An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia
We’re asking you to implement Cleanfeed internet by default in Australia to protect our children. It’s shocking how exposure to unregulated streaming of hardcore pornography has increased the prevalence and severity of sexually abusive behaviour by children as young as six years old.
As parents and friends, we’re concerned about how our children’s ability to develop healthy sexual relationships as adults – and even their safety at school today – is threatened by this early exposure to online pornography. Pornographic films are classified as R 18+ and X 18+. Yet unfettered pornography, much of it violent and abusive, is freely available to our kids through almost any tablet, smart phone or computer. And the tragic consequences are:
- Children are sexually abusing other children at an increasing rate. Such behaviour has become more serious since the widespread uptake of broadband; pornography is an aggravating factor in many cases.
- A group of six-year-old boys at an Adelaide school forced five-year-olds to perform oral sex. Trinity Grammar School in Sydney removed a Year 1 child because naked boys were performing sex acts on each other in the school toilets and playground. A grade one boy at a Victorian school “dragged female students into the toilets and forcibly removed their clothes, making them perform oral sex and kissing their genitals”.
- Research has shown that the average age of first exposure to pornography is just 11. By 15, 100% of males and 80% of females had been exposed to violent, degrading online pornography, usually before they’d had a sexual experience themselves.
Countries such as the UK and Israel are protecting their youngest citizens by directing internet service providers to provide families with a default Cleanfeed service, with age-verified over-18s given the option to receive explicit content. This means pornography is only available online to adults who choose to receive it.
Prime Minister, please implement Cleanfeed internet by default in Australia to protect our children.