Groups working on the frontline in the fight against child abuse in the UK have warned that an increase in abuse-themed pornography is “normalising” child abuse.
Children’s charity Barnado’s said it is working with vulnerable children who are being put at risk by “deviant” pornography that fetishises fantasies of sex with children.
On Monday, Pornhub, the world’s largest open access porn website, announced it would immediately remove millions of unverified uploaded videos, after an investigation by the New York Times allegedly found content on the site featuring underage subjects and sex trafficking victims. The purge brought the total number of videos on the site from 13 million to 4 million.
But even after this “clean up”, charities have said they are concerned that many videos on the site are still promoting fictionalised child abuse acted by adults.
In one series branded “made exclusively for Pornhub”, films show fantasies of parents having sex with their newly fostered teenagers.
Amanda Naylor is the lead on child sexual abuse at Barnardo’s. She told the Guardian that pseudo abuse fantasies including fetishising sex with young teenagers or between parents and children was emboldening predators.
“We know that for those who have a sexual interest in children the normalisation and encouragement of [child abuse] can escalate behaviour. ‘Fostered children’ are inherently vulnerable and they are being fetishised here. We already know that some adult offenders find vulnerability sexually motivating.”
The films are part of a broader and increasingly popular genre of incest pornography across free-to-watch mainstream sites. One video still on Pornhub shows a man with his hand over his “scared” stepdaughter’s mouth as he abuses her. It has had more than 50m views. Videos of adults posing as young teenagers being abused by older men are very common on all mainstream sites.
“These sites are not set up to be moderate. The people watching it are being enticed into seeking out ever more extreme material and seeing it on a mainstream site such as Pornhub normalises behaviour that 10 years ago would have been considered deviant and extreme,” said Naylor.
“There is also a risk that this normalises extreme sexual activity for children, desensitising them and making them more vulnerable to abuse by predators in the real world and online. We know that harmful sexual behaviour happens across siblings and extended families.”
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Naylor and her frontline colleagues are seeing the impact of increasingly extreme and violent pornography on children themselves.
“We work with boys who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour and who have found themselves in the criminal justice system for reenacting behaviours they have seen in porn: hitting, slapping, kicking, punching. The majority of children referred to us have regularly been exposed to pornography.”
And the impact of aggressive and violent imagery has a wider impact beyond those children who display criminal behaviour patterns.
“This content encourages the idea that children should and can be sexualised. We do sessions with children, and girls tell us about the pressure that their first experience of sex will be having anal sex. Boys will tell us: ‘Girls might say no, but they aren’t really saying no, by the end they will love it.’ We ask where they get this idea and they say it’s porn. It is a picture of confusion – they don’t know what ordinary sexual behaviour is.”
Child sex abuse expert Michael Sheath told the Guardian that he believed a wider cohort of men were being drawn to watching illegal material because of “deviant” incest and abuse fantasies on free-to-watch sites.
Sheath, who counsels child abusers and men found watching illegal child abuse material said he was seeing a shift in the profile of offenders, which he believes is linked to pornography.
“Mainstream pornography sites are changing the thresholds of what is normal and it’s dangerous. Of course most people can watch extreme porn and walk away, but I don’t see those people.
“If you look at the videos on mainstream porn sites you can see ‘teen’ themes, ‘mom and son’ themes, lots of incestuous porn. It’s pretty deviant stuff. To watch this you have already lowered your threshold of what is acceptable. Porn is an entry drug for a lot of them.”
Pornographers and the adult industry more widely strongly defend the content as legitimate fantasy acted out by adults, protected by freedom of speech.
UK plans for the age verification of porn users were dropped last year, but the porn industry will face new regulations with the introduction of the new online harms bill, announced this week.
On Tuesday, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport published details of the long-awaited bill.
The government said it will make online hosts such as Facebook, TikTok or porn companies responsible for any harm that might come to adults or children from viewing material on their sites.
Vanessa Morse, CEO of Cease UK (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation), said there is already concern that the government isn’t going far enough to regulate pornography.
“It appears that pornography will be put into category 2, which is not the most severe. We find it astonishing they wouldn’t put it in the most severe category.
“The amount of money that 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.”
The children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, said she was pleased by the online harms bill proposals. “The signs are that this regulation will have teeth, including strong sanctions for companies found to be in breach of their duties. However, much will rest on the detail behind these announcements.”
The Guardian contacted Pornhub multiple times for comment but the company did not respond.
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