Graduate pioneers porn recovery programme for students

A university graduate is pioneering a scheme to help students across the US to overcome their porn use.

Joshua Haskell, who first encountered online pornography at 15 years old, invited fellow students at the University of Notre Dame, Illinois, to join his accountability programme after publishing his testimony in the student newspaper last year.

Now, as the founder of Ethos National, he aims to expand the programme to every university in the US and is set to publish a curriculum and student leader training programme which will be available to thousands of students.

‘Time machine’

Speaking to Fox News Digital, Haskell explained that he was 18 years old when he found an online accountability group with “powerful, heart-wrenching testimonials” that convinced him to break his porn habit.

He reflected: “It was super, super shocking and crazy uncomfortable because I watched all of these grown men that were struggling with this, a lot of them with wives, with children, just making no progress decades down the road.”

“For me, it just felt like this time machine where I was just given this image of myself in the future if I didn’t act right now.”

‘Freedom’

After opening up about his own struggles with porn, Haskell said the encouragement he received from other students revealed that support is often scarce.

He said: “I was asking every day. How has nothing like this come to college campuses or parishes or high schools when it is such a massive issue?”

So Haskell decided to abandon a finance job in New York and expand his programme nationwide, in order to help others “find a greater level of freedom than ever before”.