It used to be found only in the back rooms of bookstores and video shops. 

Now it can be viewed instantly on a smartphone. 

And it’s not just adults — teens and children are increasingly trapped in its vile grip. 

In a pornography-saturated world, many souls are trapped in a cycle of addiction and shame before they reach puberty: The average age of exposure to porn is 12, according to a 2022 Common Sense Media survey.  

To meet this crisis, a new generation of apostolates is providing young men and women with what may be the key to freedom: genuine, in-person community. 

These new, gender-specific support groups aim to address the deeper wounds of sexual addiction, such as shame, loneliness and compulsive behavior. While porn filters, internet-free phones and online prevention programs can play a part, their focus on prevention often overlooks the inner struggles that drive people to skirt filters or hide their addiction. Christ-centered community goes to the root, offering the deeper healing many Catholic young adults so desperately need. 

What’s more, these community-based porn-recovery programs seem to be working. 

“They have hope,” Sarah Myers said of the young women she works with through an apostolate called Magdala Ministries. “That is so huge!” 

Magdala Ministries 

Founded by Ave Maria University grad Rachael Killackey, Magdala Ministries facilitates “a place of honesty, hope and healing for women of faith struggling with sexual addiction” through campus, parish and virtual small-groups, according to its website.  

Killackey says the approach is aimed at “healing female sexuality in a pornified culture”; it gives “practical advice for those recovering from sexual addiction.” Her team offers mentorship as well as talks that address the common but often overlooked reality of women’s sexual brokenness. As she explained to EWTN News earlier this year, “We … want people to leave with a sense of hope that no matter what layer of woundedness they encounter in themselves, that Jesus is going to be enough. He’s going to pull them through it.” 

Myers co-leads a Magdala group in Indiana that is going into its third session. She said that the program “flips the script” from shame, fear and “cursing our sexuality” to “God showing his glory through you to bring his love into the world.”  

“There is this emphasis on voicing and loving and reverencing the whole person,” Myers continued, including their spiritual, psychological and physiological components.  

By training its leaders and providing weekly content, Magdala cultivates confidential spaces where women can share their stories, receiving each other and themselves “not as problems to be solved but rather places of hope,” explained Myers.  

She has witnessed “women blossoming into their true selves,” moving “from isolation to community and mentorship.”  

Ethos National 

Ethos National, founded in 2023 by Josh Haskell, a 2024 Notre Dame valedictorian finalist, facilitates campus small groups for young men facing porn addiction.  

Paul Biese, a senior at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and a development associate at Ethos, said in an email to the Register that “one of the most effective parts of Ethos is the sense of brotherhood it fosters. Sin thrives in secrecy, and Ethos offers a space where young men can be honest without fear of judgment. That’s incredibly powerful — and sorely needed.”  

Ethos is free, requires only an hour a week, and gets results. “In just two years,” Biese wrote, “we’ve helped nearly 500 college-age men, and we’ve seen an average 83% decrease in pornography use.” 

 The three pillars of Ethos are “weekly small-group meetings, daily check-ins with an accountability partner, and short daily readings,” which “create a rhythm of consistency, vulnerability and mutual encouragement,” said Biese.  

Magdala and Ethos share this commitment to confidentiality because of the shame that surrounds sexual sin and addiction. Each is grounded in three main theological principles: that human dignity is rooted in being made in God’s image, that sexuality is itself good (as articulated by Pope St. John Paul II), and that Christians have an irrevocable identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. 

“Rather than reducing chastity to a list of prohibitions,” Biese explained, “Ethos seeks to inspire men to become bold spiritual fathers — men who are free, self-giving and courageous.”  

Help for High Schoolers 

Ethos and Magdala are designed for young adults, but many young men and women find themselves entrapped long before college. Parents and teachers can support teens through mentorship and small groups.  

Joseph Murray, a father of four and teacher at Aquinas Academy in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, has helped foster these kinds of communities over his 10 years as a middle- and high-school teacher, coach and mentor. In the face of “such high saturation” of porn — on social media or even at friends’ houses — he firmly believes that young men and women need supportive mentorship. 

 “They [students] really want people that they can trust [to] share their struggles as they’re trying to grow into the men and women God’s created them to be,” said Murray.  

Teachers’ role as mentors works most effectively, he added, when parents expect and support Catholic schools’ mission of human formation. Murray underscored that appropriate boundaries and guardrails — as well as gender segregation — are necessary when addressing such topics.   

Having led six Exodus 90 groups for his high schoolers before handing on the leadership to the students, Murray remarked that, while many joined Exodus 90 because of porn, the program itself is not specifically designed for that struggle.  

However, the program’s pillars of prayer, fraternity and asceticism make Exodus 90 an “antidote to so much vice,” including porn, and thus a good starting point for young people hoping to start their own groups.  

Murray described Exodus 90’s daily Holy Hour as “directing the heart’s longing” back to Christ and its community as freeing young men from the “shame and self-loathing and so many lies spoken [by the devil].”  

“When you begin to pray,” he said, “you train yourself to take your deepest longing and your deepest desires and orient them towards God, where you’re supposed to go. … If you’re growing in union with God, then fruits will flow.”  

Smaller groups, peer “battle buddies,” and one-on-one conversations with mentors, Murray added, can be especially effective in counteracting the atmosphere of shame surrounding porn.  

Getting Parental Buy-In 

Biese and Myers emphasized the role of teens’ parents. The biggest roadblock for Ethos expanding its programming to high schoolers, Biese said, “is parental buy-in.”  

“Many parents,” he continued, “either aren’t fully aware of how prevalent pornography use is or they’re hesitant to confront it. But for a high-school program to work, we’ll need parents who are informed, supportive, and willing to walk with their children through this formation.”  

“The most powerful thing a parent can do is model chastity themselves — and speak about it with honesty and compassion,” Biese said. “Chastity education is not a onetime ‘talk’ — it’s a way of life. That means building trust over time, removing shame from the conversation, and creating practical structures for accountability.”  

Myers with Magdala, remembering her own experience as a teen, highlighted the need for dialogue, awareness and openness. Parents and educators can ask themselves, “How can we start talking about this?” and work to overcome “this fear about talking about sexuality with their children” — “building that space and trust” early on and “talking about the good of [sex]” as soon as is appropriate. She encouraged communities to create opportunities “for parents to really gather together and learn in community about how to talk about the theology of the body.” 

She added, “Creating a space of holding the truth, the goodness and the beauty” of sexuality seems to be a tall order, but a necessary one, for true healing.  

That’s something Ethos’ Haskell knows well. 

As Haskell wrote of his own journey, “Porn used to be the dictator of my life. … Through God’s grace, I’ve found freedom.”