Father Richard Severson of Gansevoort, N.Y., recently retired from 17 years of service as a chaplain in New York State prisons. His last assignment was at the Mt. McGregor state prison in Wilton, N.Y. He now runs Mary's Mission in Gansevoort, a not-for profit that sponsors family and youth events.

Before being ordained -- at age 45 -- for the Diocese of Albany, Father Severson was Mayor of Hoosick Falls, N.Y. (1969-1975), and manager of a finance company in Albany. He served in a parish in Hudson Falls, N.Y., before being assigned by his Bishop to the prison ministry.

He recently spoke with Morality in Media about the problem of pornography in prisons-and how it brings people to prison. An edited transcript of the interview follows.

MIM: How long before that you realized that pornography addiction was an important factor in leading men to crime and prison?

FR. SEVERSON: When I was there, Mount McGregor was a total drug and alcohol rehabilitation center-it's now a general population prison. I used to do alcohol and substance abuse therapy. I would spend two hours on the "higher power" concept of the 12-step program, two hours on anger and two hours on family trust.

The more I got involved in this rehabilitation process, I became more convinced that drug, alcohol, and sex addictions is nothing more than the work of the devil. It becomes a method of destroying family life. Who would like to destroy that more than anyone else? The devil. Consequently, my thinking on the effects of pornography on incarcerated people began to jell. Why? Look at the newspapers today. All this stuff didn't happen overnight. Examples: a 59-year-old man rapes a three-year-old girl. A 20-year-old man sodomizes a 19-month-old baby. A 27-year-old man marries a 27-year-old widow with a 9-year-old daughter, and on the wedding day he rapes the daughter.

Now did this stuff happen overnight? There has to be a beginning somewhere. And I think the beginning goes back to the availability of pornography in the hands of people who are vulnerable to it. There's an old saying that if the mind grows up in the gutter, it's going to stay in the gutter, until it decides to come out. And with sex addiction-if someone is into the temptation, is into the habit, it's an awful battle trying to get out of it.

MIM: Can you cite specific examples, case histories, of persons you knew who had this problem with pornography addiction?

FR. SEVERSON: The pornography addiction is more subtle in the prison system. Why? They're not supposed to let the real hard-core stuff in. But I have walked the dorms, and I have seen some of the stuff hanging up.

I sent an e-mail to some former inmates, asking them about the availability of pornography in the prison systems, as they knew it. I only heard from one, and he said that [pornographic] magazines are traded in the prison system, and they're more valuable than money or cigarettes. They can either be brought in by an employee, or it's provided by the system. I haven't nailed it down [the latter,] but I'm continuing to look into that.

MIM: Why is pornography more valuable than, say, alcohol or cigarettes?

FR. SEVERSON: If you get something that has a value, you can trade it, and [with pornography] you can get back more than you could for cigarettes or for money.

I remember one specific case where there was a young man, about 19 years old, and he had been given cigarettes by another inmate, much older. It got to the point where it was payback time. So the payback time was some sexual pleasures. We had to get him out of that prison. But that's the way it works. If you have something that you give to somebody else, then you're expected to get something in return.

MIM: It's a cutthroat barter economy.

FR. SEVERSON: And how.

MIM: You've dealt with drug addiction, with alcohol addiction, with pornography addiction. How does pornography addiction differ from drug and alcohol addiction?

FR. SEVERSON: If you're tempted to alcohol, you take a drink, and that's it. And if you're tempted to a drug, somebody comes up and says, "Want a hit?" and that's it.

The aim of pornography is to swell up within the individual a desire for sexual release. And he's either going to do that by himself or herself, or he's going to seek a victim to wreak that sexual pleasure on. And that [other] person doesn't become a person, he [or she] becomes an object.

I did three services yesterday, in the Albany County jail, and the week before I did three services in the Rensselaer County jail, and I talked about drug and alcohol and sex addictions, and I laid [the blame] at the feet of the devil. And I said, "I want you to think back to whatever got you [inmates] sitting in that chair. If when you were tempted, you had said, 'Get thee behind me, Satan, get out of my life'-because that's what the Lord said to the devil when he tried to enter Peter-if you had said that and meant that and had moved away from the temptation; in the case of sex addiction, moved away from the pornography-if you had moved, would you be sitting in that chair right now? They all agreed, absolutely not.

All of these addictions can be traced to the devil. He's doing an excellent job using these three to tear families apart. Nothing has torn more families apart-even wars-than alcohol, drug, and sex addiction.

MIM: But is the sex addict somehow different-affected differently-from the drug or alcohol addict?

FR. SEVERSON: Psychologically speaking yes, but there'll never be recovery from any of the addictions unless the individual comes out of the denial, and unless that person really wants to come out of the gutter. They have to want to get rid of the addiction, before anything positive can happen.

The drug or alcohol comes from the outside, but the temptation to sex comes from within. I would say the sex addiction has more power, because he's got all the equipment right there.

MIM: Are you familiar with Dr. Judith Reisman's "Psychopharmacology of Pictorial Pornography"? Her thesis, if I may scale it down, is that pornography gets scaled into your mind by brain chemistry, and you never forget the pornographic images that you've seen, and those images are much more likely to be remembered than more benign images. Does that seem to jibe with your own experience?

FR. SEVERSON: I would say that thesis is absolutely correct, because [as I said before], "The mind that grows up in the gutter will stay there," and the mind is affected by what it sees, and what it hears, and the body touches. That's why I believe sex addiction needs more psychological help to overcome it than a drug or alcohol addiction, because it's [a temptation] the person is wearing with him.

MIM: You also feel that those who sell pornography have a moral responsibility. Could you explain that further?

FR. SEVERSON: If I leave cigarettes on a table in a school cafeteria, where young people can pick them up and use them, I think they'd charge me with endangering the welfare of a minor. If I left a gun sitting in the middle of a shopping mall, and somebody picks it up and shoots somebody, who's responsible? I'm the one that left the gun there.

I'm dealing with a truck stop not too far away from me, and I've talked to one of the owners. [I told him that some of these magazines you sell] are so X-rated, that they wrap them in cellophane. But after that person buys them, and reads it, and lays it down somewhere, and some young person picks it up, and goes and rapes somebody's daughter, who's to blame for that? I say it's the guy who sells the magazine. Morally, he's responsible for that, and spiritually, there's going to be a price to pay for that unless he realizes what he's doing and seeks forgiveness.

MIM: What else would you want to say to the MIM audience about what they can do to work against pornography?

FR. SEVERSON: I think if we just drop a note to the CEOs of corporations [like Wal-Mart, Eckerd Drugs, Target Stores, for example] and say that if they're in a family business, then they ought to treat the family with respect, not the disrespect that they're showing, with some of the things that they're displaying in some of their stores.

And we're not as united as we should be. If the churches were full, the mosques were full, the synagogues were full, if we trusted each other, if we respected each other, if we forgave each other, then it would be a different world. Even in our own faith, if we got together and said, "No more of this stuff that's wrecking our children and our families." And if we stop buying at these places that sell these things, I think we'll see things changing very fast. That truck stop that I mentioned earlier-I haven't been there in 18 months. And I told him. And we all need to do that.