Not every job is as good as it seems, and one former adult star has opened up about the trauma he experienced as one of the industry’s most popular performers.
Joshua Broome’s life is significantly different from what it was over a decade ago. He turned away from the adult-film industry and chose a life dedicated to Christianity.
A massive switch-up if there ever was one.
Broome might be far from the industry now, but he was once one of its most popular performers, known as ‘Rocco Reed,’ and claims to have starred in over 1,000 X-rated films over six years.
While some people are eager to enter the adult-film industry, as a Christian pastor, Broome has become an anti-porn advocate and spoke candidly about the dark side of the business.
Speaking on the Mighty Pursuit podcast in March of this year, Broome detailed his experiences in the adult industry between 2007 and 2013 and the scars it left him with.
Explaining how he got into the industry, he said he was ‘very naive’ and thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? I’m going to have sex with this girl, I’m going to get paid for it… no one’s going to know.’
He said: “What’s unique about [porn] is that when an act of intimacy that is meant to be done in private is done in public, there’s this dissociation from reality.
“You have to disassociate yourself from reality to do that because you can’t just be in the moment because that wouldn’t make a good scene.
“The performance is not for you or for the person you’re doing it with. It’s for the camera.”
This sounds like the worst way to have sex, but it might be something most people don’t consider when they think of the adult industry.
He also said the adult film industry puts a person on a very slippery slope as their boundaries and morals are repeatedly tested, and they are forced to consider what they will and won’t do.
Broome said his boundaries became blurred as directors pressured him into making more extreme content.
He added: “Once you compromise what you would say yes to, then what does it matter? Your ‘no’ loses all validity and you think, ‘Well, this is the only thing I can do.’
“The further you go down the rabbit hole of doing those things, the more you leave yourself open to being willing to do things that you said you would never do.”
After leaving the industry, Broome eventually met his wife, Hope, at the gym. She invited him to church, where he suddenly felt a spiritual awakening.
Broome studied Biblical theology before marrying Hope in 2016. The couple now has three sons together.