Category Archives: Pornography

Australian government pledges almost $1bn to help women leave violent relationships

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‘Leaving violence payment’ of $5,000 will help women escape abusive relationships with money for services, risk assessments and safety planning

Anthony Albanese has announced $925m to help victims of violence leave abusive relationships and a ban on deepfake pornography as new measures to combat violence against women.

After a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the prime minister announced the “leaving violence payment” of $5,000 to help meet the costs of leaving a relationship along with services, risk assessments and safety planning.

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Can AI image generators be policed to prevent explicit deepfakes of children?

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As one of the largest ‘training’ datasets has been found to contain child sexual abuse material, can bans on creating such imagery be feasible?

Child abusers are creating AI-generated “deepfakes” of their targets in order to blackmail them into filming their own abuse, beginning a cycle of sextortion that can last for years.

Creating simulated child abuse imagery is illegal in the UK, and Labour and the Conservatives have aligned on the desire to ban all explicit AI-generated images of real people.

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Teachers’ union leader calls for inquiry into misogyny among young men in UK

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Daniel Kebede accuses government of failing to tackle issue of sexism and its spread online among children

The leader of the UK’s largest education union has called for an independent inquiry into the rise of sexism and misogyny among boys and young men, saying it should not be left to parents and schools to police.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said it was “a huge issue” in schools and expressed particular concern about the ease with which pupils are accessing aggressive hardcore pornography on their phones.

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Nearly 4,000 celebrities found to be victims of deepfake pornography

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Channel 4 News finds 255 British people including its presenter Cathy Newman to have been doctored into explicit images

More than 250 British celebrities are among the thousands of famous people who are victims of deepfake pornography, an investigation has found.

A Channel 4 News analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites found almost 4,000 famous individuals were listed, of whom 255 were British.

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Police ‘could and should have’ stopped him: key points from Wayne Couzens report

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Former firearms officer’s history of alleged sexual offending dated back to 1995, 347-page report finds

Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer and three separate forces “could and should have” stopped him, a damning report by Lady Elish Angiolini has found.

The 51-year-old former firearms officer’s history of alleged sexual offending and predilection for violent and extreme pornography dated back to 1995, it said. Couzens allegedly sexually assaulted a child and attempted to kidnap a woman at knife-point in the years before he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard on 3 March 2021.

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‘Toxic’ online culture fuelling rise in sexual assaults on children by other children, police warn

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Observer investigation in England and Wales reveals 40% increase in reports of sexual assaults and rapes where both victim and perpetrator were under 18

An alarming rise in sexual assaults on children by other children is being fuelled by access to a “toxic” online culture, Britain’s most senior child protection officer has warned, as an Observer investigation revealed a sharp increase in abuse by under-18s reported to police.

Police records of rape, sexual assaults and incidents of abuse carried out by young children in England and Wales have all seen a significant increase since the Covid pandemic. The Observer has also uncovered an 81% rise in reported incidents that took place on school property. One leading expert said the problem had reached “alarming levels”.

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Peter Dutton backs age verification for viewing online pornography

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Opposition leader says graphic videos are ‘playing into the minds’ of young Australians, particularly boys

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has backed calls to implement age verification for viewing pornographic material online.

Dutton says graphic pornographic videos are playing into the minds of young Australians.

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Mike Johnson says in resurfaced video he uses app that helps people ‘quit porn’

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House speaker says in clip he and son use Covenant Eyes, which bills itself as a tool that ‘helps you live porn-free with confidence’

Mike Johnson, the hardline conservative and outspoken Christian who was elected House speaker in October, has raised eyebrows after he admitted using an app which bills itself as a tool to help people “quit porn”.

A year-old clip posted online over the weekend showed Johnson discussing how he and his son use Covenant Eyes, an app which tracks users’ phone and computer use, to monitor each others’ online activity.

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French equality watchdog finds 90% of online pornography abuses women

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Report urges changes in the law to make it easier to take down content and prosecute its makers

As much as 90% of pornographic content online features verbal, physical and sexual violence towards women, and a significant amount of violence shown is punishable under existing laws in France, a report by the government-nominated equality watchdog has found.

France’s high council for equality between women and men on Wednesday handed the government a damning report on illegal porn-industry practices, urging changes to the law to prosecute makers of pornography and to take down content in order to protect those who have been filmed.

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Sharing deepfake intimate images to be criminalised in England and Wales

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Under online safety bill, maximum sentence where intent to cause distress is proved will be two years

Sharing deepfake intimate images is to be criminalised in England and Wales. Amendments to the online safety bill will make it illegal to share explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent.

The Ministry of Justice said the use of deepfakes had been increasing in recent years, with a website that virtually strips women naked receiving 38m hits in the first eight months of 2021.

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Online safety bill: changes urged to allow access to social media data

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Campaigners say bill in ‘serious peril’ of passing without powers to make platforms more transparent

Online safety experts will struggle to sound the alarm about harmful content if landmark legislation does not allow independent researchers to access data from social media platforms, campaigners have warned.

The government is being urged to adopt amendments to the online safety bill enabling researchers to access platform data in order to monitor harmful material. Access would be overseen by Ofcom, the communications watchdog, and would protect user privacy.

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Violent porn acts occurring in sexual abuse between under-18s, report finds

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Children’s commissioner for England calls for ‘robust’ measures in UK’s online safety bill to protect young people

England’s children’s commissioner has called for the “most robust” online protections for under-18s after publishing research examining links between sexual abuse cases and pornography.

In the second of a series of reports exploring the impact on children, Rachel de Souza said she wanted to “turn the tide on pornography’s harms to children”.

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Pirate porn and candle wax: review of Australian film classification recommends end to ban on fetishes

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Report says some depictions of violence in pornography should be allowed, with government to first tackle gambling in video games

Australia should ditch its censorship of certain fetishes and some instances of violence in pornography, according to a review that could open the way to everything from wax fetishes to pirate pornography.

On Wednesday the Albanese government released a review of the classification system handed to the Morrison government three years ago, promising to prioritise reforms to tackle in-game gambling.

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One in 10 children ‘have watched pornography by time they are nine’

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Report by children’s commissioner for England finds worrying amount of content involves violence

One in 10 children have watched pornography by the time they are nine years old, according to “disturbing” new research by the children’s commissioner for England.

The report found a quarter of pupils in their final year of primary school have already been exposed. It also showed much of the material being consumed by children and young people features violence.

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Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish ‘broke law’ by watching porn in Commons

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Parish resigns over ‘moment of madness’, and claims ‘it was tractors I was looking at on the internet’

Disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, who resigned his seat on Saturday after admitting he had twice watched pornography in the House of Commons chamber, appeared to have committed a criminal offence which carried a maximum two-year prison sentence, Labour said.

Parish, who had represented the safe west country seat of Tiverton and Honiton since 2010, said that on the first occasion he watched porn on his mobile phone next to other MPs, including women, he had done so by accident.

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Senior Tories pressure Johnson to act now on MP accused of watching porn

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MPs question why direct action has not been taken, but PM says independent process is needed

Boris Johnson is under increasing pressure to take immediate disciplinary action against the Conservative MP accused of watching pornography in the House of Commons.

The chief whip issued a statement on Wednesday suggesting the matter should be referred to parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), which deals with sexual harassment and other disciplinary matters. But senior Tories questioned why he had not taken action directly against the MP, whose alleged behaviour was witnessed by two female colleagues in recent months.

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‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism

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The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable

Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.

But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?

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‘I have moments of shame I can’t control’: the lives ruined by explicit ‘collector culture’

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The swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent is on the rise. But unlike revenge porn, it is not a crime. Now survivors are demanding a change in the law

Ruby will never forget the first time she clicked on the database AnonIB. It is a so-called “revenge porn” site and in January 2020, a friend had texted her for help. Ruby is a secondary school teacher, used to supporting teenagers, and her friend turned to her for advice when she discovered her images were on the site.

“She didn’t send the thread that she was on,” says Ruby, 29. “She was embarrassed, so she sent a general link to the site itself.” When Ruby opened it, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe that such an infrastructure existed: something so well organised, so systematic, fed by the people who lived around us.”

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‘They see it in corridors, in bathrooms, on the bus’: UK schools’ porn crisis

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Frontline workers warn how children as young as seven are being bombarded with harmful online sexual material

Barnardo’s works directly with children who are victims of abuse or display signs of harmful or risky sexual behaviour. In 2020-21, they worked with 382,872 children, young people, parents and carers.

In a recent survey of their frontline workers across England and Wales, staff reported a rise in the number of children participating in acts they have seen in pornographic videos, despite feeling uncomfortable or scared. They describe porn as having a “corrosive” effect on child wellbeing.

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Campaigners threaten UK legal action over porn sites’ lack of age verification

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Exclusive: failure to prevent children seeing online porn puts them at risk of abuse and lifelong trauma, say children’s safety group

The UK data watchdog must introduce age verification for commercial pornography sites or face a high court challenge over any failure to act, children’s safety groups have warned.

The demand in a letter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) states that the government’s failure to stop children seeing porn is causing lifelong trauma and putting children at risk of abuse and exploitation. It urges the ICO to use the powers under the recently introduced age appropriate design code (AADC) to introduce rigorous age-checking procedures for publicly accessible porn sites.

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