Richard Hogan: A mother begged me to tell the story of her teen son's porn addiction

It is beyond time we tackled the scourge of hardcore pornography online — and if the EU won't act, Ireland must go it alone

The boy paused, looked at me, and then said: 'Please don’t tell my mam… I can’t stop watching porn.' Picture: iStock

I was sitting in my clinic last week, with a teenage boy across from me. I could tell he had something he wanted to share with me, but was struggling to let it out.

The conversation wasn’t really going anywhere until I said to him: “Why don’t you just say what is really on your mind and we can take it from there?”

He paused, looked at me, and then said: “Please don’t tell my mam… I can’t stop watching porn.”

He became emotional, and then he started bawling crying. A beautiful child, burdened with heavy emotional shame.

When I asked him how long did he think he had a problem with pornography, he told me since he was about seven or eight — he was now 14. He had been secretly living with this in his life for nearly seven years.

His mother was sitting outside in the waiting room, worrying that her child had become depressed. He had asked his mother could he talk with me because they had watched Raised By The Village together.

But, in reality, he had heard something I said on a radio programme about teenagers contacting me because they were stuck watching pornography. He told me he was on his way to football training when he heard the interview and wanted to burst out crying.

We sat together as he quietly described an all too familiar story of an older friend introducing him to pornography. He said he viewed it a bit on his iPad after that, but was scared he might get caught, then he said it was when he got a smartphone, at 10 years of age, that it really got out of control.

As I was sitting there, becoming enraged that a young boy had to endure this, questions kept flying around my mind. What the hell are we doing here? Why are we allowing our children to be corrupted by this poison?

Is this what being part of the European Union is all about; the proliferation of hardcore child pornography and the early sexualisation of our children? When are our politicians going to finally put our children before profit? Who is going to have the strength to take this on?

Things are not improving, they are becoming more complicated, sophisticated, and hardcore.

A recent report released by the Irish Internet Hotline (IIH) said computer-generated child sexual abuse material reported to the organisation rose by 325% last year. Why are we not outraged at this finding?

If only we could pay as much attention to the destruction of childhood innocence as we do some pay scandal in RTÉ. At times, it’s hard to remain positive when you see what really grabs the media’s attention.

After 10 years of advocacy for action against our children viewing hardcore images, and zero change, you can become despondent. But I refuse to stop shouting about it.

The report by the IIH illuminated the sheer scale of the illegal content online “now exceeds what reactive removal alone can address”. The dam has burst. The illusion that we were somehow moderating the impossible tsunami of child sexual content created and shared on the internet has ended.

We all know the internet is where paedophiles roam freely without much care of getting caught. The report shows this illegal content is now hidden behind closed-access platforms and sophisticated paywalls.

Why are financial institutions not stopping this? Where is the rigorous, robust protection against this kind of activity? If there was some sort of financial scam at work here, would it remain this hidden? Why is desperately needed child protection legislation continually blocked in the council of the European Union? It is almost like we don’t want to protect our children, we want them hooked on pornography and sexualised earlier and earlier.

The world has been rocked by the Epstein scandal, and the revelation of a dark cabal of elite wealthy people involved in child sexual trafficking and exploitation. Yet, who has been convicted outside of Epstein and his girlfriend? No one!

When you have so many questions and not one clear answer, you know you are fighting against something nebulous.

It is time that we all stood up as parents and said, turn off that poison you are feeding to our children. We should not tolerate this for one second more.

We don’t have to follow the EU, particularly if they are not willing to go after criminal organisations that are generating this content. We can stand up as a country and lead the way. We can be the model that other countries follow.

There are no real barriers to our children accessing hardcore extreme material. The end of innocence is just one click away. And our children are suffering.

In that conversation last week, the boy agreed to tell his mother what was going on in his life. He wasn’t depressed, he had been caught by the chokehold of pornography.

His mother asked me: “Please, Richard, get his story out there so other parents know what is happening to their child.”

What more do we need to happen, before we end this madness?

We have had our teenage daughters murdered by their classmates, after they consumed violent and problematic sexual material. We know early exposure to pornography is damaging for a child’s psychology. When will we say, enough is enough?

Our politicians say our children’s safety is top priority, but that’s just words, nice soundbites — where is the legislation?