Woman 'has been porn addict since age of eight'

'I think I definitely lost control of my sexuality watching the really violent porn and things like bestiality'

When the figures are broken down by gender, less than half of men – 46 per cent – thought it was a sacking issue, compared to 65 per cent of women (Getty)

A 19-year-old woman says she has been battling a pornography addiction since the age of eight.

Rebecca, who wanted to be known only by her first name, told Australian TV show Australians on Porn she started watching adult movies after seeing a film in which a young girl had been kidnapped.

She said the film created a "deep feeling" in her which she went looking for again.

On the show, she said: "When I first started watching porn, I would just watch kind of I guess ‘normal’ or ‘vanilla’ porn, just heterosexual, just run of the mill.

"And then as I got older it started becoming more violent, more aggressive and demeaning, I guess. I would watch it kind of multiple times a day and I felt like I couldn’t stop.

"I think I definitely lost control of my sexuality watching the really violent porn and things like bestiality."

She says porn changed what she desired in the bedroom and that began experimenting with BDSM - described as a range of erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, dominance and submission, sadomasochism.

She said her relationships "often involved me being in a submissive role that I’d seen in porn".

“I wanted to try choking and rough sex and violent stuff like that," she said.

"And my partners were always more than willing to do that for me."

Although she has now tried to stop watching porn and is visiting a psychologist, she says quitting altogether has been difficult.

"Quitting has been really hard and I wish retrospectively I'd never seen it and I could have lived my life without it," she added.