The following is a guest post by David Chatham. He is in court today awaiting sentencing for possession of child pornography.
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Many people talk about the proverbial “knock on the door” as their wake-up call and introduction to recovery from pornography addiction. For me, the knock was entirely too real. It came at 7:00 a.m. on December 16, 2008 when federal and state law enforcement agents knocked on our door and changed our lives. The agents were serving a search warrant to investigate me for receipt of child pornography. The pain in my wife’s eyes that morning will stay with me forever. As of this writing I have plead guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography and am facing up to eight years in federal prison.
This is my story.
My Early Exposure to Pornography
I grew up the middle child of three in a middle-class home in the suburbs of Raleigh, N.C. My father worked for IBM for 30 years and my mother started out as a stay-at-home mom, then worked her way into a professional career. My parents remain married today after 43 years. By all accounts, I had an average childhood. We lived in a rural area near tobacco and dairy farms. We belonged to a swim and tennis club nearby and had motorcycles, a boat and yearly vacations at the beach. We attended the little white country church across the street from our house. The one constant for me growing up was that I always felt different. Whether it was my red hair, buck teeth, or just in my head, it was always there.
I was first exposed to sex at age seven by an older female cousin fondling me. At age nine I was exposed to pornography when I found my father’s collection of magazines. I’m not sure what clicked, but I became fascinated by pornography and believe my addiction began with that first exposure. From that point on I actively pursued pornography by looking for it whenever I thought I might have a shot of finding it: My father’s collection, a friend’s father’s stash, neighbors, relatives, etc. I quickly learned to soothe myself with pornography and did so almost every day until January of 2009.
Child Pornography Enters the Picture
As my addiction progressed so did my need to look at harder and more explicit pornography. What started out as looking at Playboys progressed to Hustlers, then to videos depicting hard core sex acts. I discovered the Internet in 1994 and my addiction was fueled like putting gas to a fire. I was married at the time and my wife and I had a reasonably good relationship in spite of the pornography. Once I got online, I emotionally abandoned my wife and spent hours and hours online chatting and trading adult pornography. Our relationship was deteriorating before my eyes and I felt powerless to stop it. I was ashamed and angry and scared.
I discovered child pornography in 1996. I was on America Online, chatting with a person, trading adult pictures and this person said, “Tell me what you think about this one,” referring to the picture he was sending. It turned out to be a grainy black and white picture of a young girl, maybe 12, nude. I was shocked, repulsed and scared. I told him I didn’t like it, didn’t want to see more, and ended the conversation. A “normal” reaction, from what I’ve learned. However, somewhere along the way, as I traded adult images, and more and more people sent me child pornography, I dropped my boundaries and started looking at it and became sexually excited by it. To this day I don’t understand it. I’m not a pedophile; I have never touched a child nor ever wanted to. But somehow it became acceptable for me to view child pornography. The shame I felt was suffocating. But I chose each time to view it, feeling helpless to stop. I tried to justify it by saying I wasn’t physically hurting a child, that I didn’t “save” the images, and that I never distributed them to anyone else.
The Boundaries Erode
My wife discovered the child pornography and decided to leave the marriage. For most people this would have been enough of a wake-up call to consider getting help. I did consider it, attending 12-step meetings, but continued to look at pornography, digging in deeper to mask the shame of my divorce. While I primarily viewed adult pornography, I continued to look at child pornography. I treated it as almost a booster, something to put me over the top during my fantasy and masturbation.
After about a year, around 1999, I met a woman and started dating her. Lisa was amazing. She was fun, beautiful, athletic, intelligent and outgoing. We had a good time. But pornography still dominated my life. I would tell Lisa I had to have certain days free from seeing her under the premise that I needed “alone time.” Actually, I was carving out time to spend all day looking at pornography and compulsively masturbating. I was still chatting, trading adult pornography (still receiving child pornography) and viewing adult videos offline on a daily basis.
As broadband Internet became available I began expanding my repertoire of pornography. My boundaries continued to erode. It became more aggressive, more deviant. I would spend sleepless nights looking at it. Choosing the fantasy world over reality.
Lisa and I married on Oct. 4, 2003. Despite her awareness that something “wasn’t right,” she agreed to marry me. It took me five years to propose to her because I was so afraid it would just be a repeat of my first marriage and I would end up running her away as well. Little did I know just how strong a woman she is.
In the last few years leading up to the federal agents at our door, I felt like that was the inevitable end, that I was hopelessly addicted and had to hit bottom. I realize now that my bottom could have been the loss of my first marriage, the many arguments Lisa and I had about pornography, the shame I felt about my actions.
Redeeming the Time
Ultimately, I chose to receive child pornography from someone over a file sharing site in 2008. According to the agents who conducted the investigation, I was one of many people the person had sent pornography to and I was caught up in a sting.
I am currently awaiting my sentencing for the one count of receipt of child pornography. The federal guidelines suggest a prison term of around eight years for my particular offense. My wife and I have decided to use the time I have left before I go to prison to try to be of service to God and to help raise awareness of the damaging effects of pornography on individuals, families and society. Child pornography is not a victimless crime. The children in those images were physically and sexually abused for those pictures, and each time they are viewed they are victimized again.
As much as I regret my actions, I do believe God has a purpose in all of this. I accepted Christ on February 12, 2009. My wife and I have been receiving counseling and I have been attending 12-step meetings. I’ve been sober from pornography and masturbation since January of 2009. I am working on the hole that I was trying to fill with pornography, and Lisa and I are working on our marriage. We have been more honest, more intimate and more available to each other in the last 9 months than we have the entire 10 years we have been together.
Being accountable is a huge part of regaining the trust in our relationship. To help demonstrate that accountability, my wife and I use Covenant Eyes Accountability software. She receives a daily report on my online behavior and we discuss any concerns that may arise. It is a great way to be an open book, and to also provide me with one more tool I can use to fight temptation. If I do have the desire to stray, knowing how that will impact my wife and our relationship gives me motivation to stop and stay strong.
I regret my actions every day, but I’m not ashamed any more. I have seen so many small miracles in our life the last few months. While I wish the knock on the door had come sooner for me, I’m grateful that when I was ready to get help it was there in the form of God, our church, therapists and yes, even law enforcement. I pray that someone else doesn’t have to go through what we have gone through, that they open the door to redemption and recovery before that knock arrives.
My ex-boyfriend is now sitting in a jail cell because of child pornography. Thank you for sharing your story. I would love to see an article by your wife, talking about how the Lord is getting her through this. As much as the children who have been sexualized are victims, the ones who truly feel the crush of the individual sin are those closest to the person addicted to pornography, specifically child pornography. His parents, our pastor, his brother, myself, our church…. my life can never be the same because of his sin. As much as pornography is hard to talk about, child pornography and its problems have taken a backburner. It is so repulsive that nothing is out there to help those addicted to it. Please continue to share, because you are certainly not alone.
Ok…I can predict where this debate is heading and to be honest I feel the same way you do. Specifically that we can never see eye to eye on one thing…the nature of God.
I’ll level with you on two things. Firstly, I quite literally have no idea who David Chatham is. Seriously, I probably googled something like, “has a defendant ever tried to make a case for pedophilia in court?” (don’t judge me, I was bored!) and smacked the enter key. I guess I was hoping to find some comedic article about how some crazy man attempted to justify the indefensible to a stunned jury or something. You know, “Judge Judy meets Jerry Springer!” Suddenly, after skimming through some obscure and boring academic psychology papers, I found this website. At first I was outraged, somewhat so by the crimes of this man but perhaps more so by the sentiments behind the messages people have left. Specifically, the unanimous agreement that David Chatham deserves forgiveness. This group, I thought, sees pedophiles differently than the rest of the world sees them. This group is different.
Of course, you’ve explained to me why the people on this website feel the way they do. You’ve explained to me how the Christian mind works and why, in their own way, they consider the forgiveness of God to be moral, right and correct. I cannot agree that God’s forgiveness is moral and the reason for that brings me onto the second thing I must level with you on.
I am a commited Atheist. This actually means that I cannot overlook the actions of an offender such as David Chatham by saying something like, “he is acting on the orders of Satan.” If we believe that Satan exists then we must also remove at least some of the responsibility of evil deeds from the hands of man since Satan is the mischevious string puller and some arbitrary men have become his unfortunate play thing.
“I admit I allowed a demon to enter my life but the demon had bad intentions too. Please, focus at least some of your rage upon the demon.”
I do believe in giving people a second chance but we also have to realistic.
As for man’s desire to ask questions and understand the nature of things I can only say this. We are inevitable. We looked into the night sky and asked questions about the stars, the moon and our place within the universe. We peered into the farthest reaches and depths of space, marvelled at primordial galaxies, grasped bewildering concepts about the dynamics of space and time (time dialation is a head spinner!) and set foot on new worlds. With each passing decade science has shed new light on the origin of man and the begining of time. As we strive forward towards new horizons man’s innate, inquisitive nature has allowed science to show that God is a powerless, redundant non-entity with nothing to do and nowhere to hide. Genesis is false and the Bible is a lie.
Before I go I must offer you and your readers an opology. You, quite rightly, did not publish my initial posts. I understand why. They were horrible paragraphs and I am sorry for having written them. I have no excuse. I guess moral outrage combined with Internet annonymity and a sprinkling of childish attitudes led me astray.
Thanks for leveling with me and your apology. I totally respect (and support) your desire to ask good a critical questions of Christians. When I was a skeptic, I asked the exact same questions, and my intention was not to treat any question you asked as irrelevant. I just knew endless comments on an outdated thread was not the place to do it.
I didn’t take you for an atheist, to be honest. By saying God is immoral, I would have assumed you believed He existed. My mistake.
As a side note, I know many scientists, even committed evolutionists, who hold to the truth of the Bible. I encourage you not to let science be the source of your skepticism. For hundreds of years Christian societies were passionate about science and saw no conflict, and there are still many today who see great harmony between their faith and their cosmology.
Thanks for the conversation. It has been enlightening.
Sorry, I simply cannot appreciate the purpose behind this post. This website is dedicated to showing support to a convicted pedophile. How revolting. Also, Mr Chatham has confessed to absolutely nothing. He made zero effort to own up, stop his crimes or change his behaviour until he was arrested. He did nothing until he was forced to. Once the game was up his P.R instincts kicked in and he began to unveil his rehearsed and planned “changed man” campaign. His slick efforts have had the desired effect too, albeit in a few, small circles (most people are not taken in by his “repentant claims” and feel, as I do, that he would rather never have been caught.)
You and the others here are included in the small circle who wish for a better life for David. I would like to see him in jail for the next 50 years…at least.
Let’s return to the issue of forgiveness and in particular, the will of God with regard to tolerance. Now, you believe that if a pedophile rapes a child then God himself feels the child’s pain and will therefore damand a repentant plea from the offender. In other words, it is like God himself has been raped along with the child and as such God now demands, well…for want of a better phrase…revenge for having been violated in such a horrendous way. The question I would like to ask here is why does God tolerate being raped by a pedophile? If he is God then surely he would just prevent the act from taking place? After all, if we sin against God every time we sin against each other then God, instead of being an enraged observer, becomes a willing victim instead. I do not know the true figures but it seemds to me that somewhere out there right now someone is sinning against someone else and God is just laying back, feeling victimized and waiting for it to finish.
It appears that God is ready to tolerate an awful lot of abuse that He, apparantly, needn’t suffer at all.
Free will is only a plausible explanation if God cannot, or will not concern himself with the issues of us humans here on Earth. If free will is the reason behind the evils of man then God must have removed himself from our lives. Man’s will is not God’s will since God’s will is never evil.
The answers are either,
“God tolerates being repeatedly raped by free men even though He is God and could, if He wanted, stop the abuse.”
“God uses His own will to be repeatedly raped by the men over which He has complete control even though He hates it, feels victimized by it and wished it would stop.”
Hi there. I think it is probably best to stop this conversation because we will not see eye-to-eye here. I will reply to your questions, however.
First, just because David started to make changes in his life after his arrest does not mean his changes were not genuine. If you have some reasons to believe they are not genuine, tell us. Otherwise, if he is only faking for the sake of salvaging his reputation, the message the post sends is still a strong one. Coming from a man who is paying for his crimes, it sends a clear warning to men who might find themselves in the same situation. I find hope in that.
Second, this website is not “dedicated” to showing support for a convicted pedophile. That is an overstatement if I have ever heard one. We support his strong statement about child pornography: “Child pornography is not a victimless crime. The children in those images were physically and sexually abused for those pictures, and each time they are viewed they are victimized again.”
Third, I absolutely wish a better life for David, if by “better” you mean he is freed from all sinful compulsion to sexualize children and instead serves God and others with his whole heart. I make no apologies for wishing that on anyone, even the most wretched.
Fourth, yes God allows people to sin against Him. Yes, he absorbs the wrong again and again and again, millions of times over. But this is far from “toleration.” The fact that God has not judged the world for all its atrocities is a manifestation of His patience. A day is coming when that will no longer be the case. I, for one, am grateful for His patience.
As for why God allows evil in the world, that is a question people have pondered for millennia. To respond to this would take far too long, but I will say this, briefly. I believe in the God of the Bible because I believe He has revealed Himself in human history, through prophets, miracles, thousands of powerful interventions, and ultimately His Son. I also believe He had allowed evil to enter the world and that He has also not told us every reason for this. He has not revealed many truths to us. In the face of that ignorance, I can either respond in bitterness or I can respond with trust. Will I be a slave to my personal desire to “need to know” why God is the way He is, thus leading me to disbelief, or will I follow the One who died for my sins and rose from the grave? That is the personal question we must all ask. As for me, my money’s on Jesus, not my obsessive demands for answers.
Not only do I believe that the people who have commented on this thread take David’s sin lightly, but I would go so far as to say that those same people are absolving the man of ALL responsibility for his actions. Evidently, they are of the opinion that sin, or Satan, is responsible, not David.
Allow me to ellaborate. The path to forgiveness is the path to understanding God’s will and judgement. If we repent and ask for the holy spirit to be revealed to us, we must first ask for forgiveness of our sins. The problem is that Mr Chatham is asking the wrong being for forgiveness. Indeed, God has no moral right to forgive on behalf of people who have been wronged, and this includes the behalf of the children who were raped solely for the entertainment of Mr Chatham. If he has to ask forgiveness, then he should beg for it from the victims. Apparently David HAS faced a former victim of abuse. He was pretty much forced into the encounter as part of his “treatment”. It’s a shame that he did not display this enthusiasm for change before he was arrested, or at any time during the twelve years he was indulging in his “addiction”.
The way I see it, forgiveness is the issue here. Many posters seem to think that if God forgives then all’s well and good. But God was never raped on the Internet.
The forgiveness of sin by God is ALWAYS gratuitious because God goes over the head of the sinned to reward the sinner. In this case God will disreguard the feelings of the rape victim in order to validate and compensate the offending pedophile. The sinned has no say in the matter…God has made his judgement and that’s all there is to it.
THAT’S immoral. God’s judgement with regards to the forgiveness of sin is immoral. Of course, the Christian mind will be forever blind to this piece of logic since the Christian believes God and all of His judgements are perfect. If God forgives then the offender has the right to glory in the same way that the offended has the right…whether the offended agrees or not.
God is immoral.
Certainly God forgives wrongs done to Him, correct? And as far as David’s sins go, He did wrong God. God makes very clear that harming people made in His image is an attack on God Himself. There are many ways we are all guilty of these kind of crimes against God (basically any time we slander or harm another person), and these sins are so great God inflicted his terrible wrath on His own Son when He was dying in our place on the cross. Make no mistake about it: God is deeply hurt when we harm one another.
As far as seeking forgiveness from others is concerned, God also commands us to do this. If I wrong you, I may ask God to forgive me for the ways I’ve offended Him in my sin, but I still must ask you to forgive me for the ways I’ve offended you. These are two distinct acts of forgiveness and both should be sought out.
I’m curious why you think God is immoral for forgiving sins. Every sin, no matter to whom it is done, is also a sin against God. Every sin is a manifestation of that ugly drive in us to want to spit in His face and disregard Him. If you destroy my work of art, I take that as a sin against me. Similarly, if you hurt the one God made, God takes that as a crime against Him.
As you said, David has faced a former victim of abuse, and you are right, it is a shame he didn’t turn from his sin much sooner. But I am, for one, glad he owned up to his sin. It is the very reason I approached him about writing this post: I don’t want to see others like him go down that dark path, men who could make a turn right now before they find themselves participating in horrendous crimes. I pray you can at least appreciate the purpose behind this post.
Allegations? Against who? David Chatham or your readers?
I have had no need to make allegations against the sadistic and evil David Chatham because it is well known that he is the kind of guy who likes to look at babies being raped on the Internet. He had thousands of images and videos of babies being killed and raped on his computer and he spent over a decade masterbating himself whilst viewing them. That’s not my allegation against him, it’s absolute fact and I am assuming that you already know about what he is and what he did.
As for your readers I have said that it is evil to show support or sympathy to Mr Chatham. It’s evil becuase David Chatham is a convicted pedophile and he deserves to rot in jail. If you saw a child being raped by an adult man, would you have sympathy for the child or would you say something like,
“Oh that poor man. He’s clearly lost his way with God and he will no doubt be feeling really bad when the police arrest him and the whole world sees him for the monster he is. Not to worry Mr Pedo…I’ll ask God to look the other way. As for the child…what child?”
Of course, I can only refer to the people who have commented on this website but it seems to me that every single person (apart from me) who has commented about David and this case is of the opinion that Mr Chatham is a fine, brave and upstanding man.
The evidence of his arrest and conviction would suggest otherwise.
Yes. I’m aware of the reason for his arrest and conviction. I thought you were talking about new information since his conviction. We’re well-aware of what he did in the past: it was the very reason he was convicted.
I’m confused: Do you actually believe the people commenting here are saying they approve of what he did? Do you believe they think God looks the other way when children are harmed? What gives you that impression?
Your comments about David are becoming volatile. If you have some new information about David we don’t already know, then tell us, but please stop insinuating people treat his sin lightly.