Easy access to violent pornography online is “corrupting” young people and fuelling sex offences in school, a senior police officer has warned.
Chief Constable Simon Bailey of Norfolk Police, who is also the national police lead for child protection investigations, expressed his disappointment that the Government has not implemented age-verification checks on porn websites.
In March, the Government admitted that its proposed Online Safety Bill will not require commercial porn websites to implement age-verification checks for their users.
Broad conversation
Bailey voiced his concern that violent sexual behaviour was being “played out in everyday life” after being seen by youngsters in porn videos. He made the remarks in an interview with the Naked Truth Project – an anti-porn education charity.
He said: “I approached the Department for Communities and Local Government about the importance of age verification, when it was being considered.
“Unfortunately, in my opinion, that wasn’t taken forward and age verification doesn’t exist and I’ve always thought it completely bizarre that you can’t gamble unless you’re 18, yet you can view pornography as an 11, 12 or 13-year-old.”
Chief Constable Bailey called for a “broader societal conversation that says, do we really want our children’s lives being framed by what they’re viewing online and in particular from a pornographic perspective by watching films on some of the big porn sites”.
‘Warped’
A recent report has revealed the extent to which violent and criminal pornography can be easily accessed by children on the most popular porn sites.
The report, published in the British Journal of Criminology, found 8,000 titles describing physical aggression or forced sex acts on the homepages of the three biggest porn sites – many of which were free to view with no age restrictions.
Co-author and law professor Clare McGlynn QC said the findings were “shocking” and raised “serious questions about the extent of criminal material easily and freely available on mainstream porn websites and the efficacy of current regulatory mechanisms”. She lamented that such extreme acts were being “normalised”.
In response to the study’s findings, Conservative MP Caroline Nokes called for age-verification legislation, saying the report shows porn is giving young people “a very warped view of sex and relationships” and is “normalising” abusive behaviour.
Social media
Safeguards brought into law in the Digital Economy Act 2017, but never implemented, are set to be removed under the new Online Safety Bill.
The original protections required mandatory age-verification checks to be included on all commercial pornography websites, with fines for those which failed to comply.
The Bill will instead target social media, where children can stumble upon pornography. But commercial websites will not be covered automatically, as new checks will only apply to those with user-generated content.
Under the proposals, companies hosting user content, video-sharing or live-streaming will need to prove to Ofcom they can stop children accessing harmful material.
New tech could help safeguard kids from explicit content