‘He saw things that made him lose his innocence’

Lizi Patch, a writer from Leeds, noticed a change in her 11year-old son soon after he got a secondhand smartphone.

‘Soon using after the my phone, son he started became withdrawn and upset. I knew something was wrong, but he was reluctant to open up. Then he told me he’d clicked on a link a kid at his new school had told him to watch. It was hardcore pornography.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Suddenly his world was upside down. I was devastated that he’d so brutally lost his innocence and I hadn’t been there to protect him. I answered his questions as clearly as I could. He wanted to know why someone would film something like that and put it out there. In 2016, I wrote and toured an Arts Council-funded play, Punching The Sky, about what happened. People who saw it told me that talking about this really helps. To truly make a difference, we need open discussions, otherwise we’re painted as hapless parents, which we aren’t. We’re just trying to keep pace with technology.’