BROTHELS TO BROTHERHOOD

Article from The evangelistic newspaper of the modern Jesus Army 2006
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Fabio’s stepdad tried to convince him that taking smutty porn pics to advertise a brothel was “just another job”. But it sucked Fabio into addiction.

Selling sexy undies to Spanish prostitutes was just the beginning of Fabio da Cunha’s stepdad’s business plan. Next he had the idea of setting up a porn website to advertise their brothel with pictures of the working girls.

Fabio, 23 at the time, now 26, was the “photographer” he took along to the brothel with him. That way they’d get twice the cash as Fabio claimed his own separate “expenses”.

Sex sells. The money rolled in – but Fabio found himself becoming obsessed.

“I was addicted to porn,” he says. “I couldn’t get off it.” Desperation set in as he realised he was losing control.

“I got totally depressed, crying a lot,” recalls Fabio. “I felt stuck in the website. Eventually I said I wasn’t going to take any more photos. But I still designed the website, sometimes working on it all night. I felt trapped even though I knew it was not my stuff.”

Fabio’s childhood was a far cry from the seedy Spanish sex underworld he’d got tangled in. He grew up in Brazil living with his mum and grandparents. His grandmother was a godly Roman Catholic. (“I remember her collecting clothes for the poor at the age of 76”).

Fabio found her religion “boring”. But when an aunt took him to another church to hear a famous preacher, Fabio had a powerful experience of God, falling to the floor when the preacher prayed for him.

After that he travelled for an hour and a half to get to church each week. But Fabio found that, after he moved to Spain a few years later, some so-called Christians he knew looked down on him because he was poor. He began to get disillusioned and his faith unravelled. Then his stepdad suggested the website job and Fabio’s slide into chaos began.

Desperate for a new start, Fabio moved to the UK in 2004. The night before he left Spain he prayed to God, “I just want got a job in a chicken factory and moved into a company house with nine other men and lots of drugs and alcohol. Not exactly the new start he’d been hoping for.

“I was in a mess” Fabio admits. But then something happened that would change everything. “One of the guys in the house went to London and came back with a load of papers and dumped them in the lounge. One of them was a Jesus Army Streetpaper. On the cover it said ‘TEXT US’ – so I did.”

A few days and several texts later, Fabio met up with his new Christian friends.

“They accepted me as a brother,” says Fabio, “even though I was just a poor bloke working in a chicken factory! Over the next few months I found brotherhood really freeing. My faith came alive again.

“One time, in a Jesus Army meeting, I suddenly started to cry,” remembers Fabio. “Some brothers prayed for me and I felt freed from all the darkness from the porn and other things.

“Jesus has renewed me,” says Fabio, “and brotherhood has freed me. I just want to say to everyone who struggles with porn, like I did, that there is a way out. You’re trying to fill the gaps inside you – but only God’s love and Jesus brotherhood can truly fill that gap.”