LOS ANGELES—Craig Gross from XXXChurch and Brittni Ruiz, formerly Jenna Presley, appeared on The View Monday to talk about Ruiz’s decision to leave porn and embrace her Christian faith. The interview lasted less than 5 minutes, and covered predictable ground, pretty much allowing the 26-year-old Ruiz enough time to explain how miserable she was before quitting performing and how much happier she is now that she has found Jesus, and Gross to talk about his great staff who go to all the adult shows.
When asked if she was ever happy doing porn, Ruiz, who started working in adult when she was 18, said, “In the beginning I felt beautiful, I felt like I had found my self-worth. After a while I felt destroyed, hopeless. I felt helpless. I tried to commit suicide several times. I was miserable."
When asked if she ever thinks about going back, she answered definitively, “No, absolutely not. I've encountered the love of God and through encountering His love I know my self-worth. I love myself, I respect myself and I found that void. The void that I was looking for, I found that in Jesus, and I could never go back.”
Asked if she made a lot of money, she said, “I did. There was a time that I went to Tokyo and made $13,000 in a period of 12 hours, and that includes arriving at the airport and leaving, and I turned all of it away. I’ve turned it all away.”
For some reason Whoopi Goldberg, sitting on the end of the couch to the right of Ruiz, remained silent the whole time. Joy Behar, who is in her last week on the show, asked one question but also appeared to be either agitatedly disinterested in the subject or disgusted by it.
In fact, the entire segment was supposedly about a good thing—beautiful woman leaves porn, saves soul and life—but was oddly strained and uncomfortable for everyone involved, including Gross, who has done a million interviews. When Sherri Shepherd asked him toward the end of the interview, “Is everyone in your church members of the porn industry?” as if she could not imagine such a thing existing, he was slightly taken aback as the audience started to titter.
“No, we have a lot of people we’ve helped out in the industry,” he replied, laughing too. “But it’s an online community made up of husbands and wives, young and old, who are struggling, and then there are a number of people who have said, ‘we want out of the industry,’ that we’ve helped.”
“Congratulations for turning your life around,” Ruiz was then told as the segment came to an abrupt end.
To her credit, Ruiz spoke earnestly about how damaged she felt during her time in porn, but did not blame the industry for her problems even when prompted to do so. Appearing a tad strident in her convictions, however, she left the strong impression that she should probably not have gotten into the business in the first place.
The episode can be seen here.
