(Jan Moir) That children have access to porn and watch it in increasing numbers is bad enough. Now they’re making their own porn, too. And not just making it — they’re starring in their own pornographic home movies, filming each other having sex and passing them around the class as entertainment.
This week in Gloucestershire a boy of 14 was arrested for making a pornographic film of himself and a schoolgirl of the same age.
The children — who cannot be named for legal reasons — do not attend the same school, but were friends.
Some time at the beginning of March the boy made the film of them having consensual sex and posted it on Facebook. As you do. Check us out. Isn’t this great!
Dear God. For weeks, the footage was in common circulation in Cheltenham schools, and is thought to have been viewed by thousands of pupils before being removed from the site.
What is going on?
When I was at school, children would pass around copies of Jackie or Hotspur comics as amusements —not porn-grade footage of each other making whoopee in the playground.
The more sexually presumptuous fifth-form boys might enjoy the occasional snigger at a Playboy pin-up — or have curious feelings about seeing Susan Stranks appearing on Magpie in a pair of hotpants, but that was about the extent of our sexual experience and knowledge.
Porn was something someone called Linda Lovelace did. Details of exactly how and when she did it were hazy.
We thought we were so cool, but in retrospect we were as innocent as a row of cauliflowers.
Things are very different now. The Gloucester Constabulary schools unit said the practice of pupils posting compromising or even pornographic pictures on the internet was happening with increasing frequency all over the country.
Perhaps in some ways, it is sadly inevitable. Children today have the smartphones, the technology and the desire. They see or hear of reality stars, football stars and pop singers such as Tulisa featuring in sex tapes — it has become all too commonplace.
Inevitable: Is it any surprise that we’ve come to this when children see stars like Tulisa as role models, pictured here talking about an internet sex video involving her and another man?
So, naturally, some youngsters want to copy them and make films of their own.
In this case, the boy was arrested and given a police warning for making and distributing an indecent video. No action was taken against the girl, though officers spoke to her and her parents. And that was it.
Of course, it is illegal in this country to have sex with anyone under 16. Yet the legislation is not intended to prosecute mutually consenting sexual activity between children under 16, unless it involves abuse or exploitation.
‘Proud’: the unnamed 14-year-old has apparently been boasting of his actions, which involved filming a girl, 14, performing a sex act on him
The girl agreed to take part, so no charges are brought and no punishment applied — but I doubt very much if punishing the children in some way would even help.
What could jail, fines or community service achieve in such a wretched set of circumstances?
The fault line goes much deeper than any penance inflicted upon them by a disapproving society. The fact that they don’t know it is wrong is what is so depressing.
We have to mourn the loss of innocence of an entire generation of children — many of whom have been lavished with computer games, smartphones and all sorts of wondrous modern communication tools and contrivances, but have received scant moral guidance about using them for good purposes, not bad.
For so many of these children there are no boundaries — only opportunities.
Local teachers have warned of the ‘evils of modern technology’ and spoken to the schools concerned about the lack of dignity and self-respect of those who allowed themselves to be portrayed in such a way.
But it hardly seems enough in the face of growing smartphone sex.
All we can hope is that most children reap the fantastic benefits that modern technology offers without falling into the moral abyss that comes with abusing it instead.