True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

(Shelley Lubben. Picture Credit: last.fm)

This is a really strange story to share and one that I wondered how I would fit into my blog but it really interested me and so I decided to post it here especially as it has elements of true crime to it.

A few years ago I stumbled across this video on YouTube and it was a memorial video to porn stars who had lost their lives. The video was created by a woman called Shelley Lubben. I had a look at some of her other videos and it turned out that Shelley was a former porn actress who was now working as an activist trying to help other people who felt trapped in the porn industry. According to Shelley, drugs and abuse were rife in the porn industry with women and men being left traumatised, psychologically and physically damaged by their porn careers with nobody to turn to. She and her husband founded the Pink Cross Foundation which was a charity designed to help people leave the adult industry and support them with various issues and left over trauma that they may have had.

Shelley was a motivational speaker and both she and her husband were devout Christians. She was born on the 18th of May 1968 in Pasadena, California. Her family were reported to have been strict Christians but Shelley would often describe her childhood as a difficult one and later revealed that she had been sexually abused by her brother and sister (they claimed this to be a lie) when she was nine years old. Her parents were said to have done their best with her to help her but she was too far off the rails and they said that she would often make up stories in order to gain attention.

Shelley continued to spiral out of control and ended up working as a prostitute from the ages of 18 to 26. She says that during this time she learned how to look after herself in financial ways, as in, she learned how to con money out of men. She also ended up pregnant by one of her customers.

Despite her hectic lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and risky sex with strangers, she decided to keep the baby and try to be a proper mother to the child.

At one point she was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer due to the number of sexually transmitted diseases she had had.

Whilst she was still working as a prostitute she had a stint as a porn actress from 1993 to 1994, starring as ''Roxy'' in 15 hardcore porn movies. She later claimed that she had been forced to do these scenes and felt raped. Her co-stars later said that they were shocked to hear this and claimed that Shelley was more than eager to participate and in many cases she was quite aggressive and forceful in what she wanted to do in the scenes.

(Shelley Lubben. Picture Credit: businessinsider.com)

It is unclear what happened next but in 1994, Shelley was out of the porn industry. Some say it was because she wasn't that good an actress and at the age that she was, she was considered to be ''mature''. Shelley claims that she left the porn industry of her own accord due to contracting more sexual diseases. During her time out of the spotlight, she continued to battle with her drink and drug addiction but claimed to have finally found Jesus and had gotten married. She also studied at University and gained a Bachelor's Degree in Theological Studies as well as founding the Pink Cross Foundation.

Shelley would often appear in documentaries discussing the porn industry as well as speaking on various public platforms about her life and what she described as the dangers of the porn industry. When I watched some of her clips, she seemed quite a confident speaker and some of the things that she was saying, one could not help but feel empathetic, especially as she would often have other former porn stars echoing what she had said.

The Pink Cross Foundation looked and sounded like a blessing and some of the clips of what the charity actually did are still online. To me it looked like a really caring organisation. When it comes to my views on the porn industry, I don't think that everyone is in an abusive situation, I do believe that it does happen on some sets but I also believe that some people are treated right and that are quite comfortable with what they are doing. I also understand that some people may look back and regret some of the things that they did on film. Some of the things I have seen on twitter for example, I have seen clips from porn movies of women licking men's urine off the floor amongst other things. That sort of thing screams to me of desperation and degradation but the women in question flaunt it and act like it's something to be proud of and I feel sorry for them. I don't know how much they are being paid to lick urine off the floor but it can't be that much as they are always trying to get fans to pay subscriptions for their OnlyFans pages as well as constantly asking fans for CashApp donations and having to do escorting on the side.

I don't have an issue with porn or porn stars, if you're happy and confident within yourself and you are being treated right by the company or people you are working for then fair play to you. Shelley may have been someone who deeply regretted the things she had done in the past and used the porn industry as a scapegoat which many feel that she did. Other people did follow what she said and there have been people who have claimed that she changed their lives for the better and even saved a few marriages. Shelley has over 56,000 subscribers on YouTube so she did have some fans out there.

But everything wasn't as nice as it seemed with The Pink Cross Foundation. Rumours started going around that Shelley was using the funds for the charity to live a luxury lifestyle. She was often seen slurring her words and stumbling about. She claimed that she was sober but was often seen having glasses of wine at dinner meetings and someone claimed that they saw her taking prescription pills in her car.

(Shelley, her husband and their daughters, posing for The Pink Cross Foundation photos. Picture Credit: pinkcrossfoundation)

The cracks started to get bigger with more and more people starting to speak out about Shelley, saying that she was not to be trusted, even accusing her of being a liar and a fraud. The book she had written The Truth Behind The Fantasy of Porn was reported to have been filled with exaggerations.

Things got even more bizarre when Shelley had been found cheating on her husband with a younger man as well as the plastic surgery treatments & luxuries that were said to have come from the charity funds. It got to the point where Shelley couldn't hide what had been going on and officially closed The Pink Cross Foundation in 2016.

Her own brother who she had accused of molesting her as a child spoke out against her saying that she had been lying about her childhood. He contacted her on Facebook saying that he would continue to speak out against her if she continued to lie about their parents and their past.

Shelley seemed to go from bad to worse and everything was falling down around her. By this time she had three children who were not talking to her, her marriage to her husband had gone and her reputation was blackened and her charity was defunct.

Surely things couldn't get even worse? or could they?....

Continued in part two....

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