SIMON HARRIS: WE MUST ACT ON CHILDREN VIEWING PORN
Health Minister warns about kids’ access to ‘violent, domineering’ material on the web
SIMON Harris has issued a stark warning that society must tackle the crisis of children viewing hardcore pornography on smartphones. The Health Minister, himself a new father, said we must stop ‘burying our heads in the sand’. Mr Harris was shocked to learn that children as young as ten are now accessing pornography online, which he said gives them a ‘false reality’.
‘They’re learning of an environment where sex is often violent, where it’s often domineering and where women are generally the subservient partners,’ he said.
Mr Harris, pictured right, whose daughter was born seven months
ago, added: ‘Being a parent in the modern world is frightening.
‘What your child is accessing on the device in their pocket, or their iPhone or their television, or indeed their friend’s phone, is something that I know worries everybody as a parent.’
And he said that politicians can no longer dodge their responsibility for tackling the crisis.
‘The days of burying our heads in the sand and doing nothing are over – and as policymakers we have significant responsibilities,’ he said. ‘We must make ourselves uncomfortable by challenging ourselves on these issues, we must do better and, as a result of doing better, the country we live in would be better.’
Mr Harris is the most senior member of the Government to speak publicly about the growing problem of children’s access to pornography – and the mounting evidence of a connection to sexual crimes by young people. Earlier this month, Justice Michael White said that he had now handled four cases ‘where young children have committed the most serious offences… where the start was exposure to pornography on smartphones’.
And a growing body of academic evidence is showing that exposure to such material significantly increases the chances of boys becoming sexually aggressive towards women or girls.
However, despite these concerns, the Government has thus far strongly resisted measures to help combat it – such as mandatory age verification for websites showing adult material.
Last month, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government would monitor developments in the UK, where such a porn-blocking law for children is due to be introduced: however, his comments suggest that a review of the UK situation would not take place for 18 months at the earliest.
Mr Harris’ intervention, though, is likely to fuel pressure on the Government to act sooner.
He made his comments at the launch of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre’s annual report for last year, which warned of a huge increase in reports of sexual crimes. During the launch, the DRCC made reference to a study by NUI Galway, from last year, which anonymously surveyed just over 2,000 students online on their engagement with pornography.
It found that 53.3% of boys and 22.8% of girls had viewed pornography for the first time between the ages of just ten and 13.
Mr Harris said he was ‘surprised’ by this figure and he didn’t realise so many were accessing pornography at such young ages.
‘Technology can be a wonderful thing, but with advancements in technology does come great risk,’ Mr Harris added.
Noeline Blackwell, chief executive of the DRCC, said she did not see the study’s results as extraordinary.
‘When you think about it, it is not extraordinary at all. When you think of how many ways in which young people from ten upwards are accessing anything, when you think how easy it is to stumble on porn, even if you are looking for something else, then clearly it is something that children will come across,’ said Ms Blackwell.
‘One of the things children can’t cope well with is pornography because they have not got the filters that adults do to watch it. For them, very often, it is seen as real and if it is real that is their benchmark for sexual relationships and sexual activity.’
Ms Blackwell said youth workers and teachers have been coming to them in the past year to say that children they work with are reflecting what they are learning about sexual activity and relationships from pornography. The DRCC is now conducting research and providing education programmes on how to deal with children who are accessing porn online,’ she said.
The number of contacts to the DRCC helpline last year was 13,367. Of those, 7,423 were first time contacts, while 4,330 were repeat, and 44.8% of those calls were about cases of adult rape, 33% were about child rape, with 9.5% being related to sexual harassment.
Most, 77.3%, were female and 21.6% were male, while, 51% said that they were raped or sexually assaulted by someone they knew and 19.7% said it was done by their boyfriend or partner; 23.1% said it was a stranger.
Of the 356 new clients seen by the DRCC, last year, where the reporting status was known, only 104 were reported to the gardaí, which is 29.2%.
‘When you have a situation that over 70% of people using [the DRCC] service are experiencing sexual violence from their partner or someone known to them what is going on in Irish society?’ said Minister Harris.
‘What sort of children are we raising in our country? What sort of children are we bringing our country into? And can we please have a real and proper national dialogue about that?
‘We need a whole of Government and a whole of society approach to issue of sexual violence.’
He also criticised the callous attitude towards rape victims by political leaders, taking an implied swipe at US President Donald Trump. ‘It is not easy when we live in a world where some of our political leaders make fun of sexual violence, or some political leaders take to Twitter to mock rape victims,’ he said.
‘Far too many political leaders are not calling it out, are kind of tolerating it or are “sure that is only your man, isn’t that what he does on Twitter”. No we can’t actually tolerate that. We need to call out people.’
Mr Trump has had allegations of rape and sexual assault made against him over the years and the most recent came when American journalist E Jean Carroll alleged he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Trump denied the allegations, claiming she was making up the story to sell a book. He later claimed she was ‘not my type’.
Minister Harris said words like ‘crisis’ and ‘national emergency’ are often bandied about but rape and sexual assault are ‘objectively’ a national emergency and a public health crisis.
‘It goes without saying that we all want to live in a country where rape and sexual violence is rare or is non-existent or doesn’t occur but the reality is unfortunately something quite different.’ said Minster Harris. ‘The rate of sexual violence is far too high and unfortunately it is continuing to grow.’
An implied swipe at Donald Trump