LONDON, August 30, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The British Government announced today plans to broaden laws against “extreme” pornographic material to the Internet. After an extensive, and still ongoing joint Home Office/Scottish Executive consultation, Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said the new law would outlaw possession of “extreme pornographic material which is graphic and sexually explicit and which contains actual scenes or realistic depictions of serious violence, bestiality or necrophilia.”
While the law aims only to outlaw “extreme” pornography, experts in the field of sexual abuse note that all pornography is harmful. Such experts have long pointed to the relationship between sexual violence and pornography. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, director of education at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, pointed out in 2000, “I have been treating sexual violence victims and perpetrators for 13 years. I have not treated a single case of sexual violence that did not involve pornography.” (Source: Gow, Haven Bradford. “Child Sex Abuse: America’s Dirty Little Secret.” MS Voices for Children. 3/2000)
Nonetheless, human rights advocates are calling that the law, the first of its kind in Western nations, a good first step.
In a communiqué sent to LifeSiteNews.com, Ulster Unionist Party Spokesperson for Employment and Learning, Dr. Esmond Bernie said, “Research has shown that pornography and its messages are involved in shaping attitudes and encouraging behaviour that can harm individual users and their families. Children growing up in our culture are being exposed to sexually explicit material in violent and pathological forms on a daily basis through cable and satellite television, movies, and the internet.”
Dr. Bernie warned, “The widespread availability of pornography is affecting the behaviour of British young people. Academic studies in the United States and recent court cases in Britain have found that pornography can be highly addictive and directly related to sexual offending. There is an established criminological tendency for offenders to act out behaviours viewed in pornography.”
The law comes in part as a result of the lobbying of the family of Jane Longhurst who was murdered two years ago by a man addicted to Internet pornography.
The independent body, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) ,has set up an internet ‘hotline’ service for the public to report their exposure to illegal content on the net, specifically; child abuse images hosted anywhere in the world; criminally obscene content hosted in the UK and criminally racist content hosted in the UK. (https://www.iwf.org.uk/ )
See the UK Home Office consulations:
https://uk.sitestat.com/homeoffice/homeoffice/s?docs4.Consultation_Extreme_Pornographic_Material&ns_type=pdf&ns_url=https://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs4/Consultation_Extreme_Pornographic_Material.pdf
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