Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
How Sex Addiction Destroys Lives | The Dark Truth
Sun, 16 Mar 2025
Gene McConnell is an ex-john. At one time in his life, he had a porn addiction, was paying for sex regularly (while married), and even attempted to sexually assault a woman. Gene stopped himself, but the near-attempt and consequent arrest forced him down another path, towards dealing with his past trauma and related sex, anger, and emotional issues, as well as towards a life of talking to other men about his past, how he changed his life, and what was at the root of his exploitative behaviour and dehumanizing view of women.Today, he tours college campuses, speaking to young men about pornography and prostitution, is the founder of Authentic Relationships International, is a youth pastor, and is married with three children.Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What traumatic experiences shaped Gene's life?
But this babysitter who was six years older than I, at the age of six, she molested me. That started the whole ball rolling for me to step into sex clubs and go into prostitution, go into massage parlors, go into strip clubs. When you use mood-altering substances or mood-altering experiences to cope with pain, then for a season it works, and then it no longer works because it becomes normal.
And so I need to upgrade it. And so that means more graphic, more disgusting, or boundaries that I said I would never cross to get the same high that I once had. So this escalated. So I began to have fantasies of rape. And it's hard for me to even state that now as a man who's been 39 years in recovery. The way I saw myself inside, the damage inside, I could never have that woman
Because of, look at me, I'm too broken. So if I can't have that and I want that, I'll take that. When fantasy no longer satisfies, I start thinking about what is real. What would it be like to do that? And so one night in the back of a club, this woman walked by, man, something inside just snapped. It said, this is your opportunity to fulfill that fantasy.
Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Gene McConnell, and he is a former sex buyer, and we've got a really interesting story for you and an interesting show, so please check it out. So, we just had half a little bit of a chat there before the show, and you were kind of telling me, you know, just about...
about the group that you, you know, work with and, and, uh, you're a little bit about your story, but do you mind if we kind of go back to like the very beginning and talk about start just basically like where you were born a little bit about that, you know, where you went to high school siblings?
Well, the, the, um, I was born in Ventura, California. and spent my time there in that Southern California until I was in fifth grade. And so I grew up in a very good environment. My parents were pastors, my grandparents were pastors, and I could go on, the entire family had some kind of leadership and church environment. I enjoyed my fifth grade, you know, all the way to fifth grade.
But California, my parents wanted us to move to Oregon and kind of get a different experience than just California and the big city, so to speak. But in my first several years, there was a I had a blast as a kid. But this babysitter who was six years older than I, at the age of six, she molested me. She was our neighbor, and she molested me more than once.
And I was just looking for attention, affirmation. She was somebody that I played with and hung out with. And she was six years older than I was. Man, that experience was profound because my childhood just literally got blew up. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to communicate it. I had huge mixed emotions.
Ambivalence would be the word for that, but just the idea that one side of me really... I wanted to be valued and wanted and special. And the other side of me felt dirty, soiled, damaged, shame. And so I didn't know how to talk about it. And that happened more than once. It happened over a series of two, three, four years. I'm not sure. Many of the experiences were blurred together.
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Chapter 2: How did Gene's childhood trauma influence his behavior?
Chapter 3: What led Gene to engage in sex addiction?
Right. I was going to say I was I don't know if you know this. I was incarcerated, but I was at a at the federal prison complex in in Coleman, Florida. And, uh, at the, you know, I was at the medium security prison, but I was also at the low for a time. And at the low, there's a, like nearly, nearly half the compound has some kind of a, some kind of a sex crime. And, you know,
Although I'd say 90% of them are lying about it. They'll tell you they're there for something else. But, you know, it just becomes, it's so obvious. And there's such a large group of them that they don't really have to hide it. But I definitely after speaking with, you know, you know, numerous offenders and everything you're saying is like spot on.
And in some cases they would like you said, they would actually want to mount an argument. that they actually, you know, love this child, we're giving them affection and that sort of thing. And, and like you said, all of them had been abused as children.
Like, I don't think I ever spoke with anybody that hadn't been abused, even if they didn't consider it abuse, like they were 11 or 12 and there was a cousin or a brother or sister, um, that was touching them inappropriately. even if they were like, you know, oh, but you know, that happens to everybody. And I was like, well, no, no, it doesn't.
You know, and obviously, even if it happens to a lot of people, it had a dramatic effect on them because they suddenly were attracted to 11 or 12 year old, you know, girls or boys or whatever it may be. You know, I used to always say, you know, in a real, in a very real way, you have to feel bad for them because they were victims before they became predators. The problem is that
You know, once you know, once they became predators like you, as sad as it is, what put them in that situation? You just can't let monster monster roam the countryside. I mean, and, you know, it's just such a such a shitty situation.
It is, and I think you don't do this with the idea in mind, well, we just got to let them, you know, they were molested as a child or they were harmed as a child, so therefore we have to have some kind of, you know, mercy on the consequences.
Mercy on the consequences would actually allow them, like a child, if a child doesn't, if a child disobeys and does something wrong, you don't let the child go without consequences. Consequences are important.
So then they're creating monsters.
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Chapter 4: How did Gene's addiction escalate over time?
It's not like it's, you know, they're perceiving it as just like you drinking water, getting air, eating food, getting rest. They're putting it in that same framework. So if you don't get sex, you have a right to go outside and look for it somewhere else. The idea that she owes you sex, that whole thinking. is really toxic and destructive because now we're not seeing women as women.
We're seeing women as our sex, like it's no different than having masturbation, only I found somebody to give it to. So that masturbating through a woman's body rather than seeing her as an individual, as a person. So intimacy is the need and that both men and women carry it. But when I just need to be known and to be loved, that is like breathing air. I need that.
And I have shame, which says to be known is the death of you. So the fear, so shame then cuts off what I need. So if I don't get my real needs met, which is intimacy, which is to be known, to have close connection with others, then I reach out to then use things to meet that need. And for porn and sex and all that, I'm using people to get that need met. And so I reduce something to an object.
I use something that won't reject me, that won't hurt me, that won't walk away, that I can use to get that quote-unquote need met. So some people choose drugs. Some people do alcohol. Some people do food. Some, you know, gambling. We could go on and on and on. But they use something. It's not connect with something. They use something.
And so when we objectify women, which is what Ford does, and we see women through the lens of their body rather than as a human being, as their soul, how they think, what they feel, when we objectify, then we're using women, not connecting. And so shame plays a significant role in causing all of this to happen because if I have a connected life,
In other words, people know me and they actually see my mistakes and they see my flaws and they walk alongside me and they support me as I get help and they're there to help support me in any way they can. They love me and accept me and know me. Man, that brings my heart alive. There's connection. There's life there. There's something to celebrate. Wow.
And having that celebration of connection is what changes life. And so if I'm going to help people heal and change, it won't be just to stop the behavior. It will be, here's how we really get what we want.
Obviously, that shame is what stops them from getting to that point Yep. You know, like, like they're not going to reach, people don't want to reach out because they're embarrassed and they, you know, it's, um, yeah, I, it's, you know, this, this, this, this shitty situation all the way around.
Like, you know, who wants, and just like, like with, in your case, you know, had you reached out earlier, had you not been trying to hide this, and felt like, hey, there's a place I could go, there's somebody I can talk to, I don't have to be embarrassed about this, I need to deal with this, then you wouldn't have gotten to that point. Exactly.
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Chapter 5: What was the turning point for Gene in his recovery?
It makes all the difference in the world, bro. It just does. And it's made a difference on my world. I mean, I've been out almost 40 years. I've not gone back. I've never been arrested again. I've never been in that world again. I'm done. And I never will. There is so much to life. There's so much to offer. My life is different. But
you know, I still have to face consequences of those choices back in the day. Um, you know, I still have my, some of my, my kids still are wounded from that, that I'm still having to work through. Um, I lost a marriage of 27 years with that, you know, that first marriage.
And, um, it, you know, there's a lot of damage done, but now when I look though, as I've restored my relationships and I've worked through the pain of all, I have an amazing woman in my life. Uh, We know each other. We walk alongside. We celebrate. We're true partners. Oh, yeah, we still have messes, but we know it. We work on it.
I'm on top of the world relational, and I feel like life is what it should be. And I'm 67. I wish I would have known this when I was younger, but it's taken a lifetime to figure it out. But we do that. We bring people in. We do groups and we do these retreats. We're called Pursuing the Hidden Heart. For men, we do it called Authentic Manhood. And we deal with what is the masculinity aspect.
And we look at what it takes to heal the broken areas of our life. We look at sexuality. We look at pornography and sexuality. Talk about all that stuff. Talk about being a father and a husband. Just living in the world as a man. What does it mean to be healthy? So we do these retreats and workshops and people come out going, wow, this has put me on a whole different trajectory and
They don't walk away going, I'm changed. I'll never be the same. They walk away with, wow, this profoundly helps me see where I need to go and what I need to do. And I tasted something I've never tasted before and I want to learn more. And so this is a journey. Nobody gets a magic wand. Nobody gets a quick fix. But we can turn things around and make things different. And if they do the work,
Absolutely change possible. I'm a living example that as many others that I've worked with. That your behaviors, let me just say it this way. Your mistakes that you've made, the things that you've done wrong, do not have to be the definer for how you live your life out now. Right. You can turn your life around and you can change it if you want to.
I hear you. I did 13 years in prison. I got out like four years ago, you know.
Good for you. I mean, I'm really proud of you because it takes a lot of strength to do what you just did. Really? You know, it really does. And not let people, you know, pigeonhole you. And, you know, look what you're building. Look what's happening.
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