A CHILDREN’S charity says youngsters should be protected from internet pornography after a 15-year-old was jailed for raping a girl after viewing online filth.
The boy was caged after a judge heard how he spent several months in the run up to the sickening attack trawling the internet to view porn.
Teesside Crown Court heard that he and a friend bound and gagged the terrified girl, threatened her with a knife and put a plastic bag over her head during the attack.
Both boys were arrested and later admitted charges of rape and false imprisonment.
Now bosses at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) say they have seen an increase of cases where youngsters are watching hard-core porn and young girls who are forced into having sex.
Lisa Harker, head of strategy at the NSPCC, said: “Sadly we are hearing about more and more cases like this.
“ChildLine has seen a surge in calls from young people exposed to hard-core pornography on the internet and from young girls saying they are being pestered, coerced and even forced into mimicking these videos.
“The NSPCC warned on Safer Internet Day this year that online pornography and related issues such as ‘sexting’ are the new child protection issues facing the current generation of young people. And it’s often peers who pose the threat, not adults.
“We must educate young people about what safe and appropriate relationships are, and the industry must help parents block these videos from young eyes.”
During the hearing earlier this week, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton said: “You had for many months, I’m told, spent any days trawling through internet pornography so your interest in sexual matters was heightened and heightened, but it was unfulfilled and you wanted to experiment.”
The girl cried throughout the ordeal and suffered bruising and longer lasting mental scars.
The full extent of the Hartlepool attack only came to light several days later when her family noticed her bruises.
The boy was sentenced to three years youth detention while the second boy was sentenced to four years’ youth detention in November last year.