Warning: Graphic content
On his first day of high school a 13-year-old South Island boy was shown a video of a dog being skinned alive, and two more of people killing themselves.
In the days that followed, his mum says, the content shared by fellow students switched to target="_blank">“constant porn”.
“It’s pretty intense”, says the mum, who the Herald on Sunday agreed not to name to protect the identity of her son.
“When they were allowed their phones, they had porn. Just constant porn, all types, whatever you’re into. They’d be showing each other in class with their phones, and with kids that just are completely unaware.”
One video sent to the teen’s friend while they walked together showed a boy - wearing the uniform of a nearby intermediate - being filmed from behind as he masturbated.
But it wasn’t long before her son’s shock wore thin, disturbing his mum.
“At the start he’d come home telling me these stories, and then after a while he pretty much got desensitised and was like, ‘Oh, it’s just another dumb video they sent out, Mum’.
“You want to keep your kids away from a lot of things, but when it comes to this stuff it’s just inevitable with the internet, and with people videoing and sending it.”
Her story’s alarming, but sadly not surprising to those raising awareness of kids’ and teens’ exposure to - and sometimes involvement in - the distribution of harmful and illegal sexual photos and videos online.
Parenting Place presenter Holly Brooker and porn researcher and sex therapist Jo Robertson founded non-government organisation Makes Sense to pressure the Government and internet service providers (ISPs) to improve filtering systems blocking illegal and objectionable material, including child sex abuse material, and the sexual abuse of women and animals.
More than 10,000 people are backing their plea in a petition that will be given to Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden at the Beehive next month.
Work is under way to improve filtering systems, with an announcement expected in “the coming months”, van Velden says.
Under the current system, the Digital Child Exploitation Filter System operated by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) is used by ISPs to reduce access to child sex abuse material online.
Anyone clicking on a list of websites (URLs) known to host such material are redirected to a page explaining why access is blocked, and with links to additional information and support, a department spokeswoman says.
The list is based on URLs reported by the public, enforcement agencies or through proactive investigation, the spokeswoman says.
As of March 20, there were 699 unique URLs on the block list, which is manually reviewed quarterly but can also have new URLs added between reviews.
More than 4.6 million attempts to view child sex abuse material were blocked in the last five years, and more than 6000 attempts have been redirected to external support services, she says.
“The majority of internet service providers in New Zealand have voluntarily connected to the filter, and approximately 95 per cent of New Zealand internet users are protected from inadvertently accessing child sexual abuse material.”
But while 699 blocked websites might sound a lot, it doesn’t come close to international efforts, Brooker says.
“The majority of other countries that we would normally compare ourselves to are filtering thousands of websites out every day.”
She and Robertson want New Zealand to adopt the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation’s child sex abuse material list, which blocks on average 6000 URLs a day, and up to 30,000 a day at peak.
The list is also updated twice daily and uses tech such as web crawling and hashing to snag harmful websites, with analysts verifying child sex abuse material.
“There’s this advanced tech that other countries are using that we just haven’t invested in at all.”
The pair are also calling for additional genres to be blocked, such as real rape content and bestiality, which are both classified as illegal and objectionable under New Zealand law “and yet there’s millions of videos online kids can easily see”.
Adults accessing legal porn needn’t worry about being affected.
“When we’re talking about real rape content, it’s not the sexually violent content that’s on porn websites. They might say ‘rough’ or ‘brutal’ or they might use the word ‘forced’.
“We’re talking about sites that include the use of the word rape, and they’ll also say it’s authentic, not simulated.”
Meanwhile, they’ve had “productive” talks with Bing owners Microsoft, and Google’s made changes to push problematic sites to the bottom of search result pages.
But that won’t stop kids typing website addresses in manually.
“So we can’t just have the search engines managing it. We also need that systemic response. I’d love to see [the DIA] use a machine-learning model to develop a new filter that can keep up the tech for rape content and bestiality.”
Over months of their conversations with ministers, MPs, the chief censor, Google, Microsoft and ISPs, and through her own work, she’s heard many stories like the South Island mother and son’s, Robertson says.
Curious kids and teens then risk more harm when they search online for answers, she says.
“[One story] I heard from a Government official was … their daughter’s friend was told at school by an 11-year-old, ‘If I see you walking home from school, I’m going to rape you’. The daughter came home and said to her mum, ‘What does rape mean?’
“But if you don’t have a relationship with your parents where you can ask, then you would potentially Google it, and then you’ll see that content.”
Most assume the worst child sex abuse material is blocked, which may explain why the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System hasn’t been expanded to use web crawling or hashing, or to include other genres of illegal sexual abuse, since it was introduced in 2010, Robertson says.
“Our engagement with the community suggests most people think something’s being done. It’s the same with bestiality or rape content - the conversations we have, people are like, ‘Oh, surely you can’t Google that?’”
The incidence of kids being groomed online to create sexual imagery has soared since the pandemic, the Internet Watch Foundation has found.
Imagery of primary school-aged children being coached to perform sexual acts online is up 1058 per cent since 2019, according to the the foundation’s most recent annual report in 2022.
Kids are increasingly being groomed online through gaming apps like Roblox, as well as Instagram and TikTok.
Groomers are both strangers and people kids know, some posing as strangers, Robertson says.
One plus with social media is its reporting mechanism.
“I’ve seen child sex abuse material on YouTube and Instagram, but because you can report it at least they can do something about it. The problem with websites is you can’t really do anything about them.”
Imagery obtained from a groomed child can then be used for further exploitation, such as blackmailing them to encourage friends to also send photos and videos of themselves.
“We don’t have data for New Zealand, but what we see with porn and young people’s engagement with sexual content online doesn’t change internationally around the consumption rates, because kids around the world have the same phones and the same access to sites.”
Under-12s creating and sharing sexual content were likely to be the result of grooming, exploitation or coercion, whereas with over-12s it may be related to friendships or sexual relationships - which can still also be related to grooming, coercion and lack of consent, she says.
“I really want teenagers to know that when they have [sexual] imagery on their phone and when they distribute that - say someone sent them something and they send it to another friend - that’s the distribution of child sexual abuse material.
“They’re engaging in a crime by doing that.”
That’s true, but no one wants young people winding up in the criminal justice system unnecessarily, Netsafe chief online safety officer Sean Lyons says.
That includes police, he says.
“We talk with them, and that’s very much their attitude … while the strict word of law might say it’s illegal, the likelihood of any children being prosecuted under that law is next to zero.”
In New Zealand young people can only face the full spectrum of criminal charges from age 14.
Before then, charges are limited to those for “serious and repeat offending” from age 12, and murder or manslaughter from age 10. Under-10s can’t be held criminally responsible.
It’s adults grooming young people to create and distribute sexual imagery who are the target, Lyons says.
“That’s where law enforcement’s interest is. No one’s going to be hauling kids up before the Youth Court.”
Parents are, however, coming to them for advice, their concern rising each year as the online world becomes more accessible, he says.
“As the technology gets easier to use, unfortunately, it also becomes easier to cause harm.”
And it’s unrealistic in 2024 to expect teens won’t send sexual photos and videos of themselves to others.
“‘Don’t do it’ falls on deaf ears. The stronger advice we need to be giving them is thinking about how well you know somebody before [sending imagery], and what the agreement is between you and the other person.”
Conversations with younger children depend on their age, and whether parents are already speaking with them about sex, sexual identity and consent.
But even with the youngest children, parents can talk about what’s appropriate - or not - to share with others, and how those online mightn’t always be who they say they are.
“It’s beginning those conversations at an early stage in a context that’s appropriate for young people, and then not feeling like ‘We’ve had that conversation once, we’re done’.
“Because at some point the conversation’s going to change to, ‘What do you do if somebody asks you where you live, or for a picture of you … what are the things you should and shouldn’t talk to them about?’”
“Complicated world, isn’t it,” says Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand president Vaughan Couillault on the challenges facing modern youngsters.
Curiosity isn’t new - but the accessibility, volume and sometimes level of harm has changed with the internet and smartphones, the 32-year teaching veteran and current Papatoetoe High School principal says.
“I remember in Year 9 going on a [school] trip to a museum and one of my mates whipped a Penthouse out of his bag and was showing everyone the centrefold.
“I don’t think the sexual stuff is new but the ease of access, the quantum and maybe the ability to access objectionable content is new … those magazines were relatively harmless compared to what some of these guys are seeing now.”
Two-thirds of 14- to 17-year-olds have seen porn, a survey of more than 2000 Kiwi teens showed in 2018.
Of those, 71 per cent had come across it accidentally, and 72 per cent said they’d seen non-consensual behaviour, the Office of Film and Literature Classification-commissioned survey found.
Sexuality - including healthy sexual relationships - are in the Year 9 and 10 health curriculums, Couillault says.
Porn also gets a reality check, he says.
“Much like in the movies, when you get shot you don’t stick a plaster on it and carry on running. Similarly, not every man has a 17-foot penis and can shag for three hours a night.”
He suggests parents worried about their kids’ potential exposure to harmful content, people or situations - both on and offline - talk to experts.
“And the experts aren’t TikTok and they’re not found on the internet. They’re therapists, clinicians, doctors, psychologists and counsellors, and they’re the people that’ll help you navigate the murky waters of the dark stuff.
“Even just the IT people at school can help you make sure you know what your little one’s doing. Don’t trust that they’re just on Netflix, because they might not be.”
Unfortunately parents, in particular, are “largely unaware” of what’s going on, says Makes Sense co-founder Robertson.
“They don’t know that kids are talking to strangers online, on gaming platforms. They don’t know what’s available on social media sites. They don’t know what’s being normalised.
“So education is important. But the issue for Holly and I is that it’s constantly putting the onus back on parents to do the work. And what we’d really like to see is Government actually stepping up and doing more.”
That work’s happening already, says van Velden.
“The department is looking to improve the filter and expanding the list to more URLs hosting child sexual abuse material”, the Internal Affairs Minister said in an emailed statement this week.
“This work is currently under way and requires robust consultation with all involved. Right now, it’s commercially sensitive, but I expect to make an announcement in the coming months.”
It’s important to get right because technology’s moving fast and the law sometimes struggles to keep up, van Velden says.
“If we are making policy changes, or changes to the filter, we need to get those settings right under the law.”
Good work’s already been done, leading to 699 URLs being blocked and more than a million attempts to access child exploitative material stopped each year, she says.
“But we can do better.”
She hopes other ISPs will become members of the Internet Watch Foundation, as Spark did on Thursday, which follows the telco agreeing with the department to block access on their network to websites showing kids being sexually abused.
Spark’s foundation membership - the first by an ISP in New Zealand - means from April 1 they’ll also be filtering websites with child sex abuse material from the international organisation’s much larger list of blocked URLs.
The stories of families whose children have accidentally come across child sex abuse online are heartbreaking to hear, van Velden says.
“Child exploitation material online is abhorrent, and it is illegal to make, process and share. There is no place for it in New Zealand.”
The South Island mum says her son is doing okay after his unexpected and unwanted initiation last year into the dark reaches of the internet.
But the mum-of-three worries for kids whose parents are unaware, as she was, of what their kids are seeing online.
She encourages mums and dads to “flip through their kids’ phones and see their history, and be computer savvy so you’re aware of the things getting sent or getting looked at”.
And most of all, as hard as it sometimes is, to talk to your kids.
“Have good communication with your kids, because it’s gonna happen, and luckily we have an amazing open policy [in our family] where we can chat about anything.
“If we didn’t, I’d still have no idea.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
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