Parents beware: Let your children have unsupervised free reign on video games and the Internet at your own peril.
Case in point: a 13-year-old schoolboy admitted to raping his little sister, 8, after watching adult content on an Xbox computer console and will be sentenced in court soon.
The teen rationalized the rape by saying he wanted to try out what he had just seen on TV.
In Great Britain’s Blackburn Magistrates Court yesterday the boy admitted rape, indecent assault and inciting his sister to perform a sexual act on him, according to the Lancashire Telegraph.
The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has since been bailed out and sent to live with relatives away from his sister while a pre-sentence report is being prepared.
Fiona Elvines, from the Rape Crisis Charity, said that children accessing adult films was a “growing concern” that requires preventive measures. “This is going to completely destabilize this little girl’s life,” Elvines said. “It will take her a very long time to try and work through. It will have put her life on a different track and I do not want that to happen to anybody else.”
Elvines told the Lancashire Telegraph, “For a long time, people have been sitting on the fence and saying we do not have the evidence to say p0rn is harmful, but now we are starting to have some evidence around young people’s exposure. How much evidence do you need? It shows that the government’s measures are extremely important and that we need to start acting.
“When children see p0rn, they have no context for what it is used for. There is pressure on children to be sexualized, particularly on younger boys, to start having sex. It is coming from peers and porn.”
The government has said that by the end of 2014, all devices with access to the Internet will be blocked from accessing pornography, with users forced to opt in.
The Xbox customer support website says explicit content and Internet access can be restricted using parental controls.
Microsoft, the company that makes the console, said in a statement: “We have the greatest sympathy for all involved in this case. At Microsoft we have some of the most robust systems that allow parents to control what their children play and watch online.
“For example, access to the Internet is switched off automatically for all child accounts on Xbox, and we urge parents to review the settings on their children’s consoles.”
