Yes, the feminists were strident and shrill - but they were right about the toxic power

of porn
By Melanie Phillips PUBLISHED: 22:06 GMT, 2 June 2013 | UPDATED: 22:06 GMT, 2 June 2013

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Mark Bridger had a library of violent child porn on his computer. His most visited websites showed images of murders, beheadings and dead children

Google, the internet giant and acme of cool, may be fast descending from hero to zero. Despite pressure to take action against a tsunami of internet pornography, so far Google has dug in its heels.

Alarm has been greatly heightened by the recent convictions of Mark Bridger for murdering five-year-old April Jones, and Stuart Hazell for killing 12-year-old Tia Sharp. Bridger, who had searched the net for images of child abuse and rape, had a library of violent child porn on his computer. His most visited websites showed images of murders, beheadings and dead children. Similarly, Hazell also searched for child pornography on the net and downloaded child abuse images on his mobile phone. There have been other cases where men who have committed sexual assault, or worse, have been found to be obsessed with violent or child pornography. Yet asked to take the elementary precaution of installing blocks on such material, from which anyone wishing to access it would have to opt out, Google has simply refused. Some people have claimed there is no evidence that pornographic images have any effect on behaviour. They argue it is just as likely that those who commit such horrific crimes only access porn because they already have such tendencies. Common-sense would suggest, however, that at least some measure of cause and effect is involved here. Even if there is a prior tendency to sexual violence, pornographic images may inflame or excite it. They also serve to confirm in such warped minds that since others are involved in such practices they must be normal. On the day April Jones was abducted, Bridger had viewed online photographs of a child and a pornographic cartoon depicting the apparent rape of a physically restrained and visibly distressed girl. Police found numerous indecent images on his computer, as well as pictures of young female murder victims including Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the victims of killer Ian Huntley. In other words, a sick obsession with sexual violence can be fuelled even by responsible news reports. So why should anyone think that pornography wouldnt have an even more lethal effect, given the implicit messages it carries not just of normalising sexual violence and degradation, but the gross falsehood that the victims actually enjoy the experience? While experts say that most people who look at child pornography dont act out their fantasies, a significant number estimated at between one in six and one in ten do just that. That is something no civilised society should tolerate. Yet we do.

While experts say that most people who look at child pornography don't act out their fantasies, a significant number - estimated at between one in six and one in ten - do just that

Moreover, we have been through a very similar argument before on a closely related subject: the impact of screen violence on behaviour. Almost 20 years ago, controversy raged after a study by a distinguished child psychologist, Professor Elizabeth Newson, claimed that violent video images appeared to be creating new strains of sustained sadism in crimes committed by children and young people. The film industry and academics working in media studies some dependent on grant funding from that very industry insisted there was no causal link between the images and actual aggression. This was despite some thousand or so published studies in America endorsed by the U.S. SurgeonGeneral showing that there was indeed such a link.

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Such videos had a catastrophic effect on certain vulnerable young people who already had some abnormality in their make-up and who were tipped over the edge into actual violence by the images they had seen.

During this controversy, some striking voices were raised against the fashionable no link consensus by drawing on the separate, although related, issue of pornography. The voices were those of feminists, who insisted that pornographic images provoked men to rape and sexual violence. It was ironic to hear such uncompromisingly progressive forces making common cause with those on the anti-permissive side of the argument. But the feminists were right. Whether the issue was pornography or screen violence, it was clearly absurd to claim that powerful images did not have an effect on the way people thought or behaved. At the very least, such images risked de-sensitising people to violence and other extremes of behaviour. Because such feminist critics tended to be rather strident, however, their views were treated as extreme. Swept aside by the stampede for freedom of expression, the pornography issue accordingly got parked until the internet made these images so widely accessible. In any event, the damage they do is not confined to provoking acts of violence. Pornography changes the way men view women, because it turns them into sexual objects and thus dangerously dehumanises them. Indeed, experts tell us that with so many young children now accessing pornography online, their view both of women and of sex is becoming permanently warped, because their first exposure to sexuality is through these debased images. And the volume of such traffic is increasing exponentially. Reports suggest that online images of children being abused have shot up by 40 per cent in the past year, with as many as 60,000 individuals in the UK swapping or downloading child abuse images online. Which brings us back to Google. It maintains that whenever it discovers child abuse imagery, it quickly removes it. Clearly, this is a wholly disingenuous response since only a small proportion of such images are ever reported. Internet providers ought to be setting up a default block on porn sites, which would require those trying to access them to register. As John Carr, the Governments adviser on child internet protection, has said, Google needs to show moral leadership on this matter not least because, if it were to block such material, other net providers would follow. But Google is refusing to do so almost certainly because of the loss of lucrative trade that would follow. For as the technology website ExtremeTech reported last year, no less than 30 per cent of all web traffic involves pornography.

Google maintains that whenever it discovers child abuse imagery, it quickly removes it.

Clearly, this is a wholly disingenuous response since only a small proportion of such images are ever reported

Meanwhile, the Government is showing extreme reluctance to bring Google to heel. Almost certainly this is due to the extraordinarily close links between the two. Googles executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, seems to be hugger-mugger with both David Cameron and George Osborne, reportedly swanning in and out of Downing Street as if he owns it. And Rachel Whetstone, Googles top global spin doctor, was formerly an aide to Michael Howard when he was Tory party leader, and is married to Steve Hilton, the former director of strategy at No 10. Even the revelation that Google pays almost no UK tax appears to have had no adverse effect upon a relationship that seems joined at the hip. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Messrs Cameron and Osborne are so besotted by Google as an icon of cool they would no sooner take action against it than swap their own chinos for cavalry twill trousers and a trilby hat. Nor is the Internet Services Providers Association, which represents Google, Yahoo! and Facebook, any better. Its spokesman has made the ludicrous claim that any compulsory porn filter would de-skill parents and give them a false sense of security since such controls would be easy to fool. By that logic, of course, we should abandon all laws or regulations protecting children. The true reason is surely that Google and other providers are making huge profits out of pornography. It is a trade that abuses children, harms society by degrading everyone who uses it and contributes to violence and even murder and the Government is doing nothing to stop it. Now isnt that the ultimate in obscenity? m.phillips@dailymail.co.uk

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Comments (57)
Newest Oldest Best rated Worst rated View all Anyone who says porn has no effect on sexual crime statistics should speak to a lawyer working in criminal law. I've heard hundreds of clients over the years talking about how porn turned them on enough to commit crimes. And we've seen it with high profile cases in the last few weeks. It colours men's views of women and they are already predisposed to think in an unhealthy way about women in the first place when they are sexual predators. And as so much porn is based on a make believe world where women and even little girls are "gagging" for it, it's no surprise that unintelligent men take it all in without question. Sick. - cwjones , london, 03/6/2013 15:38 Click to rate Report abuse Melanie Phillips objective is quite blatantly clear. She must by now have fully realised that her demands are ridiculously naive. Nobody can fly in the face of reason to this extent of having hundreds, if not thousands of people telling her, every time she writes this utter nonsense, that it just isn't possible. She knows as well as I do by now that personal responsibility is the key. Better parenting by actually being bothered to learn about the technology your kids are interested in. Her objective can only be singularly to place her political agenda. That agenda is to blur the line between politics and objectionable content. She writes this about herself: Phillips defines herself as a liberal who has "been mugged by reality". MUGGED?????? You've been absolutely bankrupted by it, intellectually and morally. Reality never mugged you, youre just too slow to realise whats actually happening in the world and that people are doing just great without your objectionable interference - Cromwell , London, United Kingdom, 03/6/2013 15:11 Click to rate Report abuse Quote ---- They also go to confirm in such warped minds, that, IF OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS IT MUST be normal---Doesn't this say it all? We must for the safety of our children curtail these sites, and more needs to be done to identify prospective abuser's. - Poppy , Malaga United Kingdom, 03/6/2013 15:06 Click to rate Report abuse Once again, the Author seeks to blur the distinction between "legal porn" and "child porn", or more accurately, images of child abuse. Rating 17 Rating 26 Rating 35

The latter are illegal, possession is a crime with no defence, and illegal porn will, I would say, never be found via a Google search they have people dedicated to removing it. However, it is possible to find web content without using Google, and this is what the battle is against - sites hosting illegal porn, outside of UK jurisdiction. But, Google are not reponsible for those - they aren't even transmitting the material, that's down to ISPs and the telephone network. To blame Google is to demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of the Web. And to claim Google are "cool" is equally risible. - Realist , Kent, United Kingdom, 03/6/2013 14:55 Click to rate Report abuse Melanie, I'm with you on this. To my mind pornography creates a mindset where people are turned into objects and their humanity is lost. The insidious thing about porn is that the person in the picture is objectified, but so is the individual viewing the pornography. In other words if you internalize others as sex objects, logically, you too are a mere object to others. - Humanist , Hornchurch, United Kingdom, 03/6/2013 14:29 Click to rate Report abuse Perhaps there is an element of cause and effect for the minority. But should we ban everything just to rule out the small chance of it having a negative effect? - BartSimpson , Earth, 03/6/2013 14:18 Click to rate Report abuse Yes child porn is vile and needs to be extirpated. But removing it will not have any effect on paedophiles whatsoever. They have a compulsion which is incurable. Furthermore, paedophiles are unbelievably sly and will always worm their way into situations or jobs that bring them into contact with children. The only solution is to lock them up. If they are released they need castration and an electronic tag for life. The presence of child porn at the moment is just something that slimy defence lawyers can use as mitigation. "My client would not have committed this offence if he had not been able to watch child porn on the Internet." Absolute rubbish, they are going to do it anyway. - Horace , Nicosia, Cyprus, 03/6/2013 13:45 Click to rate Report abuse Right about this but horribly wrong about a whole lot else. - Simon Knowles , Thatcham, 03/6/2013 13:28 Click to rate Report abuse r4merlin - the internet wasn't around but Brady was a user of sadistic ponography, so sorry but your theory isn't necessarily correct. - gillgill , manchester, 03/6/2013 13:22 Click to rate Report abuse Violent images do deprave and change personalities, Just look at the killers of James Bulger. They lived on a diet of violent X rated movies about the murderous Chukky in the uber violet 'Child's Play'. They simply acted out their fantasies when they murdered that poor little boy. - Happy Whammer , London, 03/6/2013 13:08 Rating (0) Rating 13 Rating 6 Rating 10 Rating 16 Rating 11

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