Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
How Sex Addiction Destroys Lives | The Dark Truth
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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
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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