from www.the bulletin.us – Thanks to the efforts of a former Justice Department official, anyone needing credible, peer-reviewed research documenting the harm caused by pornography can now access an impressive library of information at a new website.

“PornographyHarms.com is a one-stop location for sound research, news articles and opinion pieces demonstrating the harm from pornography,” said Patrick Trueman [pictured], creator of the site.

Mr. Trueman, the former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, said his hope is to provide help to researchers at all academic levels, as well as the press and the general public with information they can use to educate themselves about the dangers of exposure to pornography.

“Since the advent of the internet, pornography has flooded homes, businesses, public libraries, and even schools. The results have been devastating to the social and family fabric of America,” Mr. Trueman said. “Pornography . . . is altering minds, destroying taboos, and reordering society.”

Unfortunately, the subject is rarely addressed adequately in the media.

“There’s so much research out there about the harm pornography does, but when the news media reports on this, they go to the porn industry and say it’s all about ‘right wingers who don’t know what they’re talking about – pornography doesn’t harm anybody.’ Well, now you have a place that shows there’s overwhelming harm,” he said.

His site includes a wide variety of categories pertaining to pornography such as its impact on children, marriages and families, its physiological and psychological effects, how it factors into sexual violence, prostitution and sex trafficking, as well as information on internet safety.

The time is definitely right to launch such a comprehensive site. Addiction to pornography, which results in life-long consequences, is now common among men, women, and even many children. It’s a significant factor in divorce and a contributing cause of the spread of prostitution, trafficking and sexual abuse of adults and children.

“When you have every other man in America involved in pornography in one way or another, that’s serious,” Mr. Trueman said.

The idea for the site came to him in 2008 while preparing a paper on pornography that he was to deliver at a forum in Doha Qatar.

“To prepare for my talk I was surprised how difficult it was to pull together all the material on the harm done by pornography,” Mr. Trueman said.

He decided to make things easier for everyone and received help from dozens of volunteer lawyers from the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal alliance, who helped him search for articles and review them to determine their credibility.

“All research articles have to be peer reviewed – we just don’t take anything,” Mr. Trueman said. “Some were discarded, the rest are on our site.”

The site is already proving helpful to the public. Mark Houck, president of the Oreland-based King’s Men, a non-profit ministry dedicated to helping men become better husbands and fathers, is involved with the fight against porn every day as his organization works to eliminate pornography in Pennsylvania.

“People call us all the time to ask for advice. Now, the first thing I can do is direct them to this site which will help them to become better educated on the issue and more articulate when they address their local legislators,” Mr. Houck said.

He knew Mr. Trueman was working on the site but said the finished product far exceeded his expectations.

“We’re going to use this for our own education,” Mr. Houck said. “This work by professors, doctors, Ph.D’s only gives that much more credibility to the work we’re doing.”

This is exactly what Trueman had in mind for the site.

“Pornography is a neglected pandemic and it will remain so until knowledge of its destructive forces is widely understood and disseminated,” Mr. Trueman said. “The Pornography Harms website is dedicated to this task of education.”