I was a child abuse detective and my daughter was still exposed to porn at 10yo.
My daughter was exposed to pornography for the first time at 10yo. Sadly, she is the ‘norm’ NOT the exception in these statistics.
Embarrassingly, I was a child abuse detective with over 8-years experience in the Child Sexual Abuse space at the time it happened.
I had already had the 'sex' talk and other conversations with my daughter previous to this incident and she knew what 'porn' was. I seriously thought I had covered all the bases with her potential exposure and thought she was safe.
Unfortunately, she still managed to see it due to the lack of age verification on pornographic websites.
One day, she came into my bedroom as I was folding washing and said... 'Mum, I need you to sit down'.
As a child abuse detective, my brain went to the worse case scenario, that she had been sexually abused. However, thankfully that was not the case, but she was still about to break my heart all the same.
She said, 'Mum, I googled Sex and I saw porn and it's making me feel yucky in my stomach and I can't stop seeing the man doing that to the lady, why was he like that with her'.
I was heart-broken because despite me doing MORE than the average parent does for their child when it comes to talking about and protecting their child from exposure to pornography, she was still exposed and it left her upset and confused.
I am not going to lie, I felt so upset with myself. I should have done more... but as it turned out, because she had been having her 'sex' and puberty education at school at the time, it had left her curious. Hence the google search.
My job had enabled me to know what early exposure to porn does to children. How it affects the brain, how it can leave children with flashbacks and sometimes causes sleep regression with them seeing the scenes on a loop as they try to sleep (similar to PTSD). It can also cause children to be traumatised.
Depending on the porn, it can also be a reason for children to start engaging in Harmful Sexualised Behaviours, as I had seen in my job. Especially if they are left without help, support, protective behaviours education and explanations from a safe adult.
Thankfully, my daughter came to me pretty much straight away. She told me what she had seen (a women giving oral sex, a man having penal/vaginal sex in multiple positions) and that it was only for a few minutes.
Because she felt safe to tell me, I was able to talk her through and explain what she had seen. I was able to control the narrative and help her young brain understand what she had seen with little repercussions (thankfully).
But only because we talked it through and she felt safe to do so.
However, as a result, I went on a journey of trying to better protect her device to ensure she never 'accidentally' saw porn again. I downloaded and trialled many 3rd party protective/blocking apps but was STILL able to bypass and override all of them.
In fact, with one of these apps running and apparently blocking inappropriate and dangerous content, I was able to view a video of a man engaging in sexual acts with a goat (to completion) on YouTube.
The video hadn't even come up with the 'sex' search on the platform and had been suggested to me under a completely different search name.
I reported it immediately to the platform but that video still runs rent free in my head and I cringe imagining what a child or young person would have thoughtif they had seen it. It was truly disturbing.
Even with all my experience, all my knowledge, all my protective measures and the amazing relationship I have with my daughter, I was still UNABLE to stop her from being exposed to pornography at a TOO young age.
And now as a child sexual abuse prevention educator, I worry about all of the little Australian children without the same level of help, support and communication that my daughter had and how they must be dealing with or NOT really dealing with the absolutely inappropriate crap floating around on the internet.
What I know and have witnessed from my experience investigating child sexual abuse is that early exposure to pornography is enabling the over sexualisation of our children and is inadvertently and maybe purposely helping groom our children for abuse.
In fact, in my time as a police officer, I saw groomers use porn as a way to normalise sex with adults and 'clear' the way for abuse.
I am a highly intelligent and motivated parent due to my experiences and position in the community, but not every parent has that same level of experience, motivation, nor the education that I do after 10 years in the police and because of that I know that there are TOO many children at risk of exposure, when it should simply not happen.
It's WAY past time for easy measures like 'age verification' on pornographic websites to be legislated and if our government doesn't stop the tsunami of early exposure, we are ensuring another generations of unnecessary and completely preventable child sexual abuse.
The one thing I do know is that porn exposure is increasing the prevalence and occurrence of harmful sexualised behaviours and child-on-child abuse.
So I'm calling on the Federal Government to implement 'age verification' legislation in an effort to reduce the amount of access young children have to pornography. Enough is enough. We know the risks and we know the repercussions.
But if you are a parent, screw waiting for the Government because our kids need us to protect them as best we can NOW!
Here are some very important steps you can take to ensure 'safer' internet exploration for the kids in your care. We can't fully stop them from being exposed but we can try to limit the risk and trauma.
1. Ensure parental controls, content restrictions and time restrictions are set-up on devices to make it harder to gain access to inappropriate websites and create a protective barrier to assist. You can also go as far as blocking it on your home modems.
2. Discuss private and public pictures, appropriate and inappropriate touch and behaviours (both by adults and children) with your kids. Teach them to identify when something is inappropriate and if someone shows them private pictures and photos.
3. If you haven't already, teach your child protective behaviour and body safety lessons. This includes identifying and understanding their early warning signs and when they don't feel safe.
4. Help your child identify safe adults in their lives that they can talk with if and when they feel unsafe or need to talk with someone about anything.
5. Help your child come up with and create a plan of what to do, if and when they see pornographic or inappropriate content online. If they have a plan, they are more likely to follow it than if they don't.
For help in setting up parental controls, content restrictions or time restrictions, check out my Device Know-How - an interactive webinar here: https://www.cape-au.com/device-knowhow where I walk through setting them up.
Also check out my other blogs and podcast for more help with online safety and abuse prevention.
