The time for talking is long over - now we need action

 

The conviction of two 14-year old schoolboys for the truly horrific murder of 14-year old schoolgirl, Ana Kriegel, last month, has done one thing for this country. It has opened up a national conversation about the proliferation of violent pornographic images which are available to every Irish child at the mere click of a button on their mobile devices.

The tragedy in all of this is that it took the brutal death of a beautiful and much-loved child in a dirty, dark and derelict house on a warm summer evening last year to open up a conversation that we all should have been having long before now.

At what stage did it actually become perfectly acceptable in this country to allow our children, in the privacy of their own bedrooms, to view, stream, download and share some of the most violent, depraved and disturbing pornographic images ever known to mankind? Or, did we, as parents, just turn a blind eye?

Either way, the genie is now well and truly out of the bottle, and the shock, revulsion and horror of the nation at the details that emerged over the last seven weeks in the Central Criminal Court has to be translated into some positive action going forward for the sake of all our children.

At the risk of sounding like another Mary Whitehouse, who opposed liberalism in all its forms, I have no issue whatsoever with over-18's making up their own minds about what they access on their mobile devices, but I have a serious issue with giving a 10-year old child unfettered access to a mobile device which allows them to access deeply disturbing images and videos that their young impressionable minds cannot possibly process or comprehend.

Over the past number of months I have been talking to people who work at the coalface of domestic violence in this country as part of my research for a series of articles in this newspaper. One of the things I learned is that intimate partner rape cases are extremely high and more and more clients are presenting to domestic violence support services having been subjected to the most horrendous examples of sexual assault, such as being forced to pose for pornograpic pictures which are then uploaded to the dark web. Revenge porn is also a big issue, particularly among young people.

Anne Clarke, who is manager of the Offaly Domestic Violence Support Service (ODVSS) says social media has “dramatically changed” the landscape in which they operate, and she believes there is a strong link between the rise in sexual assaults within intimate relationships and the ease with which people can access violent and degrading pornographic images on their smartphones.

Ms. Clarke says that if young boys, in particular, are repeatedly subjected to pornographic images which objectify and dehumanise women they can become “desensitised.” They can then carry these views into later life where they view women as being there merely for their own satisfaction, and that is where many of the control issues and the violence begin to manifest themselves.

In an effort to assist young people in recognising what is, and is not, acceptable in an intimate relationship, a number of Teen Dating Violence Programmes have been rolled out in secondary schools across the country, and Anne Clarke says we need to focus more on educating our young people, and young men in particular, about acceptable sexual behaviours.

Psychotherapist and author of “Cotton Wool Kids” Stella O'Malley, says she has seen a huge increase in the numbers of boys coming to her for therapy who are “disturbed by themselves.” They may never even have kissed a girl, she says, yet they are “connoisseurs of weird pornography” on their mobile devices which is, in turn, leading them into “darker, murkier and weirder places and leaving them desensitised.”

Another leading Irish child and adult psychotherapist, Dr. Colman Noctor, has said that children viewing internet pornography do not have the capacity to distinguish between “what is reality and what is fantasy.”

There may be some correlation between what Dr. Noctor says and a report earlier this year from the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland which highlighted what they described as “a concerning rise” in the the numbers of young people carrying out sex attacks, with defilement offences increasing by 20%.

In the wake of the Ana Kriegel murder trial, An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has pledged to take action to restrict access to pornography to over-18's and has asked Justice Minister, Charlie Flanagan, to examine the issue along with his officials in the Department of Justice.

Nobody doubts that the task ahead will not be an easy one, but we owe it to future generations of Irish children to say that, at least, we did everything in our power to protect their innocence, both as parents and as legislators.