From porn to pancakes

A year ago, Donny Pauling was raking in the dough. And he got to look at hot chicks—naked hot chicks—all day. Working under the name Donovan Philips, he made his living as a porn producer, in Chico, for almost a decade.

Today he’s enrolling in the seminary.

“People were really starting to get hurt,” he said recently while sipping an iced Chai downtown. “I kept pushing it away, but it was there.”

Pauling grew up the son of a pastor. He was born in Redding, but moved around a lot, attending five different high schools. Witnessing the ugliness of many of the church-goers’ behaviors turned him off to Christianity.

“I wanted to get as far away from it as I could,” he said.

Can’t get much farther away than porn.

And so, at the age of 24, Donny and his camera were in business. All he needed was a large group of attractive, preferably barely legal young women willing to take off their clothes. He started by approaching exotic dancers. Then he realized Chico State students were ripe for the picking.

“Where else can you go where there are 1,500 new freshman girls every year?” Pauling posed, adding: “They come to a party school for a reason.”

He estimates he photographed more than 500 Chico State students—and even a few faculty—in his nine years in the biz. Mostly solo, nude softcore stuff. His Web site, Donnysgirls.com, became locally infamous (he sold it last year, before he quit producing), but he also did a lot of contract work—selling the photos to other Web sites and companies, including Playboy.

He wasn’t shy about it, either.

“I would strike up conversations with people I recognized from my dad’s church,” he said. “And I would always get around to the fact that I was a porn producer.”

He would wait for the jaw to drop and then ask, “Do you ever look at porn?” He’d flash them a knowing glance and maybe a wink: “Yeah, me and you, we’re in this together, man.”

That’s because it’s all about supply and demand. He was able to make a pretty penny because companies and Web sites and ultimately consumers were willing to pay for his content. And as far as getting models, well, that was easy, too.

“The society we live in glamorizes porn,” he said. “A lot of kids grow up thinking it’s cool to be in porn. So it wasn’t tough for me [to find models].

“I’d invite them over to my house, and I’d have pictures up on the wall,” Pauling said. The photos were usually of Pauling with celebrities. “And they’d start painting themselves into the pictures.”

That was all well and good. It was the next part that, after years of perfecting his craft, started to eat away at his conscience. Once the women were excited, he’d pull them out of the picture by telling them all the negatives associated with posing nude—dads and friends and teachers finding the pictures, for example. For the most part, they’d shrug that off, saying, “Oh, my dad doesn’t look at porn.”

“Then they end up talking themselves into it,” Pauling said. He’d pay them, on average, $500 a shoot.

Life was pretty cushy, with a nice, big house, a fiancée and money to play with. Then things took a turn. He allowed—encouraged, even—his fiancée to have a relationship with another man. Sort of a swinger thing. Pauling calls it “the game.” And he lost when she fell for the other guy.

“It destroyed me inside,” he said. “But once my ego was gone, I was able to see the pain I was causing other people—because I was in pain myself.”

Last August, upon receiving an offer from Playboy for $4,000 a day to shoot a new lesbian series, instead of jumping on board, Pauling jumped ship. He’d rediscovered God.

“I don’t think that God is judgmental,” he said. “He wasn’t telling me I was going to Hell or anything, but more like ‘I expect better from you.'”

Expecting better meant he could no longer ignore the almost weekly letters from women who had posed for him begging him to erase their photos, some even threatening suicide. He couldn’t ignore the story about a woman’s pictures being posted to her father’s car or of another woman being fired because of hers. And it pained him to hear accounts of his models being recognized at bars in Chico and ridiculed or verbally abused.

“There are girls all over Chico who have been hurt,” he said.

Women aren’t the only ones, though. Their families and the families of the men—and women—who consume pornography are also oftentimes victims of the industry.

“It’s worn out to say porn objectifies women,” Pauling said. “It’s not just preying on women—it’s preying on humans.”

So now, a year after giving up a lush lifestyle of big houses and girls aplenty, here’s 33-year-old Pauling getting by in a small apartment in Corning. His fiancée left him—for the other man in their game—but he’s working through issues with his ex-wife and mother of his child, Caden, who is now 7. His father is also thrilled.

“He retired a long time ago,” Pauling said. “But he was almost excited enough to reinstate his license.”

Pauling is now working on a few different Web marketing projects, he’s getting things together to enroll in the seminary, and he dedicates himself to educating others. His unique perspective earns him almost as much credibility as his down-to-earth nature.

He uses that credibility at XXXchurch.com, which touts itself as the “#1 Christian porn site.” It was created in 2002 to create awareness about porn and offer help to those who struggle with it. Pauling has a weekly column on the site, in addition to a blog, at www.donnysramblings.com, where he writes about everything from his experience in the porn industry to his new iPhone.

The cool thing is, people are paying attention. Starting in September, Pauling will be traveling around the U.S. with XXXchurch to speak at what they call “Porn and Pancakes” events. He’s slated for a Sacramento appearance Sept. 30. He’ll talk about how the industry works, the problems he saw, and offer his perspective.

He is often asked to talk to men who struggle with porn (“the Church has a huge porn problem”). His advice: “Maybe the next time you feel like masturbating in front of that screen, think about the fact that that girl’s father probably doesn’t talk to her anymore.”

His blog and column have given him a lot of positive feedback about his transformation. He gets everything from people asking for help to models who reply, saying that his words helped them heal.

One woman told him: “It’s really nice to have someone say they’re sorry.”