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sex, it revealed that 1 in 4 participants had had sex before they were 14. Twenty-eight per cent of these girls had caught sexually transmitted diseases; 58 per cent had regretted their last sexual encounter ( Girlfriend , February 2007, pp. 124–130). Journalist, Caitlin Flanagan, says “[w]hat’s most worrisome about this age of blasé blowjobs isn’t what the girl may catch, it’s what the girls are most certainly losing: a healthy emotional connection to their sexuality and their own desire” (Flanagan, 2006).
With the ready access young children have to porn we’re seeing an increase in sexual predators who are the same age as their victims (Hamilton, 2010, p. 64). It’s sobering to talk with professionals counselling sexual assault victims, who are now dealing with ever more incidents amongst primary school-age children. For decades, research literature has indicated that children act out behaviours they have viewed or experienced. Sexual assault units also report that girls are presenting who have been subject to the kinds of sexual assaults previously onlyseen with adult women. Australian psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg, sums up the situation when he says:
    One of the greatest problems we face is that many adults lack the skills, knowledge or strategies to critically analyse and understand the longer term impacts that sexualisation/pornification have on the behaviour of boys towards girls and, eventually, men towards women. The evidence is potentially one of the most toxic elements in society and it is time that those responsible for propagating this material be held accountable. When the history of public health is written, I am sure that this battle will sit alongside the struggle against the tobacco industry, infant food formula manufacturers and elements of the alcohol industry, in significance (correspondence with Hamilton, January, 2010).
One of the many outcomes of the regular consumption of porn is that often users no longer gain the satisfaction they once did with run-of-the-mill material. In a quest to experience continued arousal they begin to seek out more deviant and violent pornographic material. Gemma, a senior clinical psychologist who heads a sexual assault support team at a major hospital, spoke of her concerns about this new climate.
    We see a lot of 12-to-14 year-olds, targeted by boys 17 to 18 years. These are young girls wanting to be grown up, who’re still very young and trusting, who fall prey to pre-planned situations. They’re plied with alcohol, and possibly drugs, and often raped anally. In the past it was rape by one boy, but now it’s 2 or 3 boys, and often filmed. The severity of assaults is also growing (Hamilton, interview September, 2008).
Neuroscience pulls few punches when examining the effects of porn. As medical researcher, Norman Doidge, reminds us, “[s]oftcore pornography’s influence is now most profound because, now that it is no longer hidden, it influences young people with little sexual experience and especially plastic minds, in the process of forming their sexual tastes and desires” (Doidge, 2007, p. 103).
We have to act. As writer, TV and radio host, and former presidential speechwriter, Colleen Caroll Campbell reminds us,
    [i]n a society where pornography is so pervasive, it’s intimidating to face the truth about how it endangers our children, destabilizes our families and distorts our views of sex and one another. It’s easier to shout down the occasional unexpected criticism of pornography than to ponder its validity and change behaviour accordingly (Campbell, 2010).
Mary Eberstadt, a research fellow at the Hoover Institute, describes pornography as “sexual obesity – the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery” (Eberstadt, 2010).
Surely the measure of a healthy society is the level to which it nurtures and protects its young? The current climate is abusive to boys and girls. If we don’t speak out against the corporate sexualisation of