Monday 30 April 2012

'MY 15-YR-OLD SON IS AN ONLINE PORN ADDICT'




A SHOCKED mother tells of her heartache at having a teenage son hooked on explicit online porn. Mum-of-three Sarah has battled to stop 15-year-old Tom looking at sexual images on the Internet.

And she is not the only parent struggling to cope. A record number of children are now viewing online porn. The Sun's Agony Aunt, Deidre Sanders, believes the law should be changed to protect kids from such explicit imagery.

Housewife Sarah, of Surrey, who is separated from Tom’s dad, also has another son as well as a daughter. Here she talks about her son’s addiction.

About a year-and-a-half ago Tom called me over to have a look at something on the computer.

He was laughing, as if he’d found something that was light-hearted, funny. I looked over his shoulder to see a naked woman covered in excrement.

I was appalled, but to my son this was nothing unusual. I know he has been looking at hardcore porn since he was about 11.

It all started when his dad bought him a laptop for Christmas when he was 10. He bought my other son one too but, as far as I know, he is not constantly looking at internet porn in the way Tom has been doing.

His dad and I separated in 1998. We have shared custody. At his dad's Tom disappears upstairs to his bedroom straight after school and I know he is looking at porn as either he tells me or his brother tells me to try to get him into trouble.

Tom first found internet porn by accident when he was 11. He came home from his dad’s and said, ‘Mum, I found these funny pictures of women with animals’.

He thought nothing of telling me and had no real idea what the pictures meant. I immediately said that this was naughty and he shouldn’t be looking at it. But that was just the start.

We don’t have any controls on our computer — I have no idea how to put firewalls on to a PC — but we keep it downstairs so there’s no way he can sneak off and look at porn in his bedroom.

At first his dad and I spoke every day about the boys, so immediately after Tom had seen the bestiality pictures I rang his dad and told him about it. But I think he was less concerned than I was.

Young boys will have a natural curiosity about sexual images, I accept that. In my day boys would try to get hold of magazine pictures of naked women and keep them under their bed.

At least the pictures weren’t that explicit and they were harder to get hold of. Now these images — and much worse — are available at the click of a mouse.

You'd be astounded at how vile these pictures are. I know that Tom regularly looks at images of real depravity, involving animals and all kinds of scenarios in which women are portrayed as little more than meat.

The most worrying thing of all happened when Tom was 13 — he started posting naked pictures of himself on Facebook using a webcam. His brother told me about it and I was profoundly shocked.

But I was even more shocked to hear about the pictures his young female friends were also posting. Thirteen-year-old girls, not posing naked but wearing incredibly low-cut tops and tiny skirts.

Most parents would be so shocked to know what kind of images their children are not only looking at but actually posting of themselves.

We have no idea what effect these vile images have on such young minds. I challenged him about his behaviour at least three or four times, but each time it was so hard to get through to him. He just laughed. I think he feels it is simply no big deal.

Lots of his friends are looking at hardcore Internet porn, too, both boys and girls. It has become part of their life. The problem is that it is so freely available.

My biggest concern is how Tom will treat women when he starts having proper, adult relationships.

Does he think all women are like the porn stars he sees online? Does he think this kind of deviant sexual behaviour is normal?

I also worry what he’s looking at on his phone. I can only pray no lasting damage has been done. As a parent, I feel so helpless. Short of watching your kids all the time, there is so little you can do.

Tom is by no means the only one who looks at hardcore porn. I am sure he and his friends share this material.

They are on their phones and Facebook all the time. So many parents would be astonished if they really knew what their children were looking at night after night. All names in this article have been changed. (thesun.co.uk)

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