A major Swedish study has found that nearly all individuals who have been filmed for commercial pornography reported severe childhood abuse, with 88 per cent experiencing sexual abuse as children, adding weight to concerns that many participants in the adult industry may be continuing patterns of trauma rather than exercising fully free choice.
The research, titled “The experience of individuals filmed for pornography production: a history of continuous polyvictimisation and ongoing mental health challenges”, was published in 2025 in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry by Meghan Donevan, Linda S Jonsson and Carl Göran Svedin. It examined the experiences of 120 adults, the vast majority of them women, who had appeared in pornography. Nearly all participants, 95.8 per cent, had suffered at least one form of childhood abuse, including sexual abuse reported by 88.3 per cent, psychological abuse by 90 per cent and physical abuse by around 79 per cent. Roughly one-third had been placed in foster care or institutionalised during childhood.
