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| Posted: 23 January 2005 at 9:52pm | IP Logged
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Online Porn Driving Sexually Aggressive Children
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Incidents of young children
displaying sexually aggressive behavior towards others appear to be on
the increase, and exposure to online pornography is a key factor,
according to a new study in Australia.
A Canberra-based health
unit working with abused and abusive children has recorded a
significant rise in the number of children aged younger than 10 who are
committing sexual offences, including "oral sex and forced
intercourse," against other children.
The child-at-risk
***essment unit at Canberra Hospital says that in the mid-1990s, it was
seeing as few as three children a year who were engaged in
"sexually-abusive behavior."
By 2000 the number had risen to 28,
and by the time this year ends, it expects to have seen 70 children in
that category during 2003 alone, unit member and social worker
C***andra Tinning told a child abuse conference in Sydney.
The unit manager, Annabel Wyndham, made a copy of the paper available Wednesday.
The
report differentiates between sexual behavior in children regarded as
normal and developmentally appropriate - the "you show me yours and
I'll show you mine" kind of games - and activity that was aggressive,
secretive, coercive and usually involved an age difference between the
perpetrator and victim.
"We're not talking about kids playing
mummies and daddies together," Wyndham said in a phone interview.
"We're talking about things like one child holding another child up by
the neck in the back of a toilet block and pulling their pants down and
doing things to them."
Most of the children seen in this category came from troubled backgrounds, and 40 percent had been abused themselves.
"Children
who are doing that sort of thing have to have other things going wrong
in their lives," she said. "They wouldn't be doing it otherwise."
Nonetheless, the unit also recorded startling data relating to Internet use.
Of
the 101 sexually-abusive children seen over the past three years,
almost all had access to the Internet, and 90 percent admitted having
seen sexually-explicit material online, the report said.
A full
one-quarter deliberately sought out pornography online as their main
use of the Internet, while about 40 percent said they used the Internet
for other purposes as well as accessing porn.
Twenty-five
percent of the 101 children said someone else -- usually an older
sibling or an older child or adolescent -- had shown them how to access
pornographic images, sometimes exposing them to it against their will.
The unit also found that parental supervision of the children's online sessions was uniformly lacking.
But
while the children admitted accessing the Internet at home at a time
and in a place where a parent would find it difficult to supervise -
usually a study or bedroom - parents questioned separately said they
"doubted that their child would access any pornography via the
Internet."
Wyndham said her unit did not believe the rise in
cases of children behaving in a sexually aggressive manner was merely a
matter of increased recognition of a longstanding problem.
"We
think this is a new thing of the modern world, because of access to the
Net and - to be truthful -combined with some pretty terrible parenting."
The
research paper was presented by the Canberra unit and a
government-funded body called the National Child Protection
Clearinghouse.
One of its child protection experts, Dr. Janet
Stanley, said there seemed to be a link between sexually-aggressive
behavior among young children seen by the unit and Internet pornography.
"We're
suggesting there's an ***ociation between the children's exposure to
inappropriate material on the Internet ... and their acting out in
sexually aggressive behavior, experimenting and modeling what they're
seeing."
Stanley called for tighter government regulation of Internet service providers (ISPs) to help protect children.
Computers in the bedroom
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 2001, nearly half of children aged 5-14 have access to the Internet.
Fears
about the risks of stumbling across pornography online were given
weight earlier this year in research carried out by a public policy
center called the Australia Institute.
It found that among 16-17
year old respondents, 84 percent of boys and 60 percent of girls had
come across sexually explicit material on the Internet by accident.
(The
survey also found that 38 percent of boys and two percent of girls
among the respondents deliberately used the Internet to access
pornography.)
Another survey this year found that 75 percent of
parent respondents felt the federal government should do more about
online porn, and 60 percent felt it should do a lot more.
An
anti-censorship group, Electronic Frontiers Australia, said ISPs should
not be expected to use mandatory filtering software. Rather, parents
should supervise their children's access to the Internet.
Asked
about the censorship concerns, Wyndham suggested that adult Internet
users should be in a position where they could "opt in" for
sexually-explicit material if they wanted to.
"You should have to go and look for it. Why should it be in your face?"
Young
Media Australia is a non-profit organization which aims to promote the
good aspects of media in childhood development while campaigning
against the negative elements.
YMA president Jane Roberts said
Wednesday parents, the government and society at large had roles to
play in protecting children from inappropriate material on the Internet.
Citing
the recent decision by Microsoft to shut down its free, unmoderated
chatrooms because of child abuse concerns - a decision criticized by
many, for different reasons - Roberts said "from our perspective, any
attempt to stop in appropriate access to children should be applauded."
She acknowledged that policing the Internet was very difficult for governments.
Much
of the challenge lay in educating parents about both the benefits and
drawbacks of the Internet, and encouraging them to develop a sense of
trust with their children as well as supervising online use.
YMA argues strongly in favor of ensuring that computers are placed in a public area of the home.
"Kids
are often far more savvy about using the technology than their parents
are," Roberts said. "You have parents who are happy to have children in
their bedrooms with the door closed and the computer on ... the first
thing we say is, get those computers out of the bedroom."
Edited by admin on 23 January 2005 at 10:06pm
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