Submission to the Online Safety Bill 2021 and Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021.
news.com.au, Feb 25 2021, documented more than 2,500 testimonies from girls as young as 13, reporting a serious sexual problem caused by easy access to Internet porn “particularly in Sydney’s private all-boys schools, where students would allegedly rape or assault girls from other private schools...”. Highlighted in the story is the fact that at least one of the sex assaults and rapes has ended up on Pornhub, a mega-giant, Canadian based, Amsterdam owned Internet porn provider. Nicholas Sampson, the principal from one Sydney private school (Cranbrook School mentioned several times), is quoted as saying it was clear that “easy access to pornography was perhaps the most ‘pernicious and undermining’ influence on his students.”
Pornhub has freely sent child/rape images into Australia and now is sending child/rape images of our own Australian children being raped across the world.
On 16 Feb, Channel 7 in Brisbane ran a news story documenting schoolchildren streaming porn at Queensland schools via their smartphones. With this school’s limited resources they have initiated protective measures against their schoolchildren accessing Internet porn which has to be bypassed by the children. Certainly with the governments’ almost limitless resources it can come up with more protective measures across Australia to protect the innocence of our children.
The Weekend Australian of 27-28 October in 2018, in a timely reprint just yesterday on 1 March 2021, reports “Disturbing acts of sexualised behaviour among young children are becoming more frequent in schools as mobile devices result in children being exposed to pornography...”. The article continues, “...the ready accessibility of porn via a simple Google search has led to a rise in child-on-child sexual assaults across all education sectors as children re-enact in playgrounds and classrooms what they see online.” In other words children are raping children in our classrooms, playgrounds and schoolyards due to Internet porn. This case concerned an incident reported in South Australian. Just how many are never reported Australia-wide? http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/education/boys-7-act-out-sex-on-girl-6-risk-of-mobile-porn-grows-in-schools
The government should initiate Opt-in laws for Internet porn as an immediate step to better protect our children. The once thriving Australian Dial-a-Porn industry was defeated in the Howard government era when such Opt-in laws concerning this service were introduced by then-Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston and passed by the Parliament. There is no child in Australia holding a credit account needed to access Internet porn; the children’s electronic devices are all linked to their parent’s accounts. As in the Dial-a-Porn example - Aussies refused to sign up for the service - parents recognised the need to protect the minds of their vulnerable children. I believe they will refuse permission for an ISP to send them pornographic material. The Australian Federation for the Family is asking the government to come up with a similar plan with appropriate penalties applied to ISPs who break our laws.
Sarah Golsby-Smith, head of Learning and Teaching at Presbyterian Ladies College in Sydney, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald 26 February 2021 is on the mark when she writes, “I do not understand why access to home internet must simultaneously mean access to online pornography. Why is it that family friendly filters are not ubiquitous at the moment of sign-up with any provider? If a person wants access to hardcore pornography, then the onus should be on that person to opt out of the family friendly filters, not on the rest of us to find ways to protect our children. I still remember a friend telling me of preschoolers who had accessed hardcore porn by telling Siri their new toilet talk words, leaving them traumatised. This is how easy it is, how widespread this ‘education’ is on what a sexual relationship looks like.”
The Australian Federation for the Family has for years been calling for Opt-in measures to be adopted by the government if the government is serious about protecting children from dangerous access to Internet porn. Legislative measures should be taken so that Internet Service Providers must obtain permission before they can send pornographic material to any Internet-connected device. This is not banning or censoring Internet porn, rather this is simply giving the homeowner, office worker, family member, schoolroom, etc, the authority over what legally enters its domain.
There are some wrongly pushing for “age verification” laws as an effective answer to this serious problem. This is a spurious claim. As I stated above, the children’s accounts are all linked to their parents’ accounts, who of course pass the “age verification” test. Don’t go down this dead end road. Also some say the Opt-in idea will never work because people will still find a way to access Internet porn. Isn’t this true with all laws? Imagine if the government had no laws against rape, murder, theft or assault on the grounds that people will still do it anyway?
The Pornhub block is another important positive step the government can take to show the world that Aussies are serious about child protection. The Canadian government is presently taking legal action against Pornhub for the child/rape imagery they distribute (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/canada-illegal-online-content-child-porn-1.5847695) and certainly the Australian government should block this Internet porn giant and stop them from sending such imagery into Australia.
Pornography has a long history of causing harm in Australia and, once recognised, State and Federal parliaments have, by and large, taken some legislative measures to curb the destruction and better deal with the issue. It always takes some time for the laws to catch up with the technology. Now is the time for the Australian laws to catch up with the devastation caused by children’s easy access to Internet porn.
Although ridiculed in the progressive media, the harm caused by porn in Australia has long been recognised by the experts. Prominent Victorian Barrister Dr Don Thompson, then-Chairman of Forensic Psychology at Monash University and Consultant to the Australian Law Reform Commission in an address quoted in Australian Family Physician magazine to the Victorian Criminal Justice Symposium (16 March 1991) stated categorically that “pornography is causally related to sexually violent behaviour.” This expert warning is echoed by former Victorian Crown Prosecutor Richard Read who says there is “definitely a very clear link between pornography and sex crimes”.
New South Wales Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Murdoch says porn use among our young men is “the fastest growing part of the problem of domestic violence” in the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 December 2014. In an article entitled “How Porn Is Turning Young Boys Into Rapists” Tasmania’s The Mercury newspaper on 12 October 2014 quotes Assistant Commissioner Murdoch as saying “easy access to porn has caused sexual assaults by young men to double in 5 years.”
Inspector Sprague established the Spectrum Task Force in Melbourne, the largest task force of its kind in Australia’s law enforcement history, and states there’s a strong link between pornography and the amount of sex crimes we get.
In Quadrant magazine, 1 Nov 1993, Hon Dr Marlene Goldsmith published an article entitled “Pornography and Sexual Violence”. In it she states “We spend millions on affirmative action, we profess (at least publicly) horror at racism and yet misogynistic visual imagery images are, to many, sacrosanct. Women (ed. note - I would add children today) are being raped, beaten, murdered, but their right to life and liberty is considered less than than the right to purchase or profit from pornography.”
Dr Goldsmith’s voice from the grave warns us of the scientifically documented dangers of porn well before the tsunami of Internet porn. Our schoolchildren’s unrestricted access to it via their smartphones must be curbed.
Former Aboriginal research consultant, now Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson in her book “Looking at the Problem” cites several sexual atrocities caused by porn. She warns, “A worker at a Northern Territory women’s shelter describes how women are being raped with a stick after porn videos. Rapes are being perpetrated on drunken women by young boys 10 - 15. Young girls from 8 years upward are being sexually misused… They are being shown hard core porn videos and encouraged to perform likewise.” Like Dr Goldsmith, Professor Atkinson warns of and documents this harm (and much more) caused by video porn well before the onslaught of Internet porn.
“On Mornington Island”, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, “men had forced children as young as 7 to engage in acts depicted in pornographic videos. A 5 year-old boy recently suffered internal injuries after older boys tried to emulate a scene from another video.”
An 8 September 2006 article in The Australian newspaper headlined “Sexual Abuse A Part of Culture, Boys Told” it reports, Aboriginal boys as young as eight are being used for sex and told “it’s a cultural thing”. Then-PhD student Gary Lee from Charles Darwin University is quotes as saying, “Everyone knows its happening.” Lee reports encountering an eight year-old boy “whose behaviour was totally sexualised” and did not know how to relate to an adult except sexually, thanks to exposure to porn.
Such Aboriginal atrocities, caused by white man’s porn, prompted then Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Mal Brough to claim, “children had to be protected. Its patently clear coming out of report after report and story after story that there is a major problem with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities.” He rightly claims, “The states and territories must act on this insidious problem.”
Perhaps now that “this insidious problem” has invaded the elite (white man’s) private boys and girls schools in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and elsewhere across Australia, indeed anywhere with Internet access, the government will act by initiating Opt-in legislation for Internet porn as suggested by Sarah Golsby-Smith in The Sydney Morning Herald article.
“A 12 year-old boy was allegedly raped repeatedly while his hands and feet were bound as a part of horrific sexual assault by 10 males at a remote Top End community.” After watching a porn DVD he was anally raped by 6 of the defendants. 3 teenagers then proceeded to rape the boy. According to the article in The Weekend Australian 9-10 September 2006, “The youngest defendant was 12, while the oldest was 39.” Northern Territory Magistrate David Leadsman is quoted as saying the case was “the worst he has ever seen.”
Will the government wait until such atrocious sexual scenarios are reported as occurring in our private schools before protective action is taken?
New York Times bestselling author, Vanity Fair editor and Harpers Bazaar and New York Magazine writer Nancy-Jo Sales who once warned me against allowing my granddaughters to have smartphones, in her book “American Girls” documenting the social media sexual journey undertaken by American teen and preteen girls says the most common response from the girls when told their “boyfriends” are showing friends naked pictures of their girlfriends is, “I didn’t know he liked me that much.” This shocking response is directly due to the ubiquitous presence of and unrestricted access to Internet porn by the children. Children should be able to mature without having their thinking warped is such a way. It should be looked upon as a government duty to place protective barriers between them and access to Internet porn. Opt-in laws will go a long way in providing such a barrier and blocking Pornhub will also give better protection to our children from the unscrupulous purveyors of Internet porn.
Pornified author Pamela Paul cites the exhaustive work “A Systematic Review of the Effects of Aggressive and Nonaggressive Pornography” by Drs Lyon and Larsen. 81 peer-reviewed research studies in a scientific meta-analysis concluded that exposure to pornography does have an important causal impact. Despite some modern day pornographers use of the lame “non violent erotica” excuse for peddling their smut, science has confirmed that “Non-violent pornography contributes to aggressive and callous attitudes and behaviour toward women.” In other words, it would appear that the porn our schoolboys are watching is causing them to rape our schoolgirls and treat them aggressively with callous disregard. This is confirmed by reputable experts and media reports across Australia and the world today. Italian medical journal Medicine, Mind and Adolescence quotes Dr Claudio Violato in reporting that the negative aspects of porn are “clear and consistent.”
Nicholas Sampson, head of Cranbrook School in Sydney’s East, warns about the “easy access to porn” and how it is destroying childhood innocence as does prominent educator Sarah Golsby-Smith, the head of Learning and Teaching at Presbyterian Ladies College, also in Sydney. They join many other competent academics and education administrators warning about the dangers of easy access to porn by our children. Professor Judy Atkinson, Dr Claudio Violato, Dr Don Thompson, NSW MLC Dr Marlene Goldsmith, Victorian Crown Prosecutor Richard Read, Former Federal Cabinet Ministers Mal Brough and Richard Alston have all sounded loud and clear warnings about all forms of pornography. Their voices are joined by such law enforcement professionals as NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Mark Murdoch, Spectrum Task Force Director Inspector Sprague, former head of the Child Exploitation Unit in Victorian Police Inspector Vicki Fraser, former Queensland Police Superintendent Greg Early and former Qld Police Director of the Juvenile Aid Bureau Nev Taylor in sharing their serious concerns about the harm caused by porn. Even today’s left-leaning media reporters are now echoing statements of truth about the harm caused by children accessing porn.
Perhaps the government will listen to the real experts on porn as well as the 2,500 and counting Australian schoolchildren victims of porn mentioned in the opening sentence of this submission.
The Australian Federation for the Family (AFF), on behalf of its members is calling for the government to act in the best interests of our women, girls and schoolchildren and immediately block the Canadian based Internet porn Service Provider Pornhub. Just as an indication of how offensive Pornhub is, the world’s major credit card facilities, including but not limited to MasterCard and Visa, have refused to process further credit card transactions from Pornhub. AFF is also advocating for Opt-in legislation, similar to the type that was instrumental in defeating the Australian based Dial-a-Porn merchants, whereby ISPs can no longer send dangerously offensive pornographic material to any computer connected device that has not specifically requested it. We have been asking Prime Ministers, MPs, Cabinet Ministers and Senators to do this for many years.
Jack Sonnemann with the Australian Federation for the Family has prepared numerous submissions to parliament and has appeared in public, media and professional forums internationally documenting the proven link between pornography and sexual aggression. They are all accessible on his website at ausfamily.org and contain data from scientific conferences, medical journals, peer-reviewed studies, meta-analyses, international reports, police studies, media stories and personal testimony about the harm caused by porn and is willing to appear before any forum to document the truth about porn.
Prepared by Jack Sonnemann,
Director, Australian Federation for the Family,
c/o Post Office,
Grove, Tasmania 7109,
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