'End Teen Porn' campaign focuses on raising minimum age of performers

LOS ANGELES - A group of former pornography film performers is joining forces with Exodus City in an "End Teen Porn" campaign calling on producers, directors and agents to stop recruiting teens into the porn industry.

(Getty Images)

The "End Teen Porn" members are introducing a letter urging those in the porn industry to raise the minimum age to perform in porn from 18 to 21.

The letter details the mistreatment of performers by agents, producers, and directors to appear as underage children and made to enact sadistic pedophile fantasies. It also brings attention to performers being rushed into signing consent forms and being coerced into high pressure situations to do sex acts that are humiliating and degrading.

Exodus City, a California nonprofit focused on ending commercial sexual exploitation, has started an online petition at https://beyondfantasy.com/petition/ to raise the entry age in the porn industry to 21.

"After 23 years in the business, I have come to strongly believe that an 18-year-old fresh out of high school has a completely different perspective on life than he or she will have three years later. I simply don't feel comfortable anymore, shooting talent under 21," producer and Adult Video Network Hall of Famer Axel Braun said in 2013.

Since then, Benjamin Nolot, CEO and Founder of Exodus Cry, said nothing has changed.

"The implications of appearing in a pornographic film are significant with potentially lifelong consequences. For many, it has destroyed their lives: performing dehumanizing sex acts they said they wouldn't do and being made to appear as minors," Nolot said.