Children's Commissioner horrified by child access to porn

England's Children's Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has expressed deep concern about children accessing pornography online.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Dame Rachel said: "We’ll look back in 20 years and be absolutely stunned that our children were exposed to so much harm online.

"I’m seeing eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds – a massive percentage of underage children – on these websites and social media. If parents actually knew what their children were seeing they would be really worried."

She stressed that the government needs to crack down on access to porn sites, something CARE has campaigned for over many years. Illustrating the harm porn causes to kids, the Commissioner added:

"I was so concerned that I got a group of 16 to 21-year-olds and brought them to the Department for Education and asked them about their experiences of online harms.

"There was one girl who talked to me about her first kiss with a boyfriend and how he put his arms around her neck and tried to choke her. It was her first kiss. He had been watching porn and thought that was what you do."

Another young girl who took part in the interview described how she is harassed for naked selfies by boys up to ten times a night.

"The difference is that when I was at school something might happen but we could go home and it was over, whereas it is 24/7 now," Dame Rachel said.

Last week, a child safety coalition urged pornography sites operating in the UK to implement age verification controls to prevent children stumbling on explicit content.

An open letter organised by Barnardo's and signed by various other charities also calls for sites to remove "illegal and harmful content" that would be classed as illegal if a person was found in possession of it.

You can sign the open letter by visiting this page: Open letter on child protections from pornography