The Strictly winner was first shown explicit material aged just nine. He became hooked and tells Damian Whitworth how he finally broke free of something that destroyed his life ‘from the inside out’
re Oduba jived into the nation’s hearts in 2016 when 13 million watched him become the surprise winner of Strictly Come Dancing. He said it was the most incredible experience of his life, and Gene Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward Kelly, praised the American smooth that he and his dance partner, Joanne Clifton, performed to Singin’ in the Rain, saying her husband would have been proud of it.
That joyful national moment gave the former Newsround presenter a platform to build a career as an actor, mostly in musical theatre, alongside presenting work. But now he has revealed that behind the twinkly smile he was hiding an addiction to pornography that he can trace back to his first exposure to explicit online content when he was just nine years old.
The addiction, he said, destroyed his life “from the inside out”, leaving him consumed by self-loathing and contributing to thoughts of suicide. Oduba, 39, decided to speak out after seeking help for his addiction following the death of his father and the end of his marriage. His addiction was something he had hidden from all those close to him. “It is the perfect taboo,” he says.
An older boy first showed him sexualised images of a video game when he was nine. “I didn’t choose to be in this position. I was a child. I fell into something. [I had] a curious mind. By the time I was 14 or 15, this was a daily occurrence,” Oduba says by video call, choosing not to switch his camera on as he articulates better without the overstimulation of looking at faces. He also prefers to use the phrase “adult explicit content” rather than the word “pornography”, which he finds is “a trigger”.
Oduba grew up in Dorset, where his parents had moved the family from Nigeria in 1988. His father, a lawyer who continued to work in Nigeria, was a strict disciplinarian and after a sibling was caught smoking, Oduba understood that if any of them transgressed further they would be punished by being sent back to the west African country. Oduba went to Canford School, an independent school in Dorset, and then Loughborough University.
Sometimes, as a child, he would wait until his parents had gone out to watch pornography online all day, or late at night when everyone was asleep. “I became a master of masking what was going on,” he says of his porn habit, which he attributes to childhood trauma. “There was emotional neglect. There was fear. I didn’t feel safe at certain times in my house. [I was] intimidated by my parents.” His older brother suffered a psychotic episode and disappeared. Oduba hasn’t seen him for 20 years.
Porn sites became a haven. “If you have found something that has given you what you want, from a desire point of view, at your fingertips, without rejection, it’s giving you the connection that maybe you’re lacking from your caregivers. Through highs of dopamine it’s suppressing a lot of that negativity. It becomes like a friend. It felt like the first relationship I ever had.”
… The dopamine hits were like taking a drug, and as Oduba built a “tolerance” to the material he was looking at he went deeper into the dark heart of the internet. “The tolerance level just goes higher and higher and higher. You’re seeking more of the stuff, you’re seeking more regularly and then you’re seeking something that’s going to give you a higher hit because you’ve already reached the tolerance level.”
He went behind paywalls, including to sites offering webcam porn. “I spent thousands of pounds over my adult life.” His secret online world affected his relationships. “It became the lens through which I saw the world and I saw relationships.”
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The dopamine hits were like taking a drug, and as Oduba built a “tolerance” to the material he was looking at he went deeper into the dark heart of the internet. “The tolerance level just goes higher and higher and higher. You’re seeking more of the stuff, you’re seeking more regularly and then you’re seeking something that’s going to give you a higher hit because you’ve already reached the tolerance level.”
He went behind paywalls, including to sites offering webcam porn. “I spent thousands of pounds over my adult life.” His secret online world affected his relationships. “It became the lens through which I saw the world and I saw relationships.”
… “Grief will force you to take a look at your life,” he tells me. “My dad’s death. The divorce. My sister’s death. That gave me perspective enough to go: why am I so fearful?
“And it became very obvious to me that I had been using [pornography] as a way to hide all of the pain, run away from all of the suffering that I was going through.”
He began discussing his addiction with his therapist. Today he has been “sober” for 18 months. “And it’s still something that I have to work at daily.” …