Former “Bachelor” contestant Madison Prewett has opened up about her earlier struggles with porn and masturbation and how faith and confession helped set her “free.”
On a recent episode of her “Stay True” podcast, the 29-year-old revealed that an addiction to pornography and masturbation began when she was in middle school.
“This has been a struggle,” Prewett said. “This has been a huge part of my testimony, something I’ve struggled with since middle school. And thankfully, by the grace of God, and by the power of godly community and people around me, I have been free from porn and masturbation for — I don’t even know — 10 years.”
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Prewett said the struggle left her feeling “enslaved” and consumed by shame, even as she pursued a relationship with God.
“That was something that enslaved me and marked me for so long,” she said. “No matter how much I loved Jesus, I could not shake that sin. I could not break free from porn and masturbation. And I would beat myself up and I would be bound by shame.”
Prewett appeared on “The Bachelor“ in 2020 and made headlines due to her commitment to refrain from sex until marriage. Now a wife and mother, Prewett said her curiosity around sexuality started early. By the time she was in middle school, she had begun engaging with media that introduced her to sex and relationships.
“I had already had moments of being curious about things and having certain feelings, or wondering certain things, or fantasizing about certain things,” she said. “I had not told that to anyone. I had not pursued to do anything about that, but I was curious.”
Prewett, who has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Auburn University and earned her certificate in pastoral leadership through Highlands College in 2018, recalled watching a show at age 13 that featured nudity and sexual themes.
“It was all about sex and sexual relationships and who [the main character] was going to choose based on who she was attracted to, and it was a whole crazy thing,” Prewett said. “But I just remember I had never watched anything like that before, and my body started feeling things that I had never felt before.”
Within a few weeks, she said, she began searching for pornography online and started masturbating. She noted that, at the time, she believed these were struggles only men dealt with — an assumption that made her feel isolated and ashamed.
“This continued for a long time,” she said. “And then this bled into relationships. I was letting the enemy run my life with living in secrecy and living in isolation.”
TheMade For This Momentauthor said her struggle affected her ability to maintain physical boundaries in dating relationships.
“This bled into then, when I would start dating someone, I pushed so many boundaries physically,” she said.
Although she was raised in a religious home, Prewett said there was a lack of clarity around the topic of sexual desire.
“I didn’t have clarity,” she said. “Those were the gray areas of this whole purity thing that I was not clear on, that I was not certain about. And so, because of that, I found myself continuing to push boundaries and continuing to go further than I knew deep down in my heart that I wanted to go or that I knew I should go.”
Prewett emphasized that healing began when she opened up about her struggles. Previously, she shared that she enlisted “accountability buddies” to help her stay on track prior to marrying her husband, Grant Troutt.
“Confessing to God and confessing to other believers is what set me free from the addiction to sexual sin,” she said. “As soon as I said the thing that I was so scared to say, I immediately felt free,” she said. “Immediately, something shifted. Something happened when I spoke what was in the dark, and I brought it into the light.”
Prewett said healing didn’t happen overnight, but transparency with others and a supportive community helped her create a space for accountability.
“Obviously, that doesn’t mean I went from that moment and never struggled again — absolutely not,” she said. “But as I brought it into the light and I brought other people into it, I then created an atmosphere where my sin was brought into the light, people were aware of it, and they then could hold me accountable.”
A report released last year from Barna, Beyond the Porn Phenomenon, found that 54% of Christians reported viewing pornography compared with 68% of non-Christians. In general, 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women reported consuming porn on some level.
Kay Warren, wife of Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, has also opened up about her past struggles with pornography, which she said stemmed from her experience with childhood sexual abuse.
“I didn’t tell anybody,” Warren said of being sexually abused as a child. “I didn’t have words for it; I didn’t have language. Somehow, I knew it was bad, and I blotted it instantly out of my mind. And as far as I was concerned, it was buried.”
Warren said the trauma led to struggles with anxiety, depression and shame-based thinking, as well as issues with sexual identity and addiction.
“Anxiety and depression and shameful sexual attractions and actions divided me into a good girl on the outside, and in my mind, a bad girl on the inside,” she said.
Warren said it took years of therapy — both individually and with her husband — to begin finding healing. Yet, she emphasized, the effects of abuse have not been fully resolved.
“I wish that I could say today that there are no longer any effects of the abuse,” she said. “Christians like the big bow on top of the package that says, ‘This is the way it used to be, but praise God that’s no longer true.’ And sometimes it happens that way, but sometimes, in this life, it doesn’t.”
“There are parts of my soul and my body that will not be completely healed until I see Jesus face to face,” she said. “Every day is one day closer to the total and complete healing that my soul longs for.”
