Our Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist appeared before the NSW Standing Committee on Social issues examining the ‘Impacts of harmful pornography on mental, and physical health’ at its first public hearing Monday. This was her opening statement.

The pornography industry is significantly responsible for the harmful sexual socialisation of a generation of young people.

The world’s largest department of education has contributed to rising rates of violence against women, harmful sexual behaviours/peer-on-peer sexual abuse at levels never before seen. 

A generation of boys exposed to rape porn, sadism, torture, incest porn, at the click of a button.

The French equality watchdog found 90% of porn features violence against women with much of it amounting to torture.

30–60 percent of all incidents of childhood sexual abuse are carried out by other children and young people.  Data from the landmark Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) state: “Child Sexual Abuse by known adolescents [in non-romantic relationships] is by far the single most common category of offending.”

Professor Michael Salter in the Child Light submission, states: “The widespread availability of pornography appears to be driving the increased perpetration of sexual violence by children, particularly boys. 

Girls report routine sexual harassment and abuse by male students: touching, rape threats, sexual bullying, body shaming, sexual moaning and sexual gestures and boys trying to choke them. Boys commonly share porn at schools, airdropping it to kids on the bus, sending girls live masturbation videos.

79.9% of teachers were seeing more sexualised behaviour in schools from as young as Year 2 including children simulating sex acts on other children as documented in our report ‘Sexual Harassment of Teachers’ [SHOT] released by Collective Shout and author and parenting expert Maggie Dent late last year.

Many teachers identified pornography exposure as a significant driver of the rise in harmful sexual behaviours in schools. One said:

“I believe there is an increasing disconnect between women as human beings, and women as objects and I attribute this corrosion of respectful and boundary driven relationships to unfettered access to pornography.” 

We urge you to use every lever at your disposal to ameliorate these harms.

Read our Submission on the Impacts of Harmful Pornography on Mental, Emotional and Physical Health here.

See also: Sexual Harassment of Teachers’ [SHoT] report, Collective Shout/Maggie Dent, here.

Men's violence, not stigma, is the cause of harm to prostituted women

Report cites Collective Shout and Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist

Following its 2019 Inquiry into the Modern Slavery Act 2018 and Associated Matters, the New South Wales Legislative Council tabled its final report last month. The Act makes new provisions regarding child sexual exploitation material through the addition of the following offenses to the NSW Crimes Act 1900: 

a new aggravated offence in relation to using a child to produce child abuse material, and a new offence of providing information to assist a person to avoid detection for a child abuse material offence. 

We welcomed these new provisions which will strengthen capacity for holding offenders to account for sex abuse crimes committed against children. 

The report contained several references to Collective Shout’s submission and evidence presented by Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist who appeared for us at the Inquiry hearing last November, including the following quote from our submission:

New South Wales law must ensure that any person who is facilitating such horrific acts as the abuse on demand of babies and other young children, wherever the abuse might be occurring, through a digital platform operating in or accessed from New South Wales, is subject to an offence, whether the person administering or assisting to administer the digital platform does so intending it be used for that purpose or after becoming aware that it is being used for that purpose fails to take all reasonable steps to prevent that use. 

Contrary to our recommendations against watering down the Act in relation to digital platforms the amended Bill now excludes the previously proposed new criminal offence of administering a digital platform used to deal with child abuse material. Conflicts between Federal and State law was cited by the committee. Several contributors to the Inquiry objected to this deletion, noting that its inclusion was stronger than the provisions of Commonwealth legislation to hold digital platforms and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) accountable for hosting child sex abuse material. We shared concerns that its exclusion will provide loopholes for such offenders. As Melinda Tankard Reist pointed out at the hearing:

The child victim is a part of the slavery supply chain. Combating modern slavery has to include combating the global epidemic of this pay-per-view torture of children in the growing trade of predators commissioning the live sexual abuse of a child viewed via their computer screens and facilitated by their ISPs. ISPs and telcos including Telstra, Optus, iiNet and TPG are providing the infrastructure for the live streaming of the abuse of children to be possible. ISPs are part of a chain which contributes to the distribution of child sexual exploitation material but they have not been brought to account.

Melinda Tankard Reist at the Inquiry hearing, 4 November 2019

In her verbal evidence, MTR commended other contributors to the Inquiry, including International Justice Mission Australia (IJM) and the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA), as well as the expert advice of UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner Kevin Hyland. We were pleased to see Hyland’s six-point strategy for ending modern slavery featured in the report, which highlights the need for all nations to mandate - through legislation - a child-exploitation - and human-trafficking-free internet, as well as the outcomes of the proposed legislation which, according to Hyland, include “leading businesses into generating ethical profits free from exploitation and modern slavery”. We anticipate this outcome will have positive consequences for the broader community - women and girls particularly who stand to benefit from corporates who are unwilling to profit from exploitative activities.

While not mentioned in the Final Report, we noted CATWA’s significant observation that the Act’s proposed minimum $50 million annual turnover threshold for mandatory supply chain reporting will fail to capture agents of the sex industry - an industry in which women are at greatest risk of trafficking and slavery. In its submission CATWA concluded:

A requirement for sex industry businesses to report would be a first step in the fight against modern slavery. 

We strongly support this recommendation and would advocate for its inclusion in any future amendments.  

Read our full submission to the Inquiry here.

Read the full Parliamentary Hearing transcript here.

Read the NSW Legislative Council's final report here.

See also:

Pay Per View Torture: Why Are Australian Telcos and ISPs Enabling a Child Sexual Abuse Pandemic?

Tech companies turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse material

Collective Shout’s submission to the Modern Slavery Bill 2018 (Provisions)

Australian Modern Slavery Act must tackle sexual exploitation

Slavery is real and we will fight it, says NSW parliament

MTR + Melinda Liszewski address Social Policy + Legal Affairs Committee