When he saw me come in, he quickly closed the computer. It was almost 11pm on a school night, so I went in to tell him to turn off his light at once.Ĭharlie was sitting in bed with his laptop in front of him - we'd bought him one when he'd started his new school, but he clearly wasn't doing his homework. I was going to bed when I noticed the light on in Charlie's room. But then one night my eyes were opened to the truth. It never occurred to me that the problem was pornography. I feared that, as the youngest of several brothers, this particular boy might also have access to cigarettes, drink and even drugs. I knew his new friend was encouraging Charlie to play the violent video games that I hate so much and have always banned. I can't prove that he started it all, but I suspected there was something going wrong from the moment the two of them first met.įurtive: A new study shows that four out of five 16-year-old boys and girls regularly view pornography (posed by model) But even the best schools contain a few bad apples and my suspicions fell on a particular boy in Charlie's class. Was Charlie responding to that? Or perhaps it was the influence of his new school.Ĭharlie goes to a big suburban comprehensive that prides itself on the quality of its pastoral care as much as its exam results. We weren't the screaming and shouting kind, but there was a sullen gulf of silence opening up between us. My husband, Mike, and I were going through a rough patch, as most couples do at one time or another. And the doctor assured us he wasn't physically ill. So it wasn't some kind of hormonal reaction to becoming an adolescent. He didn't have a hair on his chin and his voice was high and unbroken. How could my beautiful boy, who could light up a room and my heart with his smile, have turned into this hollow, self-hating shell? What had I done wrong?Īlmost six months went by and still I could find no answer. At his junior school he was popular with his classmates, loved playing football in the school team and was rarely in any kind of trouble with his teachers. He'd always been a cheerful, friendly, sunny sort of chap. I know, because my son was one of them.Ĭharlie was 11 when not just his behaviour, but his entire character started changing. It's enslaving hundreds of thousands of British children. Here, one distraught mother tells the Mail how her 11-year-old son changed beyond all recognition when he began secretly watching porn on his laptop in his own bedroom.
Their defiance comes despite an independent inquiry into online protection by MPs that warned a generation of teenagers were addicted to porn. Major internet firms were yesterday accused of being 'complicit' in exposing children to hardcore pornography and violence online by continuing to refuse to give parents the choice of blocking material that no child should see, but that is too easily available on every device now in the home.