A Scottish newsagent has been fined just £53 for selling pornographic magazines on the bottom shelf, but critics are concerned the small fine will not restrain other shops from doing the same.
Saeed Ahmed, who runs News World in Kirkcaldy, had the magazines taken away by police as evidence and was charged under a little-used piece of legislation.
But the Front Page Campaign, a group which works to combat the sexualisation of children, criticised Mr Ahmed’s £53 fine saying it was no deterrent at all.
Embarrassed
News World is regularly used by pupils buying crisps and drinks and they raised the alarm over the pornographic magazines.
Amy King, who founded the Front Page Campaign, said: “It was common knowledge among the kids. The boys I spoke to wanted to buy car magazines.
“They were embarrassed by the magazines on display, but it was certainly being aimed at them.”
Desensitise
“The pictures are very unsuitable for children.”
She raised concerns that the media was playing a “big part” in the sexualisation of children.
“People are going in and out of shops all the time with these things on display and it desensitises us to what’s inside”, she said.
Indecent
It is reportedly the first time in at least ten years that someone has been prosecuted under the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981.
Mr Ahmed claimed he was “rearranging the shop when it happened”.
“Usually, those magazines are on the top shelf, but at that time they were on the bottom.
Disappointing
“However, they were in the corner of the shop, away from the schoolchildren, with no other magazines beside them”, he said.
Amy King hoped the fine would send a message to other shopkeepers, but said she it was a “big disappointment” that the fine was so small.
“I am sure he makes a lot of money out of these magazines and £53 will be neither here nor there,” she said.
Explicit
In 2008 Claire Curtis-Thomas, who was then a Labour MP, called for lads’ mags to be given age-appropriate 16 and 18 certificates.
She warned that children are able to access “material of a sexually explicit and violent nature”.
And in March this year Tory MP Nadine Dorries called for a ban on the most erotic lingerie adverts to help protect children from getting the wrong idea about sex.
Shocking
She said the adverts are becoming “more hardcore and shocking”.
Highlighting the adverts on buses, Mrs Dorries commented: “Since when did it become acceptable to have larger-than-life posters of scantily clad women moving up and down every street?”
Earlier this year teenage girls hit out at modern liberal mums who do little to protect them from ‘pornified’ boys.
No help
“I wish my parents would say I’m not allowed to be home alone with a boy”, said one 16-year-old girl. “I wish they’d say boys aren’t allowed in my bedroom.
“They make this big deal about ‘trusting us’, but that’s not helping me”, she said. “They have no idea what goes on, and I’m too embarrassed to tell them.”
Research revealed that many teenage girls are being pressurised by their boyfriends to engage in sexual acts taken from pornographic films.
Journalist Penny Marshall, writing for the Daily Mail, disclosed harrowing stories of young girls who say demands from teenage boyfriends are often both “disturbing and upsetting”.
Schoolgirls discuss pressure of sex