The Podcast Trend Of Using Sexual Abuse Survivors For Entertainment

Outrageous behavior is for everyone's entertainment but what if we're only reacting to the result of someone who was sexually abused as a child?

In this episode of the Whatever podcast, the shock factor of her hyper-sexual behavior is overshadowing a possible darker story.

First, let me state that I am not a clinician. However, I am highly interested in psychology, have a good grasp of it & often consult clinicians before discussing sensitive topics like this. I don't take these conversations lightly & I think they're incredibly necessary to have.

In this episode, Kelsey, who is 22 years old, describes many of her sexual exploits at such a young age and her outrageous tales become the main focus of conversation. However, there are key details of her traumatic young life that I believe the host didn't recognize at the time.

When I first heard this clip, there was one statement that she made that sent alarm bells going off in my head: "It started with adult content when I was 9 or 10 years old and I kept getting addicted to it. I could not stop watching it."

While it is true that children are being exposed to pornography at younger ages, Kelsey describes something different than just exposure: addiction. This means, Kelsey understood what she was watching and sought it out at an astoundingly young age. Why would a 9-year-old seek this out?

Well, an incredibly likely reason is that she was already sexualized by that age. If she was addicted by 9, then it's not beyond the possibility of her being physically sexual with someone before that age. If it's not clear, a hyper-sexual 9-year-old is beyond abnormal.

It is one of the major indicators of possible sexual abuse happening to a child. Child predators often groom their victims by introducing sexuality to them and exposing them to pornography to normalize this behavior and rationalize what's about to happen to them.

However, this assessment isn't happening in a vacuum as she gives other facts about her upbringing. Her mother was an alcoholic and she never mentions her father, which one could assume he was not involved in her life: This possible combination made her incredibly vulnerable.

Maybe her mother had a boyfriend who had access to her or a relative who was close to her. Who knows, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility for a child who's growing up in this environment. In 90 percent of cases, sexually abused children know the person abusing them.

Kelsey describes being kicked out of the house by the age of 19 and having sex with, at most, 6 men a night due to her sexual addiction. In her words "It was never enough." Although extreme, this type of behavior isn't uncommon for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

For some survivors, sex becomes their primary currency of social validation and it's how they measure their self-value. When they're depressed, sex lifts their spirits, and they feel temporary value from the behavior but constant sex without attachment can leave anyone feeling empty.

To manage that empty feeling and unresolved trauma, many self-medicate with drugs, which is exactly what Kelsey did in her teenage years. Along with having a sexual addiction as a teenager, she turned to opioids, heroin, and alcohol to alleviate her emotional pain.

Genuinely happy people who feel they have something to live for don't turn to street drugs as a medication for their pain and have unprotected sex (she admitted they were unprotected) with over a hundred men. She even admits that when she was really depressed, she had more sex.

These are the activities of an individual who has devalued themselves and seeks an external remedy to cure their internal strife. There is nothing healthy about a woman inviting six random men into her home in one night, one after the other, to engage in unprotected sex.

Thankfully, she eventually went to rehab and her being able to talk about this so openly may be a sign of progress in recovery. However, I think her situation is far from being uncommon on many podcasts that want to highlight the sexual deviancy of certain women.

It's hard to engage in shock value content about how much of a whore she was if you knew that her sexual deviancy originated from her being victimized as a child. According to the Journal of Adolescent Health, 1 in 4 girls report experiencing childhood sexual abuse before age 18.

Maybe the prevalence of such a rotation of uninhibited women on these podcasts is a sign of a growing problem with how many of our children are unprotected and being victimized by predators more so than it is a growing problem with female promiscuity.