Australian school children as young as six are accessing online pornography, school principals have warned.
A NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the impacts of harmful pornography on mental, emotional, and physical health was established in August last year and had its first hearings in March.
Lourdes Mejia, the Principal of western Sydney private school Montgrove College, told the inquiry’s second round of hearings on Monday that she was “surprised” by the age of the children who appeared to be exposed to pornography.
“I’ve seen much younger instances of children, as young as Year 2 or Year 1,” she said in response to Hunter Valley Grammar School Principal Rebecca Butterworth saying student in Year 6 were sharing sexualised imaged.
“You can see that they have had some access to pornography from perhaps the stories that they tell or even sometimes the drawings or things that they write, little notes that they pass to each other that I have seen recently that have quite surprised me.”
Ms Mejia told the inquiry there was an issue of children from immigrant backgrounds watching huge volumes of pornography because their parents did not believe it could happen.
“There was another point made that certain families from a different cultural background, or recent migrants who haven’t grown up with any of this kind of thing, they think that they’re exempt or ‘This is never going to happen to my child’,” she said.
“I’m seeing more instances of that where these children are accessing hours of this and the parents are completely ‘How could that possibly happen?’ because it just wasn’t part of how they were brought up and their own values.”
She also told the inquiry that she believed pornography was “slipping in” because children had unregulated access to social media and that it was hard to get help from the parents who she’d “really like in the room”, rather than those who were already concerned and taking action.
Lorrae Sampson, Principal of Nowra Anglican College said she had seen an increase in girls and female teachers “having to put up with boys making inappropriate sexual innuendos or noises” and in the “objectification” of girls by young boys.
Submissions to the inquiry closed in January and includes disturbing accounts from parents, partners and pornography addicts on the horrific effects of sexual content on children, many of which are too graphic to publish.
But Mish Pony, the CEO of prostitution advocacy group Scarlet Alliance, said in her submission that she rejected the idea that pornography was “inherently harmful”, said it could be beneficial to homosexuals.
“Many LGBTQI+ people report positive experiences with pornography, including greater understanding of personal sexuality, education on sex practices not covered by school curriculums, and validation of personal identity,” she wrote.
She also said that “porn performers are sex workers”, and that online pornography was providing new opportunities for prostitutes.
“More recently, many ‘in-person’ sex workers have also diversified into participating in digital forms of sex work, including live camming/streaming, self-produced and distributed adult content creation, and studio-produced porn,” she wrote.
“Increased accessibility and the emergence of new online platforms (e.g. OnlyFans) have provided sex workers with autonomous advertising opportunities for in-person services, and the ability to navigate challenges including COVID-19 restrictions and the increasing precarity of the gig economy.”
Header image: Principals Loudes Mejia and Lorrae Sampson (NSW Parliament).
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