The Government’s Online Safety Bill must “end the sexualisation of childhood” by tackling online pornography, Baroness Floella Benjamin has said.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the former children’s TV star and Vice President of Barnardo’s highlighted that “teen” is one of the most frequently searched terms on porn websites. In content analysed as coercive or exploitative, the most commonly used words included “schoolgirl” and “teen”. While the Online Safety Bill prohibits child sex abuse material, it does not apply to adults acting as children.
Lady Benjamin warned that unless it forbids such content with child-like actors and family members online, then “abuse and violence towards children” will continue to be normalised. She emphasised that material including such depictions is currently prohibited from sale in the offline world, as it would not receive age classification from the British Board of Film Classification.
Abuse
The Peer also warned that children themselves have “unfettered access” to online pornography, and shared how she has heard “first hand” from people working in childhood trauma projects about “the rise in child-on-child sexual abuse, often with early access to online pornography being a factor”.
A new report from the Children’s Commissioner’s Office (CCO) found that half of 379 interview transcripts relating to child-on-child sexual abuse cases from 2012 to 2022 contained at least one verbal reference to violent acts common in pornography.
no child should be able to access or watch pornography
One child said their perpetrator spoke about the “things he’d seen on porn”, while two separate kids claimed they had been treated “like a porn star”.
‘Critical’
England’s Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza stated: “As the Online Safety Bill moves through Parliament, I want to use this opportunity to turn the tide on pornography’s harms to children.”
“This report is focused on the harms that children face from accessing violent pornography, and how that might influence their own harmful sexual behaviour. That is why regulation online is so critical to protect children and young people. I am categorically clear: no child should be able to access or watch pornography.”
De Souza said the Online Safety Bill must ensure that “robust” age-verification measures are introduced to prevent children from viewing pornography wherever it is found online.
Schools
Last month, school teachers warned that they are being increasingly threatened with sexual assault due to more children watching online pornography.
Ciarán Kelly speaks to @corkslifefm about the prevalence of #porn in the modern world and the appalling impact it has. #ChristianInfluence #Online Safety Bill https://t.co/e0Nz77ggtV
— The Christian Institute (@christianorguk) May 4, 2023
A survey by the NASUWT teaching union revealed that more than one in eight of the 8,466 members surveyed (13 per cent) had been physically assaulted by a pupil in the last year.
Wendy Exton, a teacher of 28 years, told the recent NASUWT conference that in addition to violence, rape threats from pupils are also “becoming increasingly common, due to the abuse of online porn, Covid lockdown and their inability to understand acceptable and appropriate behaviour”.
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