Youth Wellbeing Project

18 hours ago

😢 To every child or young person who has been abused - our hearts go out to you. May you find healing and may justice rain down.

👉 In Australia, we've had the Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It remains to be seen how effective this has been.

😫 In the US, the number of claims filed against the Boy Scouts of America totalled 88,500. The article reports that it’s by far the largest sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. Scouting has long offered a “perfect petri dish” for pedophiles: “boys have taken an oath of loyalty, they are away from their parents, in the wilderness. "We are devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in Scouting and moved by the bravery of those who have come forward,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement. “We are heartbroken that we cannot undo their pain.”

👉 For help in Australia: Kids Helpline | Phone Counselling Service | 1800 55 1800 or kidshelpline.com.au

newspunch.com/nearly-90000-sex-abuse-claims-filed-in-boy-scouts-bankruptcy-case/ ... See MoreSee Less

Youth Wellbeing Project

23 hours ago

😩 Another wake-up call article. Be sure to know what your kids are up to online, how this is shaping their attitudes and behaviours, and how it is making them vulnerable to grooming and exploitation. Regular conversations are ESSENTIAL.

➡️ "I spoke to a social worker recently who works with young children—think nine- to 11-year-olds—who have committed sexual abuse, or even sexual crimes. The one thing, I was told, common to all her cases was that the child was a consumer of online pornography. These children, she said, become so addicted that they stay up all night on their iPhones browsing pornographic tube sites. Often, the parents have no idea and hardly know to be worried—they are clueless about what's on these sites and how absurdly easy it is for a child to access them."

👉 Our recommendation is to delay, delay, delay giving kids smartphones. Check out our recommendations here: www.pornresilientkids.com/free-downloads/

www.newsweek.com/science-says-porn-huge-problem-lawmakers-must-stop-ignoring-it-opinion-1547810 ... See MoreSee Less

Youth Wellbeing Project

5 days ago

🤔 When we give kids devices, what are we saying yes to? Unless there are super tight filters and regular monitoring, the simple answer is, porn and predators.

👉 From the Office of the eSafety Commissioner: “Our investigators see terrible, terrible things, what we call coerced self-produced child sexual abuse material so children who are groomed online and then are asked remotely to commit sex acts either in the privacy or their bedrooms or bathrooms.

“In so many of these videos you can hear their parent’s voices in the next room.

The commissioner urged parents to take an active role in their children’s online activity.

“This can happen right under parents’ noses so we do encourage the more your kids are in open areas of the home,” she said.

Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the agency had experienced extraordinary spikes in complaints since March, including a 172 per cent increase in image-based abuse reports, a 123 per cent increase in illegal and harmful content, a 49 per cent increase in adult cyber abuse and a 32 per cent increase in youth-based cyber-bullying.

Full article posted in the first comment. ... See MoreSee Less

Youth Wellbeing Project

2 weeks ago

🤢 Feeling ill reading this post. The number of predators is increasing, as too is the number of children's lives devestated.

⚠️ What many people aren't willing to acknowledge is the role of pornography in influencing adults to digress to child sexual exploitation material and abuses against children. Here's just some of the research available to confirm:

☣️ A 2013 researcher who authored a paper on Internet pornography and paedophilia, proposes: clinical experience and now research evidence are accumulating to suggest that the Internet is not simply drawing attention to those with existing paedophilic interests, but is contributing to the crystallisation of those interests in people with no explicit prior sexual interest in children.

☣️ A 2015 study of 18-year-old Swedish males found that users who frequently watched porn viewed all forms of porn more often. One-third of frequent users viewed more deviant forms of pornography such as violent pornography, animal pornography and child pornography. 3.1% of frequent users reported viewing child sexual exploitation material, and 10.2% viewed sex with animals.

☣️ In terms of what this could mean for the numbers of Australian adult males digressing to more deviant forms of pornography such as child sexual exploitation material, we must consider the findings of Lim et al. (2017) . This study of over 800 Victorians aged 15 to 29 years found that eighty‐four per cent of young men watched porn on a weekly or daily basis. If we apply the above findings of one-third digressing to extreme content, significant numbers of men are regularly accessing more deviant forms of porn, including child sexual exploitation material.

🙏 Please, please, please talk to your kids about porn and let your teens know what to do if they see child sexual exploitation material. As ghastly as this is, we MUST educate our kids so that they can avoid harm and be revolutionary change-makers. Lets not let another generation of kids fall victim to porn and predators—and lets educate to prevent more youth turning into predators.

Find these stats in our recent submission to the Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Inquiry. Contact us if you want support to address this in your school.

www.youthwellbeingproject.com.au/sexual-violence-submission-2020/ ... See MoreSee Less