Strictly Come Dancing star Ore Oduba has revealed he has battled a porn addiction since the age of nine.
The TV star, 39, spoke to Paul Brunson on his podcast We Need To Talk stating that it was only 18 months ago that he ‘escaped my addiction’ and that it had ‘destroyed my life from the inside out.’
He said he wanted to speak out now to highlight the issue of children seeing sexual imagery on social media.
An emotional Ore said: ‘This is me putting my life as it is on the line, to save my children and to guide anybody else’s children going into a world where at their fingertips, they can fall into something they never asked to.’
He added: ‘Part of me is terrified, the vast majority is terrified because I feel like, personally, for me, the rest of my life begins the day after this, as it’s a kind of a seminal draw-the-line moment.’
Ore said that he was first shown adult content on a computer by a friend’s older brother. ‘I remember being very intrigued and a feeling of eyes being opened. Whilst I wouldn’t say addiction set in immediately, the intrigue started immediately.’
Strictly Come Dancing star Ore Oduba has revealed he has battled a porn addiction since the age of nine
‘And it didn’t take long relatively speaking, for that intrigue to start running my mind over because at nine, at that age, you haven’t necessarily got full access.’
‘Wanting to find a way to address that intrigue, wanting to find ways of that awakening, wanting to replicate it or find it whether it was on television or in magazines.’
Ore said his upbringing with his strict father meant he could never tell his family about his addiction, citing the example of one of his siblings being caught smoking at school.
He explained how his father told the family that should anything like that happen again that they would all be ‘removed’ from the UK and would be ‘educated and raised in Nigeria under his rule and his roof, for a nine, ten year old that is life over as you know it.’
The behaviour continued for decades with him keeping it separate from other elements of his life. On the We Need To Talk Podcast, he explained: ‘It’s very isolating. It was something that I just knew to be me. Just a part of me. Something that I would always go to to feel. If you ever felt worthless, if you ever felt rejected. It was always a thing.
‘The reason that I felt like I needed to speak about this is because I wanted to be able to guide my own children when it comes to it, when it comes to them seeing stuff that is going to be there.
‘They’re going to come across it in life, so many of life’s pitfalls, whether it’s drink, drugs, money. It’s something I knew I needed to address.’
He added: ‘This is, I believe, one of the biggest problems we have societally. There is such a prevalence. When we hear that 60% of children are finding it accidentally, that it is cropping up on iPads, that it’s just so normal. If we leave it, what’s going to happen is these children start self-educating.’
