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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