Britain’s youth support workers hear horrific reports of painful, degrading sex on a daily basis
WORDS: HOLLY BOURNE ©DAILY MAIL. PHOTOS (MAN POSED BY MODEL): KI PRICE, GETTY
The fear of what our children may be exposed to online has been around for years. Yet despite efforts to monitor and control the content they see, sometimes it just isn’t enough. Research shows one in 10 children has viewed online porn by the age of nine, with the average age of first exposure being 12. Shockingly, 22% of 14- to 18-year-olds have viewed porn multiple times and of these, one in five admits to having a ‘porn habit’. It’s no surprise that the widespread consumption of hardcore porn is being deemed by many as a public health emergency. Former youth sex adviser Holly Bourne agrees, having witnessed first-hand the effects it has on young people. She tell us her story…
‘I HAD TO PUSH MY RAGE TO ONE SIDE’
Holly Bourne is a former youth sex adviser for a charity and author of You Could Be So Pretty.
Gripping my office desk, I read the messages landing in my inbox.
‘I’m 14, and my boyfriend wants anal in a car park while people watch.’
‘I’m scared to get strangled but everyone else is doing it.’
‘Sex always hurts and my boyfriend doesn’t care.’
During almost every shift as an online sex and relationships adviser for young people, a teenage girl would write in, confused and upset after she’d been pressured, coerced or forced into having sex. In particular, to have rougher and more violent sex — like the sex they said the boys were watching in online porn. I had known from my training that sexual violence would come up, but I never expected the onslaught. On a bad shift, at least half the messages would involve sexual violence. What was especially upsetting was these girls rarely realised they had just described a rape to me — they just saw non-consensual, degrading and painful sex as a ‘normal’ part of their lives. It was worryingly evident what early exposure to hardcore porn was doing to this generation.
I had been warned that this kind of work takes its toll, that most people can only endure two years at the most. I’d worked as a journalist and editor at a youth charity website for three years and they’d asked me to step into this new role. I had a no-doubt idealised concept of what it would involve and how fulfilling it would be.
I considered it a privilege to be privy to young people’s sex and relationship anxieties. The fact the service w
