AMERICAN mums and dads are
spending US$9,000 a month to save their porn addicted sons, by sending them to
a desert boot camp designed to shake them out of their bad habit.
The Oxbow Academy, known as
Porn School, opened seven years ago in Utah and now has 24 boys aged 13 to 17,
said school director Stephen Schultz. He said some of the boys had gone from
obsessive porn addiction to acting out fantasy scenes in real life and
molesting other kids.
At Oxbow, the students are
given a tough regime of daily chores, hours of therapy, lie detector tests, and
all phones and personal computers are banned at the school. Each day begins at
6am. And although there are full-time catering staffs, the students have to do
their own washing and laundry.
In the afternoon, the kids
are bussed to a second campus for "holistic therapy" classes, which
includes art, music and horsemanship. (We guess they've never seen Peter
Shaffer's play, Equus.) There are "qualified high school teachers" on
staff and the kids do the same lessons as they would in a regular school.
Every teenager has access to
a computer for their schoolwork, which only allows them to open encyclopaedia
pages. A school day ends at 9pm and the teens have one hour to lounge in a
communal meeting room. And like ordinary schools, there’s homework.
The kids are also given
therapy assignments to help them address their sexual issues. Parents are
required to join their kids at one therapy session a week, via Skype, and they
have to attend a two-day seminar together every month.
The school director likens
porn addiction to heroin abuse. "Most porn addicts get agitated when
they're deprived of their online sources," said Schultz.
"One boy from Chicago
actually got the shakes like a drug abuser. He was in very poor shape when he
arrived. He'd been on his computer 10 to 12 hours a day looking at porn. He
wasn't eating, he was dehydrated, had poor hygiene. He'd done nothing but watch
porn."
He added that teens that
have indulged in "inappropriate sexual behaviour" have a sense of
shame and won't readily admit everything they've done. "If the boys
disclose something criminal, like touching a neighbour's child, we have to
report that to the state where the offence was committed."
One student, John, was just
10 when he was first exposed to pornography. Now 18, he clearly recalls,
"My cousin was babysitting and I came in when he was watching porn on TV.
It was pretty hardcore stuff and I'd never seen anything like it. He let me
watch, too."
"It became an issue
when I was about 13 and around girls at school. I found myself thinking about
those images and I started searching out online porn. We had a computer at
home, but it was downstairs so I looked on my games console and phone. I
watched threesomes, women on women. I wanted it more and more. Whenever I had a
free moment, I'd find a way to be alone so I could watch porn. It seemed out of
my control."
"At 15, I had a
girlfriend and we started sleeping together. One day, she found some porn on my
iPod and she was angry but intrigued. We watched it together. Looking back, it
was really twisted. My concentration at school was affected, too. It degrades
everyone, the people who make it and the people who watch it."
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