A JUDGE IN Cork has called for “more rigorous restrictions” to be placed on pornography after the court heard that a young defendant in a sexual assault case watched pornography from the age of 11.
Sentencing the teen to 18 months in Oberstown for sexually assaulting a woman in her 20s when he was just 13 years old, Judge Catherine Staines said that the presumed influence of pornography was a “disturbing” aspect of the case.
The 15-year-old, who was 13 years old at the time, pleaded guilty to sexually and physically assaulting the woman.
The judge, sentencing the boy yesterday, said it is “truly shocking” that such pornographic material is “available to vulnerable, impressionable young people”.
“Clearly these companies are making vast sums of money from selling pornographic material,” she added.
”More rigorous restrictions should be imposed on them to prevent this harmful material being available to young children.”
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had assaulted the victim while she was walking home from an evening out in Cork city centre last year.
Giving evidence about what happened on the night, Detective Sergeant Tansley said the boy followed his victim from about 11.25pm before approaching her from behind, striking her on the back of the head, knocking her to the ground and hitting her in the head again.
He was stopped in the act after an eye-witness caught him while driving by. She previously told the trial that she was driving up Evergreen Street when she saw a male in the middle of the road. His leg was moving as if he was kicking something.
She indicated that when she got closer, she noticed that he was kicking a young woman.
“She had a long dress on [but] I could see the girl’s dress was up above her waist, it was up around her breasts, and I could see her panties, her panties were down, you could see her crotch. She was lying on the floor.”
The boy lied to the witness and said that he had came across the victim after seeing three other men attack her.
The woman said that she informed the victim that she was safe now. She and two other people who came upon the scene started cleaning the blood off her face which was beginning to swell up badly.
The victim said she was so badly injured from the attack that she was unable to use the facial recognition feature on her phone to call her parents.
In a plea for a more lenient sentence, the boy’s solicitor said that he had no previous convictions and had never been in trouble prior to the incident.
This week, Aontú TD Peadar Tóibín said the “government know the link between sexual violence and children watching porn, yet do nothing” after the Children’s Commissioner for England report found 10% of their participants had accessed porn by the age of nine.
Tóibin said, according to research from Children at Risk in Ireland, “boys as young as eight years of age are accessing pornography online and one in every three porn videos depicts explicit sexual violence or aggression”.
The report from the English Children’s Commissioner found that 79% of children surveyed had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18 and that children as young as nine had access to the content.
Tóibin said: “The government is banning the advertising of junk food to children but yet won’t use the same common sense when it comes to children consuming pornography.”
Last year, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said there was more work to be done to work towards restricting access to pornography while introducing the new “Zero Tolerance” plan.
A study by Women’s Aid, a national domestic violence awareness and prevention organisation, found that 71% of people believe that tech companies have the capability to end children’s and young people’s exposure to pornography.
Additionally, the organisation found that 78% are concerned about children’s and young people’s exposure to pornography in Ireland.
Women’s Aid recommended that the Government should examine practical and effective measures that might be taken to target the business model of the industry while Tóibin believes it’s “reckless” that the government have yet to take action on these restrictions.
In her impact statement, the victim in the case said she was determined not to let what had happened to her control her life. However, she finds it hard to walk places on her own.
“Even walking during the day if I hear or think I hear footsteps I find it hard to breathe and start panicking. It feels like I’m back in the moment I was being assaulted. I usually wait for the person to pass me in order to try to calm down,” she said.
The woman said she finds it hard to hug or be close to male friends of family members since the incident and the idea of being in a romantic relationship in the future makes her feel extremely uncomfortable.
She also feels anxious when passing teenage or young boys.
“For a minute, my heart starts to race and my chest feels tight. I feel angry that this was done to me while I was doing something so basic that everyone has a right to do. I feel angry that my sense of safety has been taken away from me.
“There hasn’t been one day that has passed that I haven’t thought about what happened: it has changed me and I’m still dealing with it but I know that I won’t let it control me forever.”
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