Online porn showing choking to be made illegal, government says
8 hours ago Share Save Shiona McCallum Senior technology reporter Share Save
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Online pornography showing strangulation or suffocation is to be made illegal, as part of government plans to tackle violence against women and girls. It follows a review which found depictions of choking were "rife" on mainstream porn sites and had helped normalise the act among young people. Both the possession and publication of such material will be a criminal offence, under amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill currently going through Parliament. Online platforms would also be required to proactively detect and remove such material or face enforcement action via media regulator Ofcom.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said the change would make choking in pornography a "priority offence" under the Online Safety Act, putting it on the same level as child sexual abuse material and terrorism content. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: "Viewing and sharing this kind of material online is not only deeply distressing, it is vile and dangerous. Those who post or promote such content are contributing to a culture of violence and abuse that has no place in our society. Conservative peer Baroness Bertin warned earlier this year that there has been a "total absence of government scrutiny" of the pornography industry. Her independent review, published in February, cited an account of a 14-year-old boy asking a teacher how to choke girls during sex and warned that people imitating such behaviour "may face devastating consequences". Speaking to the Today programme, on BBC Radio Four, Baroness Bertin welcomed the government's move but said more action was needed. "It's only the beginning as there's still so much violent pornography that is completely legal in the online world and completely illegal in the offline world," she said. "The government has to use this as a first step to try to address that balance."
'Serious form of violence'