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LOS ANGELES, CA – A new study from UCLA's School of Public Health shows that pornography performers face physical harm, sex abuse, and sexually transmitted infections.

Presented at the Centers for Disease Control’s 2014 STD Prevention Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, the study found that 10.3 percent of performers — 75 percent of whom were women — were “physically hurt during a film shoot.” Nearly 14 percent of performers “performed a sex act [they] did not want to do.”

Additionally, 23.7 percent of the 366 respondents said they had gonorrhea or chlamydia, and one-third of performers had used a drug besides marijuana in the prior three months. Nearly 59 percent of respondents had used marijuana in the three months prior to the study, which was done from August 2012 through June 2013.

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A new study found 10.3 percent of performers were "physically hurt during a film shoot," but a former porn star says it's really much higher.

Shelley Lubben, a former porn actress and the president of Pink Cross Foundation, said the study's results understate the real abuse of performers. “The study shows 10.3% are HURT physically during a porn set — meaning they fell or they stepped on glass or their breast implant ripped open and they have to go to the hospital,” she told LifeSiteNews.

“It does NOT, however, cover those who are physically abused as is the norm in porn,” Lubben explained. “Physical abuse is a woman who is strangled, kicked, hit, slapped, gagged with a penis, and physically restrained while being raped by one or several male performers. The study isn’t talking about that — that number would be much higher, about 90 percent.”

Lubben also said the study's results were questionable because “women in porn often lie or don't realize the truth of what they are involved in.” She says that “the study is asking mentally ill, sexually diseased, drug and alcohol-addicted people to answer honestly.”

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“But at least the study can give the public a peek at what this industry is about,” Lubben said.

Despite the risks inherent in the pornography industry, performers are not as well paid as they were in the past. While the industry brings in billions, many engage in illegal escorting and prostitution in order to make ends meet. Lubben says that “people who support pornography are supporting physically diseased, mentally ill, drug and alcohol addicted people who are being extremely abused in a California workplace.”

In 2013, the industry put itself on moratorium three times because of the contraction of HIV/AIDS by several performers.

A 2010 study in the journal Violence Against Women found that “88.2% [of porn scenes] contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping, while 48.7 percent of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female.”