e-nough of porn on e-TV! (26 July 2007)

Porn on free-to-air national TV is outrageous. There are many parentless homes in South Africa and many homes where children are not supervised as to what TV they are watching. R18 restrictions are not enough to prevent children from watching these films

Shaheda Omar, therapeutic manager at Teddy Bear Clinic in Johannesburg, has interviewed 100 child sex offenders and their mothers from across the social spectrum for her doctoral research project at Johannesburg University. In most cases she found that absent parents and “unmet emotional needs” had turned television into a “surrogate care-giver” with disastrous consequences. While some children claimed they had wanted to emulate love scenes in soap operas like the Bold and the Beautiful, others said they had been inspired by late night pornography on e-TV (Cape Times, Child on Child Violence Out of Control, 22 October 2006).

Even so-called soft core pornography has been shown to fuel sexual abuse. It desensitizes the viewer by objectifying the women. This can lead to addiction and a desire to view more hard-core material.

I cannot believe that e-TV feels no sense of social responsibility for the harm they are causing.

Considering that South Africa has some of the highest rape statistics in the world and one of the highest HIV prevalence rates, can e-TV (and other broadcasters) afford to be contributing to these disastrous statistics through the negative sexual grooming of children and adults in this nation?

Pornography is the theory, rape is the practise.

Sincerely,

Taryn Hodgson