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Investigatesonline pornographyTHE NUMBER OF children under 17 receiving support under a Tusla-led programme for sexually harmful behaviour has increased by more than 40% in the last year.
The Journal Investigates can reveal how rising referrals to the National Inter-Agency Prevention Programme (NIAPP) has led to more services being rolled out around the country to cope with demand.
It comes as child safety experts here warn that the porn industry is targeting “younger and younger” schoolchildren online.
Explicit cartoon-themed content, which includes characters from popular kids TV shows, is being circulated and pushed to young people on the internet.
Eoghan Cleary, a gender studies coordinator, told The Journal Investigates: “It was teenagers for a while, but now it’s getting younger and younger and younger.
“There is Paw Patrol porn, Baby Yoda porn, and porn that is specifically made to target kids around stuff that they’re interested in before they even realise what their own natural sexual development might be.”
The fake content, which The Journal Investigates has seen, is widely available and easily accessible. It has been created by third parties, with no connection to the original makers of the TV shows mentioned.
Cleary said the government now has a “closing window of opportunity” to tackle the issue, as a growing number of teenagers are being influenced by violent and extreme material they are viewing online.
His call has been backed by a number of leading child safety experts who say Ireland faces a sexual violence epidemic unless more is done to hold tech companies to account.
“The pornified expectations that are out there have just become normalised and mainstreamed,” Cleary said.
“And I’m at pains to try and get government to realise is, there’s a closing window of opportunity whereby if we don’t do anything, sex, for the current generation, will just become sexually violent,” he said. “Sex will just become sexual violence.”
Figures obtained from Tusla show that last year 83 referrals were made to the National Inter-Agency Prevention Programme (NIAPP), a significant increase from 2023 when 58 referrals were received.
The child and family agency run programme provides assessment and age-appropriate intervention for children aged 3 to 17 who exhibit “sexually harmful/abusive behaviours”.
Tusla told The Journal Investigates that the number of children requiring such intervention has been “steadily increasing” in recent years. In 2022, NIAPP received 53 requests for safety, therapeutic and risk management support for children.
Children At Risk Ireland (CARI), a charity providing similar child support and therapy services, has also seen a rise in children presenting harmful sexual behaviour.
This, according to CARI, is defined as developmentally inappropriate sexual behaviour that may be harmful or abusive. It can include peer-on-peer and child-on-child abuse.
Chief Executive Clinical Officer Emer O’Neill told The Journal Investigates: “CARI has always worked with children who display harmful sexual behaviour, but I think the clinical team and myself are seeing a little bit more of it.
“I think that’s what we’re seeing in the world today around sexual violence, sexual abuse.”
O’Neill said the child sexual abuse charity, which currently has offices in Dublin and Limerick, was currently working on developing its service “throughout Ireland” due to the increasing need of children requiring support.
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Cleary, an assistant principal at a school in Co Wicklow, has seen first hand the damage porn-use is having on Ireland’s schoolchildren.
The teacher, who sits on the government’s Online Health Taskforce, was made aware of one recent incident involving a group of young students where a messaging group was set up to share X-rated material.
“It was a WhatsApp group with over 100 first year [students] in it. And it was primarily used just to share porn with each other.
“That’s an end-to-end, encrypted social media platform that the owners of have absolutely no legal responsibility as to what happens between children,” he said.
The Journal Investigates asked Meta, the owners of Whatsapp, about this and queried how children are able to share such harmful content freely.
A spokesperson responded: “We give all users options to control who can add them to groups and the first time you receive a message from an unknown number we give you the option to block and report the account.”
Cleary said that the internet has changed in that, previously, users would have to seek out pornographic content to view it. Now, pornographic content is seeking out its consumers and targeting a younger audience.
What parents see online and what parents are targeted with online is totally, utterly different from what kids are targeted with online.
“And so the parents can’t even imagine the content that their kids are engaging with.
“As soon as the internet realises you’re a teen or pre-pubescent male or female, it bombards you with pornographic content that is made to either entice you, or is made to introduce you to a world whereby this is normalised.”
The teacher said female students have told him about being targeted with porn via social media, and even asked to provide their own images to sites.
Male teenagers have been targeted with links to X-rated material on both social and gaming platforms, he said. This included so-called gaming influencers directing young people to harmful content.
From September 2027, education on consent, pornography and mental health will become mandatory for all secondary level students.
The new curriculum, announced last year by the National Council for Curriculum Assessment, will be part of the updated Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE) programme.
Media regulator Coimisiún na Meán also adopted a new Online Safety Code last year, binding video-sharing platforms to protect children from harmful content.
However, the code only applies to platforms which have their EU headquarters in Ireland.
It’s a welcome step, said Cleary, who has run his own gender studies school programme for the last eight years. However, he believes it is not enough.
“We need legislative action to protect children online in the first place,” he said.
“An absolute no-brainer for me would be that every single teacher is trained in how to teach media literacy.
Be critical of sexualisation in the media and porn literacy, areas around avoiding being the perpetrator or victim of sexual violence. And porn literacy, gender, domestic, sexual and gender based violence.”
In a statement to The Journal Investigates, the Department of Education said its updated SPHE curriculum aims to “equip students with the skills and knowledge to navigate the world around them, and to develop healthy relationships”.
A spokesperson said this included a strand at Junior Cycle, which focuses on the influence of the online world, and the influence of pornography, on “young people’s understanding, expectations and social norms in relation to sexual expression”.
“It is important to be very clear that the curriculum categorically does not expose children to graphic or explicit content, or normalise the use of pornography,” the spokesperson said.
“On the contrary, key messages would be that pornography is not a good place to go to learn about sex, and that it can be disturbing and even damaging for young people.
“No inappropriate, graphic or explicit material should ever be used in a classroom setting.”
The Journal Investigates has spoken to a range of experts and child safety representatives who have also backed Cleary’s call for government action to be taken on protecting young people from online porn content.
Dr Clíona Saidléar, Executive Director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland, said Ireland is experiencing a “serious rise” in child-on-child sexual violence.
She said: “There’s been some harrowing accounts coming in to us, particularly from young girls, who have experienced incredible violence from their peers. That is absolutely pornography inspired and facilitated.
Pornography has made it seem like sexual violence is not violent.
“It has groomed that generation around it. How do you name what’s happened to you as sexual violence, if your whole culture around you has said that that’s normal practice?”
Alex Cooney, CEO and founder of online safety charity CyberSafe Kids, said Ireland needs a roadmap similar to that recently introduced in the UK which aims to protect children from harmful content.
“The UK’s regulator has introduced a new requirement on any service that provides pornographic content that could be accessed by a child, but it goes beyond the commercial porn sites,” Cooney said.
“And so basically they’re saying, if you allow that content, and if it is likely to be accessed by a child, you have to age gate to 18, and it’s got to be highly effective age assurance. We want to see a very clear timeframe and roadmap for that requirement in Ireland.”
As well as legislative changes, there is also a greater need for parental awareness and education, experts told The Journal Investigates.
Dr Sharon Lambert, Member of the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI), emphasised not only the need for strict parental controls on online devices, but also “open communication” around sexual health and relationships.
“If parents don’t want to talk to children about healthy sexual relationships, then they should not give them unrestricted access to the internet, because you can’t have both,” she said.
“You can’t say, I don’t want my children to know about healthy relationships, while also handing them a device that allows them to access really dangerous, inappropriate content that is very, very bad for their development.”
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Reporter: Patricia Devlin • Editor: Maria Delaney • Social Media: Cliodhna Travers • Video: Nicky Ryan • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
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