Aussie mum: ‘Sex ed is fast-tracking 14-year-olds into sexual exploration’

Sex education lessons in an Australian school are encouraging children to become sexually active, a concerned mum has warned.

Mum Belinda told a radio station in Sydney that graphic ‘sex talks’ in lessons at her 14-year-old son’s school had left him “quite disturbed”.

When Belinda raised the issue with other parents in an online chat group, she was inundated with responses voicing similar concerns.

‘Pure filth’

Belinda sent 2GB Sydney reporter Ben Fordham a copy of a letter she had written to her son’s  school “regarding explicit content taught to 14-year-olds”, which she described as “pure filth”.

In an interview with Fordham, the mother-of-four said: “I’m by no means a prude”, but added that “there has to be a point when it has to be appropriate.”

She said that her son and his friends had been asked “inappropriate” questions on “intimate topics”. While she hoped that “most of these children have not had a first sexual experience”, she feared the lessons were “fast-tracking their sexual exploration”.

Belinda also wondered whether whole sessions on the dangers of pornography might pique interest such that, even “if a student wasn’t watching pornography”, they are “likely to be doing so now”.

Cultural harm

In 2023, journalist Jess Hill told Australia’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee that almost half of Australians aged 9 to 16 years of age are “regularly exposed to porn”.

She said: “It is hard to overstate just how damaging that is as a cultural education, particularly for young boys and men.”

The Committee also heard that one in five Australian women over the age of 15 will suffer sexual violence in their lifetime, while males aged 15 to 19 represented the highest rates of offending of any age group.