A victim of teenage rape has spoken out over the easy availability of pornography.

Speaking to Sky News, Dandy Doherty says she was sexually abused when she was 11 and then raped at the age of 15 with her abusers being the same age.

“Pornography needs to be talked about from a very young age” she said, “it’s inappropriate for a 10-year-old to be watching fake sex online and thinking that that’s what’s normal.”

Her comments come as the National Education Union recently debated the issue of sexual assault at its virtual annual conference.

General Secretary Mary Bousted told Sky News that the behaviour of pupils has been ‘corrupted’ due to social media and access to pornography.

Research indicates just how easily available online pornography is for children. Some as young as just seven years old have accessed porn.

In 2016, the Government introduced the Digital Economy Act (DEA) which included measures to introduce age verification controls on pornographic websites.

Known as Part 3, this was approved by MPs and Peers in 2017 and should have been implemented. These controls would have covered ALL commercial, online pornographic websites.

Also if Part 3 had been implemented, there would be an operational regulator with power to crack down on extreme porn online.

However, despite strong public support and MPs and Peers voting for it, the Government dropped Part 3 of the DEA on 16 October 2019.

Instead, they’re planning on introducing a new Online Harms Bill which will include age controls, but only for ‘user-generated’ content.

As CARE CEO Nola Leach argues in this Politics Home article, this means weaker protections for children because the new legislation as it stands falls short of the comprehensive protection on offer through Part 3 of the DEA.

Baroness Benjamin recently raised these issues in the House of Lords and many other Peers joined her in urging the Government to think again.

If you want to help, you can email your MP and ask them to put direct pressure on the Government to implement Part 3 immediately to make sure there’s stronger protections for young people online.