Former Porn Star Ashley Brooks Story

Growing up, I never knew the love of a father.

My mother and father split up when I was about 6 months old, and my mother never remarried. I had no contact with my dad until I was 6 years old, and very little contact thereafter. I saw him once a year for two months. Every summer I would fly from California to Missouri to visit him. This started when I was 6 years old. Flying across the country alone was a very scary and confusing experience. I still remember the trauma of that first separation, being forced to leave the only parent I knew. To me, he was a complete stranger, and in my own mind, I had no idea why I had to leave my home, my friends, and my “mommy” to visit him. His family was very nice, but in all of my visits, I never bonded with any of them. I always felt like an outsider, and completely out-of-place, so at 6 yrs. old, I suffered from separation anxiety and loneliness.

My dad was a very cold and intimidating man, and I dreaded the visitations. His harsh and unaffectionate demeanor scared me, but there was one particular uncle who was very warm and affectionate, and out of all my relatives, I was the most drawn to him. During my second summer visitation, he would become my molester. This happened several times. Most of the incidents I have blocked from my memory, but I do remember my dad walking in on him (we were in the bathroom) and totally blowing up. I was taking a bath at the time, and he was sitting beside me. The fact that he paid me so much “special attention” made me feel cared for, and in my young mind, I couldn't quite understand that what he was doing was wrong. I never saw my uncle again after that, and the incident wasn't spoken of. Everytime I asked about him, people would change the subject. Now I am quite confident that this incident marked the beginning of my skewed view of sexuality.

At home, I lived alone with my mom. She was a very devout and Godly woman, and loved Jesus, but suffered from depression (although never diagnosed) and was very moody. Sex was rarely discussed at home. She told me about the basics, but when I had questions about other things (like STDs and prostitution), she refused to answer them. I had to do my own research, and became very confused about sex in general. I never saw it as a pure and lovely thing, but as something shameful and dirty.

In school, I was able to make good grades, but socially, I was inept. I never saw myself as pretty or likeable, but as an ugly geek. I had very few freinds, and I was ridiculed and picked on for most of my school years. I was a “loner” and isolated myself a lot, and struggled with depression and a very poor self-image. Very few people liked me, and I didn't really like myself too much. As I grew older, I managed to make more friends, but I never managed to grow comfortable in my own skin.

My teenage years were very awkward and lonely. I never really fit in with my peers, and felt unloved and unlovable. I was 14 when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She would go into the hospital for weeks at a time, leaving me alone in the house. I remember one Christmas when she was in the hospital, decorating the tree and crying over my loneliness. I was too ashamed to open up to anyone about my inner turmoil, so I withdrew. Dealing with my mother's illness, with no family to lean on and very few friends, I sort of found refuge in myself. I developed depression and anorexia. At one point I got down to 99 lbs., and would black out from not eating. I told myself that I was fat and ugly and needed to lose more weight. I was out-of-control. I guess I was seeking attention without having to reach out. The fact that I was in danger of losing the one and only family member that I knew and loved scared me to death, although I never let myself face that fear. I was too distant and numb to reach out to God at that point, although I know that He was there. I also know that He was protecting me.

Even so, I managed to get good grades in school. I graduated from high-school early and went to college. Just after my first year, I was introduced to speed. I instantly fell in love with it, because it gave me a rush of self-confidence – something I had never before experienced. It felt good. No longer was I that worthless geek that people ridiculed. I thought I could do anything. Although I never became physically addicted, there was a powerful psychological draw. There was a huge void inside of me, and it helped to fill it and numb my senses. I would continue drugging on and off for most of my life.

During my junior year, I met my husband-to-be. He was my first boyfriend. He was very outgoing, funny, and handsome, and we married just under a year later. He seemed like a very good catch. I wish I could say that I married him for love, but the truth is, I was deathly afraid of being alone. I knew that my mother would be dying soon, and that she had always dreamed of seeing me get married. When he proposed, I said yes, although I wasn't quite sure I was doing the right thing. I also couldn't see anyone else falling in love with me, because of my low self-esteem.

A year later, when I was 22, my mother passed away. He showed me very little compassion. During the funeral, I cried and leaned my face on his shoulder, to which there was no response. He just sat there with his arms crossed. It made me so angry, and hurt even more. The night of the funeral, I spent consuming massive amounts of speed and sucking up the grief. From that point on, my husband was my only family, and I had no one else. I knew that I HAD to make my marriage work.

As husband and wife, we never bonded emotionally, and romance was non-existent. We were more like buddies than spouses.There was no affection, no cuddling, and no deep and loving connection between us. I do believe we married each other to fill a void, but as the years passed, another void inside of me grew deeper. I felt inadequate as a wife. Our sex life was ineffectual and unfulfilling. It was purely physical with no emotional or romantic element at all. A few years into the marriage, I walked in on him in the bathroom one day looking at porn. I didn't even question him – I immediately walked out and left him alone. When I asked him about it later, he immediately got defensive. I didn't want to start any trouble, and figured that my inadequacies were what drove him to look at it. I was hurt, but as always, I ignored my feelings and took the “easy way out.” I allowed him to continue looking at it, and told myself that it was no big deal. I would turn a blind eye, but eventually, porn made its way into our bedroom, and we started using it as a sex aide between us. I was oblivious to the fact that it was actually destroying the intimacy between us, and sex was becoming colder and colder between us. During our lovemaking sessions, his eyes remained fixed on the TV screen, and I told myself that I was being a good wife, and helping him. I was in total denial.

Because I did not feel comfortable doing certain things that he was into, it caused more of a rift between us. One day, he suggested that we try this thing called “swinging.” He said it would be good, because he would be able to try out things on other women that I was uncomfortable with, sort of taking the pressure off of me. I agreed because I didn't want to deny him what I thought he needed, and I didn't want him to become more dissatisfied sexually. It was a disaster. Seeing him with other women made me feel more inadequate, so I just made up for it by focusing my attention on the other man. I was angry, and hoped that he would get jealous. We continued on in this lifestyle for a couple years, until I got fed up with the whole scene. We tried to have a normal sex life on our own, but by that time, a rift had formed between us.

At this time, we had a mutual friend who was a stripper. She suggested that I could make a lot of money stripping, and that I should audition. Hubby was 100% on board with the idea. I wasn't sure what to think, but by that time, I was willing to do anything to keep the marriage peaceable, so I agreed. It was a very high-class club in San Francisco, but even so, I felt like a piece of meat onstage. It was a very strange experience. I hated the men that came in there, yet I still wanted them to think I was sexy. I fed off of the attention, but hated what I was doing. I hated how I looked, and how I felt, vulnerable and on display. I was completely exposing myself for guys who didn't care a thing about me. I remember hubby would come into the club to watch me, and I always hoped that he would see the guys fawning over me. I worked the day shift because it was always slower, and couldn't stomach working nights when the club was packed. All those eyes following me around the club, grabbing me, having to make eye and body contact with them. When I got home, hubby would always want to know how much I made. It was never enough. I just wanted him to be proud of me, and know that I was desirable. Every day, I dreaded my job.


I only lasted a few months before I decided to quit. He was not happy. He saw how miserable I was stripping, yet he continually encouraged me to stay. It really hurt. I thought this was the end of my life in the sex industry. I was so wrong.

During those periods when I wasn't sexing for money, I managed to get several jobs, but none of them long-term. It seemed that no job I ever had was good enough for him. We were in constant financial trouble, and with the birth of our daughter, it escalated. We constantly borrowed money from his parents. I felt like a complete loser. One day, the subject of porn came up. He thought it would be a really great idea and would solve all of our financial troubles. I was sick and tired of being broke, and figured that it couldn't be any worse than stripping. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. He took some pictures of me and sent them off to a few agents. A few days later I got a response, and headed off to Los Angeles to meet with this agent.

I was completely alone and completely out of my element. My only concern was getting work immediately so that I could make some money, and please hubby. In my mind, I suppose I was also using this to show him how “adequate” I really was. By this time, I was uninhibited and had lost all self-respect. I saw myself as neither valuable nor loveable, but as a commodity.

I met with the agent at his shabby and filthy apartment. He told me that I could make a lot of money in this business, but first I had to show him how “good I was.” He told me this was standard procedure. I knew nothing about the porn industry, and suspected that I was being hustled. At that point, though, I didn't care. I just wanted to come home with a contract. I sucked up whatever self-worth was left in me and threw it out the window. He set up his cheesy video equipment and I did my first “scene,” right there, in his crappy apartment, with no condom and no protection. It was humiliating and disgusting. After he was done violating me, he made up a bogus contract, and sent me home. I never did get any work from that creep.

Instead, my husband became my manager. We moved to Los Angeles and became full-time pornographers. He contacted several porn companies and, over the course of about 6 months, I made approximately 20 movies. I would do anything that was offered to me, from straight intercourse, to lesbian, to fetish movies. I had no self-respect. I even did a urinating scene, having to act like I was enjoying it. It was completely disgusting. We dived head-first into the lifestyle. I lived my life in a depressed and vacuous daze. On the days when I went to shoot, I tried not to think at all. I would zone out and just go with whatever was happening, and drug out whenever I could.

Being on porn set was a very strange experience. The moment you arrive, you get into that “porn mode.” This basically means zoning out and transforming yourself into nympho queen, ignoring the emotions that are going on inside of you, and becoming the person the producer wants you to be. You are a puppet. Filming takes an entire day. After make-up and still photographs are taken, the rest of the time you spend hanging around the set, waiting for your scene to start. While waiting, I would usually go in the back and smoke pot with the other performers. Some of them would be in the bathroom snorting coke. No one was in their right mind. My husband would always accompany me to the sets, schmoozing with the rest of the talent, and trying to get more work for me while I was busy having hardcore sex. The pornographers would call him my “suitcase pimp.”

Filming is always an extremely traumatic experience. One 15 minute scene can take an hour to shoot, an hour of being jostled around and pounded on and told to get in every single uncomfortable and awkward position imaginable. Oftentimes the performers are very rough, and it was never just straight sex – it was a lot of stopping and starting and regrouping and trying to keep up physically, all the while, acting like you are enjoying it and wanting more, more, more. The whole experience is mentally and physically draining, and I coped by zoning out. Sex took place in a self-induced stupor, and the only thought I remember going through my mind was “This will be over soon. You can do it.” All the while I was making porn, I would try to convince myself that I would get used to it, or that things would get better. They never did. I had absolutely no control over my own body, and I was slowly losing my grip on reality, and my mind. The sheer guilt, along with the emotional and physical exhaustion, brought me even deeper into depression. I didn't even know who I was anymore.

Life in the porn industry is lived in constant fear of getting STDs, or wondering if the guy who is invading your body might have HIV or AIDS. Whenever I would get an infection, I wasn't even allowed to worry about my own well-being, because I was too busy worrying about how it would cut into my financial situation. Would it upset hubby if I had to take a few days off from filming?! How would it affect his mood? I had absolutely no say-so in the matter. I felt completely trapped.

Long days on the porn set left me exhausted and depressed, and I had no desire for normal sex with hubby. Even so, I was expected to fulfill my “wifely duties,” and seeing me make porn with other men seemed to get him even more aroused. All I was good for was sex and money.

The breaking point came when my husband had scheduled me for a particularly rough scene with 2 male performers. Days before, I caught an infection, and told him that I couldn't go through with the scene. My hope was that he would be sympathetic, cancel the scene, and perhaps show me some kindness. That didn't happen. Instead, he became very angry, and told me that I was “ruining everything.” This scene was going to pay a lot of money, and I was just going to let that kind of money slip away? He thought I was an idiot, and I was angered that he had so little concern for my well-being. I was faced with the reality that my own husband cared absolutely nothing about me. I had absolutely no reason to justify my behaviour anymore, and decided that it just wasn't worth it. Shortly thereafter I quit. He was not happy at all.

Life after porn was a rough transition. We were still broke, and I had a lot of trouble adjusting back to normal life. There were deep emotional wounds, but recovery was impossible. Life was so chaotic. I sank into a deep depression, and started cutting myself. I was filled with anger and self-loathing. Suicide was not an option for me, so I would take out my anger by self-harming. I loved watching my flesh being cut, because it was like revenge against myself. I could not function normal sexually, so hubby would buy me drugs to cope. I was smoking speed and meth, and this exacerbated my mania. One day, he caught me cutting myself, and had me institutionalized. All I did in the ward was sleep and eat, I was so exhausted. The doctor placed me on lithium. After that, the marriage was pretty much over. Because of my mental state and living situation, he got custody of our daughter. I had lost everything.

By the grace of God, I ended up going back to school and securing a job. I was taken off of meds and things started to look up. Even so, I was lonely. I wasn't looking for a relationship, but I met a man whom I fell head-over-heels in love with...but was also mentally unbalanced, and drank. In my love-induced stupor, I overlooked that, and the 2 of us moved in together. He was unemployed, and I worked and took care of him.

It was an extremely abusive relationship, physically and emotionally. Early on, I admitted to him that I had been in porn, and this planted a seed of anger in him that was unleashed everytime he drank. I was terrified of him when he drank. He would kick me, beat me, punch me in the stomach, hold me against the wall by my throat, while saying that I deserved it because I had been in porn. He called me every filthy name in the book, telling me that I was damaged goods, and that he was the best thing I would ever have. I believed him. Oftentimes I would come home from work, and he would accuse me of sleeping with the guys on the job, because “once a slut, always a slut.” When I tried to explain to him that I hated making porn, he would accuse me of lying. I began to think that I was crazy. One time, when he found out that I had been in contact with my ex-husband, he took me to a park and violently raped me.

He was completely paranoid and would search my phone to make sure that I wasn't calling anyone behind his back. One time he became so enraged that he sat on top of me and broke my finger. I was terrified to leave the relationship, yet terrified to be in it. I began to hate myself even more for having been in porn, and believed that I deserved the beatings because of it.

This went on for approximately one and a half years. The breaking point came one morning, when he came home drunk after a long night of partying. He was his typical angry self, and started ridiculing me for being a “slut,” telling me that he knew I loved making porn. Eventually, it became physical, punching and kicking me. He held me down on the bed and started tearing my mouth open with his fingers. I was bleeding profusely. He then proceeded to hold my face in a pillow and suffocate me. He was completely drunk and crazy, and I was terrified thinking that he would kill me. I couldn't breathe, and I was completely at his mercy. He wouldn't let go of me. He just kept holding me there. In desperation, I cried out to the God who had watched over me all of these years. “God,” I thought, “if you have any mercy, please send your guardian angels to protect me.” At that very moment, he let go of my head and went in the other room. I knew that God had saved my life. He then ordered me to take a powerful narcotic so that I wouldn't go tell anyone about the beating. I fell into a deep sleep, but the next day, I left and never came back. I eventually got a restraining order against him.

I was basically homeless, and had no one. I was able to track down an old friend and she invited me to stay with her. She had ready access to drugs, and I would consume mass quantities, trying to forget about my sad life. My life consisted of work, drugs, and partying. I had nothing and no one. God had rescued me from death, yet I was still running away from Him. About a year later, my friend and I had an argument, and she kicked me out. I lived out of my van for about 2 months, while saving up for an apartment. I eventually managed to get off the street and into a place, but I continued drugging and falling deeper into depression. Here I was, 35 years old, and starting life from scratch. I had lost my family, my home, and all that I had worked for. I felt completely alone, and had all but given up on happiness. Even so, God hadn't given up on me. In His incredible mercy and grace, He looked down upon me, and pulled me out of the pit that I had dug for myself. I was an emotional wreck, but God was waiting to piece me back together.

As I drove to and from work everyday, I stumbled upon a Christian radio station called KWVE. I started listening to the teachings in my vehicle, and learning once again about the love and grace of Christ. It was something that I had long forgot about. I knew I could always come back to Him, but I didn't realize how much He truly loved me. The messages were like salve to my open wounds, and through those teachings, He filled me with the knowledge and understanding of His love, grace, and mercy, which I desperately needed. His word came alive to me, and I came alive as well. He made me realize just how valued and worthy I was. For so long, I believed that I had absolutely no self-worth because I was a throwaway wife who had been in the porn industry. God showed me that I was His beloved child whom He longed to hold again and shower with His love. I was so numb inside, but He taught me how to feel again.

Slowly but surely, He started to rebuild my life. He freed me from the bondage of drug addiction and manic depression, and brought me into a fellowship with warm and caring people. For the first time in my life, I had a family. As I started to grow in Him and grow deeper into His word, I fell deeper and deeper in love with my Saviour. Never in my life had I known such love. It was so warm and unconditional.

Next, he put me in contact with Shelley Lubben, also a former porn actress. Finally, I had someone whom I could talk to, who understood the kinds of things that I went through in porn. Someone non-judgmental who also loves the Lord. Shortly thereafter, the Pink Cross Foundation was formed, and she asked me to be a part of this wonderful ministry that reaches out to women and men in the porn industry and shares the love of Christ.

As I look back on everything that has happened, one thing is for certain – even while I was completely lost and in sin, and even while God was the furthest thing from my mind, through it all, He was protecting me, and leading me to that place of repentace and restoration. I am a completely new person today. Life can still be hard sometimes, and I still have many things to work out, but having God in my life gives me hope, and I know that He will continue to restore me and help me rebuild, making something beautiful out of my life – beauty for ashes.

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