On again/off again porn performer Sophia Lynn has once more been saved by the church.
Lynn, the former contract girl whose career imploded prior to the 2007 AVN convention and who was depicted in an ABC PrimeTime special having serious doubts about her fleshly job choices, has accepted both a South Dakota secretarial position and Jesus Christ as her savior.
I called Lynn at her new job at Sioux Falls’ Celebrate Community Church, an evangelical parish with a congregation of 2500.
“It’s hard to keep your faith in the adult business,” she said. “When all your friends are saying ‘Let’s go to Les Deux tonight!’ rather than ‘Let’s go to church!'”
After leaving the porn industry for the first time in 2007 – or, just prior to her duties signing for Adam & Eve at the AVN Expo – Lynn returned last summer as a prospective NinnWorx contract performer. She did not get that gig, sources say, because her attendance was “erratic” and there was talk of “drugs.”
“I had developed a real tolerance for Oxycontin,” she said, but also used cocaine and “Narcos.”
When Lynn said “Narcos” I thought she’d said “Norco,” the town where NinnWorx has its office.
“No, I was always clean when I was with NinnWorx,” she said.
I met Lynn last summer and didn’t think she was any more or less druggy than I was, but her ambiguous feelings about the adult industry were apparent. Each time we’d see each other, including at this year’s AVN show, where she was hanging around the Sex Z Pictures booth, she would say, “we should really do an interview” and then not respond to followup questions.
“I know,” she said. “I’m in, I’m out, I’m in, I’m out.”
Missionary and ex-stripper Heather Veitch, founder of adult evangelical unit JC’s Girls, brokered a deal by which Lynn would leave the adult industry and take a job at the evangelical church where she has been a secretary for the past week.
Celebrate Community Church sponsored Lynn’s flight and housing.
“(Celebrate) had been trying to get in touch with me since the PrimeTime special,” Lynn said. “As you know, I am hard to get in touch with. But they started praying for me. Then they called Heather (Veitch) and then I happened to call her. It was the answer to my prayers.”
Lynn told me that she’d decided to leave the porn business again after this year’s AVN show.
“I went back to (family in) New Jersey and got clean,” she said.
Lynn is now living with a church family and plans to get her own apartment in Sioux Falls next month. “This is home now,” she said. She also said she plans to go back to school.
Lynn has a three-year-old child living with her ex-husband.
I visited the church’s website and asked Lynn, who is comfortable using her legal name, Crystal Bartolome, what she thought about Celebrate’s views on Marriage and Family:
“God’s plan for human sexuality is that it is to be expressed only in a monogamous lifelong relationship between one man and one woman within the framework of marriage. This is the only relationship which is divinely designed for the birth and rearing of children and is a covenant union made in the sight of God, taking priority over every other human relationship.”
Lynn said that the adult industry fills holes for people. “Financial holes, self esteem holes,” she said.
But does Celebrate’s views on marriage and family square with Lynn’s own?
“It’s not our place to judge,” she said. “God and Jesus love everyone.”
Lynn said that everyone at the church knew who she was and how she had until recently earned her living. “And they’re very accepting,” she said. “It’s nice to see Christians acting like Christians.”
Lynn had been a Sunday school teacher in Florida prior to embarking on her adult career. I asked her if her previous strain of Christianity was like her current one.
“No,” she said. “A lot of churches are very judgmental and unforgiving.”
I noted Lynn’s many comings and goings from the adult business and asked if her new gig was going to stick.
“South Dakota is home now,” she said. “Though I had to look it up on freaking Google.”
Previously: Oh JCs Girls, Book II; Sophia Lynn makes three; Night of 101 Girls
See also: JCsGirls, Celebrate Community Church
She’ll be back, they always come back.