking engagements in 2022/
Exodus Cry Outreach Impact:
- Reached 350 exploited women in 2022.
- Reached hundreds of prostituted women and girls I Los Angeles during the week of Super Bowl LVI.
- Provided 225 hours of trauma therapy for survivors of trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse, many of whom had images that were nonconsensually distributed on Pornhub.
Exodus Cry 2022 Budget:
- 2022 Revenue: $2.97 million.
- 2022 Expenses: $2.57 million.
- 2022 Net Income: $397,000.
“Whether on the streets, in strip clubs, or online, our (Exodus Cry) outreach team has connected with over 5,000 trafficked and sexually exploited women and girls in 12 countries.”
Faith, Film and Justice
Benji Nolot was joined by filmmaker Fabiola (Fab) Altamura and hosted by Pastor Nathan (Nate) Edwardson to discuss “Faith, Film & Justice” at a forum on the Arts and Entertainment held at the Stirring Church in Redding, California on May 10. Pastor Nate is on the Executive Board of Exodus Cry.
Benji: “We need more Christians working in the film industry…Artists inspire people to think…We need a wider audience whether a person of faith or not…We need to live in the tension of the mystery of God…Our world is organized into forces of darkness and forces of light. Systems like trafficking look to steal, kill and destroy…We want to build a tribe of people (filmmakers) that are storytellers of all ages that love Jesus.”
Fab: “We (Christians) have become a little irrelevant…The Church is our worst critic…In my classes, I teach my students to adhere to core values. The world is not clear cut.”
Abolitionist Pledge and Thun Lake, Switzerland Retreat: May 27-31
Benji Nolot’s calls the porn and sex trafficking industry “modern day slavery” for those caught in it. His inspiration is William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade.
Exodus Cry is calling for a new abolitionist movement and has an abolitionist pledge:
https://exoduscry.com/abolitionist/ and an upcoming abolitionist retreat in Europe at Thun Lake, Switzerland from May 27-31. Main speakers are Benji Nolot; Helen Taylor, Exodus Cry Vice President of Impact; and Simon Haggstrom, author and detective inspector specializing in prostitution and sex trafficking. Registration which includes lodging ranges from $1,950-$2750 (depending on lodging arrangements). For info:
https://exoduscry.com/retreat/.
What Can We Do?
“We need a baptism,” said Nolot on Mother’s Day. “When we look at the life of Jesus and the power of His public ministry, it was preceded by a baptism” as the Father sent the Holy Spirit to descend upon ‘my beloved Son.’ Jesus felt loved. He felt the Father’s love. Then He went and loved others. We need to be loved: individually, corporately, and collectively.
“God is not looking to throw people into hell; but is asking us: ‘Who can we win to the Kingdom of God?’”
Michael Hernandez, from California is co-founder of the Citizens Journal—Ventura County’s online news service. He is a former Southern California daily newspaper journalist and religion and news editor. Mr. Hernandez can be contacted at [email protected] and is editor of the weekly “Stories Speak Volumes.”
