Children must no longer be exposed to the “dangerous and ubiquitous form of ‘extra-curricular’ sex education” that is online pornography, a Peer has warned.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Baroness Jenkin of Kennington warned that “we cannot console ourselves” if children are only protected from graphic materials used in schools, while they continue to be exposed to violent online pornography.
She backed Lord Bethell’s proposed amendments to the Online Safety Bill, which would introduce age-verification measures to prevent children from viewing pornography wherever it is found online.
‘Very dangerous’
Lady Jenkin said that pornography is deceiving children into believing strangulation is normal, warning: “And the porn industry may be profiting from it, by making money from young people watching porn and even appearing in porn.”
Also speaking to The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics Podcast, she said that girls are “horrified by what they see” and think they don’t want to be a woman if that’s what it entails, which is pushing some to identify as non-binary or the opposite sex.
The Peer stated: “So it has a very, very dangerous effect. We have no idea what the long term consequences are going to be with regards to relationships” and “we have to sort it out and we in Parliament have a responsibility to do that”.
School
Earlier this month, school teachers warned that they are being increasingly threatened with sexual assault due to more children watching online pornography.
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”.
Rise in sexual assaults in schools linked to online porn