Jesus Loves Porn Stars: The Brittni Ruiz Story

The blood ran.Twenty-one-year old Brittni Ruiz sat on the toilet in the bathroom of her father’s house, high on drugs, hopeless and strung out. She had recently quit the porn industry, yet her life had continued to spiral downward. She’d scanned all the diverging avenues of escape and decided that suicide was the clearest path. And if this wasn’t rock bottom, nothing was.Preparing to die, she turned the lights off, found a pair of sharp-edged scissors, and began to butcher her wrists, slicing back and forth, devastating skin and tendon. A pennant of blood ran to the floor, as the dark, complicit voices of Meth, now licking their chops, encouraged her to take her life.But amid all of the evil noise, the agony and tumult, another voice seemed to somehow radiate through.“Put the scissors down and turn the lights on,” the voice said.“It was a calming voice and had great authority,” Brittni recalls. “God spoke to me.”Family members soon rushed in, and Brittni almost bled to death. It wasn’t her first suicide attempt, but it would be her last.At the time, the family knew her as Brittni, but the world knew her as Jenna Presley, Porn Star, whose videos had been downloaded all over the planet, from highrises in Hong Kong to basements in Houston. And although she was known the world over, fame’s mask betrayed the demons Brittni bore as she hobbled through real life. “Jenna” would make over 300 videos in her adult film career, collect awards, and become an avatar for sexually-charged, obsessed fans, but Brittni felt isolated and suicidal.“Jenna Presley was an alter-ego,” Brittni says. “I had two separate identities. Jenna Presley was my form of strength, but Brittni was lonely and depressed. I put on this façade like I was happy, but I was totally dying inside.”Behind that façade, behind the posters and the DVD covers and movie clips that objectified her, there was a person who was dying to get out. There was a frightened, love-starved young woman looking for peace anywhere she could find it.Brittni was born in Southern California and raised in a strict, godless household where perfectionism was an ever-looming burden. “I was always striving for perfectionism,” Brittni says. “What I did was never good enough. If I got an A, it should have been an A+. If I was a Size 3, I should have been a Size O. I wanted to please my parents, but in many ways it was a standard I put on myself. I would do anything I could so someone would love me.”While the Bible wasn’t discussed, young Brittni would get small peeks inside the Kingdom Life, in the form of a Baptist school bus that once picked her up or her grandparents who were devout believers and occasionally took her to church. But while faith didn’t blossom, those small seeds planted many years ago would eventually bear fruit in Brittni’s life.“I knew God was real, but He always seemed at a distance,” Brittni relates.Desperate for acceptance, Brittni turned to occasional drug use and promiscuity. While teetering on the edge, she somehow maintained her grades and was a good student throughout high school. Things were somewhat “normal” until a night in Mexico that would forever change the course of her life.Brittni says that she and a group of friends traveled from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico, a border town with a wide array of discos, drugs, and general lawlessness. One night after having too much to drink, seventeen-year-old Brittni stumbled out of a bar and noticed a strip club across the street.“They put me on stage that night,” Brittni says.That was her first experience as a stripper, but back in the states, Brittni was soon a regular on the stage, filling her purse with wads of cash and getting the attention she coveted. A couple of producers from the adult film industry took notice, too, showing up at the club and slinging large bills at the performer. When they pulled Brittni aside, they claimed to make “romance” movies and assured she was going to be a star.Although she understood full well the type of “romance” movies that the men were referring to, she nevertheless agreed to meet them the next day. And before she knew it, she was dolled up in costume filming her first solo sex scene.“The reality was that I didn’t love and respect myself. I was numb. Being belittled was something I was used to. But I thought that if I could just make it in life, that I could be successful at something, maybe I’d be worthy of love,” she says.She also surmised that the money she’d be making in the porn industry would give her the security she needed.The costume and transformation didn’t stop with hair and makeup. Brittni chose her stage name and made her world debut at age 18 as Jenna Presley.So the die was cast. Brittni admits that even if friends and family would have tried to stop her, she would not have allowed it. “I had this mindset that I’m 18 and I’m going to do what I want,” she says. “I wanted freedom.”But Brittni learned that freedom came with a price, as she continued making films and rose to one of the top “starlets” in the industry. Over the next several years, her identity as Brittni whittled away as she sculpted and polished Jenna. Fame, though, wasn’t enough to fill the void, so drugs soon came into the picture, starting with cocaine. And when cocaine could no longer get her high, she upgraded to prescription pills, heroin, and Meth.“I became a drug addict and an alcoholic,” Brittni says. “I got to a point where I just didn’t care anymore. I wanted to die.”As a porn star, Brittni attended various events such as the Exxxotica Expo trade show in New Jersey, where adoring fans came in droves to snuggle up next to their favorite stars, get autographs and pictures of the scantily-clad performers. Perhaps this is the last place one would expect to find Christian missionaries, yet it was there that Brittni first noticed the staff of XXX Church handing out Bibles and t-shirts that read “Jesus Loves Porn Stars.” Even though Brittni had limited experience with church, this provocative, unconventional effort to show even Porn Stars that Jesus cares made a profound impact on her and another seed was planted.Desperate, unfulfilled, and weary of her vacuous lifestyle, Brittni continued to search for ways out of the industry, but the prestige and money always lured her back. Haplessly wedged between porn and inner peace, she also worried that if she left, no employer would dare take a chance on a former adult film star.Who is ever going to hire me, she thought.Her life consumed with drugs and sex, Brittni reached an initial breaking point in 2009. “That was the first time I quit the industry,” Brittni says. “I called my grandparents and asked if I could join them at church.”Brittni’s grandmother picked her up in Los Angeles and took her back to their home in San Diego, which became a temporary haven from the prurient empire of porn.Her grandparents attended The Rock Church, a “megachurch” in San Diego with an average weekly attendance of over 12,000 and pastored by former NFL star Miles McPherson. At her very first church service, Brittni lofted a hand at the invitation and accepted Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior.“That’s when I first accepted Jesus. The enemy wasn’t happy,” she says.The Rock pastoral staff gave her a Bible as a token of her salvation, and Brittni began her journey to truth by reading the book of Genesis.But six months later, Brittni was back in porn and accolades began to pour in like never before. She was soon named one of the top 12 female porn stars by Maxim magazine.God wasn’t about to let her slip through His fingers, though. Later, another shaking occurred when Brittni’s boyfriend was stabbed to death by a motorcycle gang and Brittni feared for her life for over a year.The final straw came in 2012, when Brittni left the industry for good. With only $5 to her name, she was about to board a plane to Las Vegas to shoot a movie when she heard a familiar voice saying, “Bring your Bible.”On the quick flight, Brittni digested Revelation 2, where Jesus is speaking to the Church in Thyatira:“Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.” Hearing this, God began to speak to her and Brittni realized that, like Jezebel, she, too, was the adulterous woman. Because rent was due, Brittni decided to shoot the scene in Vegas, but quietly decided it was time to say a final goodbye to the industry.Once back at home, Brittni began to attend church regularly and dove into the Word. For a year, she called a moratorium on dating and committed herself to a life of purity. The woman who was once known for sex was now committing her life and her body to Christ.“It would be a lie to say it wasn’t a struggle,” Brittni admits. “We were born to desire relationship. But I just used the Word to stay encouraged. The devil took enough years of my life, so I just began to speak the Word over my life. I am more than a conqueror. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4:13. I spent a lot of alone time with the Lord and praying.”Now three years removed from the porn industry, Brittni has turned her mess into her ministry and she’s working to build back the life that the enemy stole from her. She’s working with XXX Church to minister to the same people who used to be her co-stars. She’s attending conventions, speaking at Women’s Conferences, and sharing the Gospel with anyone who will listen.“At the conventions, we give out coffee and lip gloss. It’s so loving and not judgmental. It’s light in a dark place,” Brittni says.XXX Church, founded by Pastor Craig Gross, also hands out nontraditional Bibles—the Book of John with a mustachioed man wearing Aviator sunglasses on the cover—and helps to break strongholds of porn addiction through a counseling ministry.Brittni says that the Jesus Loves Porn Stars t-shirts have caught on. “We were in Chicago and some of the girls were coming up to me and were like ‘Do you have the blue one? Or the yellow one?’”For the most part, Brittni and her XXX Church friends have been fairly well-received at the conventions. “It’s truly amazing to be the hands and feet of Christ. Jesus kicked it with the sinners. We don’t picket and rally. We just try to go to the convention and serve,” she says.Much of Brittni’s impact has been made within her own home, as she’s led many of her family members to Christ, including her mother, sister, and brother.“My pain had a purpose,” Brittni says.She also found a job with a limousine service company in San Diego and now works as an office manager in addition to her ministerial efforts.And after her yearlong dating hiatus, Brittni met a youth minister (whom she describes as “an amazing, Godly man”) to whom she is now engaged.A while back, Brittni chucked her old Jenna Presley Fan Page (which had 80,000 followers) and started a new Facebook and Twitter account under her real name, where she is journaling her thoughts and testifying to the greatness of God. In an August 7, 2013 Facebook post, Brittni said:I have never found greater love, acceptance, joy and peace than I have now with Jesus in my life. So do the phantoms of guilt still haunt her, knowing that her videos are still all over the Internet and people are still watching her?“No. The Lord has set me free,” Brittni says. “If I didn’t forgive myself, I would live a shut-down life. Unforgiveness is a nasty, bitter root. Jesus died on the cross to set us free from guilt and condemnation.”She even has a message for those who might be tempted to watch pornographic videos, underscoring that there is no real distinction between sins committed in public and those committed in private. “Even if it’s done in private, you are still doing it in front of God,” she says. “Lust is a false illusion. It’s taking something from someone you shouldn’t have in the first place. Lust takes, but love gives.”Since finding Christ, Brittni has gotten a considerable amount of press, and even made an appearance on The View. While many have praised Brittni’s transformation, there have been critics, too:“I am all for people finding religion to change their life, but let's call it what it is here: swapping one crutch for another.”“Shame. She traded one false perception on reality for another.”Brittni understands that many will question whether or not her conversion was legitimate, or if redemption is even possible when you’ve gone too far down the dark path.Why should Brittni get to enjoy the same benefits of those who have tried to live a decent life? some might ask.But if God can save a woman who threw the joy of her youth away to decadence and pornography, surely He can and is willing to save anyone, even at the eleventh hour of their life, even in the midst of abject sin and despair. Perhaps His willingness to reach down into the pit at any time should be viewed as an act of mercy, not injustice. God loves everyone, not just the ones who deserve it.“People are in sin and darkness because they haven’t seen the light,” Brittni says. “But the Bible says that the truth will set you free. People are walking around on the streets as a drug addict only because they haven’t heard about Jesus.”So this is her testimony. God showed up and Jaws-of-Lifed Brittni Ruiz out of the wreck she’d made. The small seed grew into the Tree of Life. The scars have healed. For the first time in her life, her mind and her purpose is clear, and she discovered the love she was looking for all along.Somehow, God rescued her. And yes, Jesus Loves Porn Stars.“It’s not a crutch,” Brittni says. “I found my way home.” 78Images courtesy of Brittni Ruiz