An “immediate and urgent” introduction of age verification is needed to stop children accessing extreme content on pornography websites, children’s charities have warned.
In a strongly worded open letter to the largest pornography sites in the UK, a coalition of charities and child safety experts led by Barnardo’s said the harm being done to children was so severe that the issue could not wait to be addressed as part of the online safety bill, which has yet to come into effect.
“The new laws take up to three years to come into force, and in the meantime millions of children could be seeing harmful content millions of times over, with serious consequences for their mental health,” said Barnardo’s chief executive, Lynn Perry.
The coalition, which includes teaching unions, politicians and children’s experts, has also drawn attention to the extreme nature of content on some of the most popular sites, including child abuse, fantasies of men exposing themselves and rape fantasies performed by adults.
The Guardian has previously reported on concerns around pornography that fetishises child abuse, rape, incest and so-called “revenge porn”. Barnardo’s said: “Many commercial pornography websites feature depictions of practices that meet the definition of criminal standards of sexual violence, including rape, incest and so called ‘revenge porn’, which would be illegal to buy in the UK.”
Barnardo’s says its frontline workers are having to help children who have been seriously affected by seeing extreme material. One 15-year-old boy went from spending hours outdoors to watching pornography during lockdown. He was arrested after exposing himself to an older woman, and disclosed that he had been specifically viewing content that portrayed men exposing themselves in public to women who enjoyed this and then engaged with the men sexually.
Barnardo’s professionals who supported the boy felt his actions were directly linked to what he had seen online.
A new YouGov poll shows that almost 70% of UK adults agree that extreme pornography that would be illegal to sell on a DVD should also be illegal online. This compares with just 10% who disagree.
Among parents the figure was higher, with 75% of parents and guardians agreeing that extreme pornography should be illegal online compared with 62% of adults who did not look after children. The British Board of Film Classification has backed the call for similar restrictions to apply to pornography sites.
While politicians have so far mainly focused on children’s access to pornography, charities hope that now the online safety bill has been published there will be a debate in parliament on the nature of the material as well.
Vanessa Morse, head of Cease UK (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation), said the fetishisation of abuse needs to be controlled far more stringently.
“The money the porn industry makes from these pseudo child abuse videos and rape fantasies is staggering, and the vast quantities of pseudo abuse material on porn sites is normalising extreme preferences and making it harder to identify real abuse that might be posted on these sites.
This week’s call from charities acknowledges that steps have been taken to protect children, such as MindGeek – which owns Pornhub – working with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity, to deter users from looking for illegal content.
In December 2020 Mindgeek announced it would be banning unverified video uploads after allegations that it was hosting child abuse videos. The two main credit card companies, Mastercard and Visa, ended their involvement with Pornhub following the allegations.
The policy of introducing age checks on pornography sites was first announced by the Conservatives during the 2015 general election campaign but has repeatedly run into difficulties. The government said that any age-assurance method used by pornography sites would have to protect users’ privacy.
MindGeek was contacted for comment.
• This article was amended on 1 April 2022. The final version of the coalition’s letter did not refer to Mindgeek removing unverified content; this has been removed.
