Online porn is destroying our children

MAYBE when MPs finish crucifying the Safe Schools program and other initiatives to actually help kids, they can crack down on the real threat: online porn.

RendezView. Children watching TV, screen, porn.

It was recently revealed that a six-year-old boy forced oral sex on a preschool friend while they were “playing” together in the cubby house.

A broken child no doubt, this is a little man who should be reciting the Wiggles’ Hot Potato off by heart.

Instead this boy copied something he watched, a sex scene he viewed with his older brother, apparently, in a scenario which beggars belief.

Elsewhere, a group of Year 1 boys were allegedly found “performing sex acts” in the school toilets at Sydney’s posh Trinity Grammar School.

And another boy, four, now needs a minder to stop him sexually assaulting other kids in a regional kindy in South Australia.

Sickened and stunned by these examples? You should be, even in the sex-soaked climate in which we live and try to raise our children without screwing them up for life.

Unless they are victims of physical abuse or exposed to graphic sex in the home there can only be one potent influencer triggering this type of behaviour.

And that is the corrosive impact of online porn and the absurdly easy access to it — a cancerous time bomb for our children.

But where’s the outrage and shock from our “family values” MPs about these real life horror stories?

This week they’re too busy playing political ping-pong with the Safe Schools program, arguing that it will brainwash our kids gay or get everyone gender-bending.

The six-year-old’s shock story was revealed by safety expert and emeritus professor Freda Briggs as part of a Senate inquiry into the foul, permeating impact of hard-core web material.

She found in one study for the Australian Research Council that some fathers — and I use the term loosely here — like to watch online porn with their young sons. The rationale is that it’s “fun” and “what guys do”.

And by all accounts, these are not isolated cases.

It’s porn — free, 24/7 and streaming into your home and their bedroom — which is the biggest threat to our children’s sexuality, sanity and souls.

The threat is not school lessons designed to inform school children about homosexual and transgender issues.

Professor Briggs says in her submission: “There is absolutely no doubt that children are suffering as a consequence of the availability of internet pornography.

“There is also no doubt that society will also suffer in the near future as children grow-up viewing sex as an activity separate from relationships.”

And this: “Sexual exploration is a normal part of healthy child development but children (usually boys) who are sexualised prematurely through access to pornography or personal experience may engage in sexual behaviours that are not within normal bounds.”

Online porn is toxic, it’s unstoppable and it scares the hell out of me because I know that somehow someday my kids are going to view it despite my best efforts to stop them.

Cyber safety expert and former police officer Susan McLean says the average age for an Australian child’s first glimpse of online sex is a frighteningly tender 11 years old.

And no sane parent is happy for the internet to be their child’s sex educator.

Conservative MP Cory Bernardi last week told a meeting of federal government MPs that Safe Schools “prematurely” sexualises children.

But that is precisely what unfettered access to online porn does with serious effects on children’s and teenagers’ psychological health. A young brain magnifies everything.

In addition to butchered self-esteem and body image we have endless accounts of girls being pressured into revolting sex acts that they wouldn’t normally consider. Or that their bodies physically can cope with.

A flood of outrage by conservative MPs means the $8 million opt-in Safe Schools is under review by the Turnbull government.

Former PM Tony Abbott has also stuck the boot in, branding it “social engineering” rather than an attempt to tackle bullying.

And the Australian Christian Lobby says it promotes “queer sexuality” in the guise of a pledge to encourage schools to be more inclusive.

But what about the insidious threat happening next door right now — easily accessible online porn designed to normalise deviant sex?

As McLean warns: “Even if your child does not look for online porn, it will most certainly find them.” Filters help, but they don’t block all inappropriate content.

So maybe when our grandstanding MPs have finished crucifying the Safe Schools program and other initiatives to actually help kids, they can crack down on the real threat of online porn.

That is the least our children deserve.