the Daily News' full Valley Exposed coverage, including multimedia. Tell us what you think of this special series at our Valley Exposed forum. CHATSWORTH - In need of grace, Keri Humble walked into The Church at Rocky Peak one Sunday and received the recognition that shamed her.
"I love your show on the Playboy Channel," a door greeter told her, referring to "Spice Hotel." There are many lifestyles born-again Christians can leave behind and begin with a clean slate. Porn star is not one of them.
"Once you do it, you are putting a permanent black fingerprint on your life that is going to follow you the rest of your life," Humble said. "You can't take it back: It's on film." Every church pastor in America deals with porn's effect on their flock.
But in the San Fernando Valley - the heart of the adult-film industry - ministers and churchgoers also must mend the fractured souls of people like Humble. One of seven children born to a former nun and a sailor, Humble grew up in a comfortable Rhode Island home with strong Christian values. But after high school, she began sowing her wild oats.
She moved to Florida, married her best friend and nearly went broke. When it seemed she and her husband might lose their condo, they decided Humble should put her body to work. She got a job stripping three to four nights a week at a club two hours away.
But the money wasn't enough. So Humble, then 25, got into performing in adult videos, and what started as a temporary gig to earn more money soon became a career. "After I did it once, it was almost just like, `Now I've screwed up.
I might as well just do a couple more,"' she recalled. "And then after that, it just kept going and progressing and progressing. That's how it works with sin.
You feel like you have already made the mistake. You can't take it back so you just might as well keep on sinning." One movie credit would become 274 over the next six years, according to the Internet Adult Film Database, though Humble said the number is more like 500.
There was nothing subtle or tasteful - or even printable - about the titles. As Aria, Humble was an adventurous performer. She and her husband eventually moved to the Valley so she could make more.
Humble would perform in up to 10 scenes a week, at $1,000 to $1,800 a shoot. But the more she made, the more they spent. A leased car became a $25,000 Chevy Tahoe; a $2,000-a-month Woodland Hills apartment was exchanged for a $3,000-a-month place.
Humble said she once made $36,000 in three weeks. But at the end of the month, they couldn't afford to pay their rent. The pattern wore on their marriage and, in June 2004, the couple separated.
She remained in the business, but started to think it was the root of her problems. "As long as I was in the industry, nothing was working for me. And I finally just realized: Enough is enough.
" So she sought out God. It took months of making herself feel guilty by attending church before she could quit the business in March 2005. The following Sunday, Neil Johnson noticed her in the front row of a service at Rocky Peak.
He was the men's ministry director, and he could tell she was in pain. After the service, his wife, Lynn Johnson, approached her. "Hi, I'm Keri, and I just retired from the porn industry.
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