Pornography trap: Multiple churches hope to help addicts beat this toxic shame

Many women see the signs but don't recognize them for what they can mean. Their husbands withdraw, become reclusive, spend money that's unaccounted for, and — most of all — they have secrets. Secrets about where they go, what they spend their time doing, why they stay so late or go so early to work.

Bernie Anderson knows all the signs, because he lived them.

A highly respected leader of his congregation, Pastor Anderson now leads Wasatch Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. But for years, he had a secret life that he kept all to himself, day in and day out. As he ministered to his flock, his own soul was floundering. Secrecy and silence masqueraded as his best friends.

In that way, Pastor Anderson was just like an untold number of church leaders across the spectrum of faith traditions.

He was addicted to porn.

As a 9-year-old boy, Bernie loved to rummage — through basements, closets, boxes — any place where he might find hidden treasure. While staying at a relative's home, he found a discarded pornographic magazine. "Even then it was scintillating. I remember visiting that closet at least a couple more times to see if I could find more," he recalls.

The next time, it was a discarded Playboy magazine at his own house. Then regular opportunities to view the Playboy Channel through a modified cable TV signal at his grandparents' home when they weren't around or had gone to bed. Finally, basic cable TV in his own home offered MTV "with plenty of skin to take in. Sexual thoughts and fantasies continually clouded my mind, and masturbation became the normal, frequent release."

The binges were always followed by remorse and begging God to forgive him. He fought silently and alone all during his teen years. College was something of a reprieve most of the time, because he kept himself so busy he seldom had time to seek out his hidden vice. But visits home provided the free time required for movies and magazines. The technology to offer Internet porn had yet to be developed.

His final years as an undergrad were filled overflowing with activity: He met and got engaged to his future wife, Christina; served as student body president of his college, and took a position as a youth minister at a local church. Even so, "pornography was still a constant temptation, and while I wanted to confess my ongoing battle to Christina, I feared that she might quickly drop me and run the other way.

"And if I told anyone else, I ran the risk of others finding out. The reputation I had built, along with the trust and popularity I enjoyed, would all come crashing down."