Chocking scenes in online pornography should be made illegal to help counter “an avalanche of violence” towards young women and girls, a Labour MP has said.
Speaking exclusively to GB News, Jess Asato told how she will go to Parliament next week and call for a change in the law to ban the scenes, which are already outlawed in other forms of "offline" pornography.
Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, is also going to push for new laws which would help ensure girls aged under 18 aren’t being featured in X-rated films.
She fears the use of underage girls in porn is opening up a “gateway” to abuse - and has demanded Ofcom imposes massive fines on those firms who fail to make proper checks, and clean up their act.
Speaking exclusively to GB News, Jess Asato told how she will go to Parliament next week and call for a change in the law to ban the scenes, which are already outlawed in other forms of 'offline' pornography
GB News
In an interview with Gloria De Piero, to be screened this Sunday on GB News, the Labour MP said: “We know online pornography has become a vector for violence against women and girls. This isn't the sort of pornography that people might have been used to in the 1980s.
“We are talking about extreme violent acts, degrading acts against women in pornography. And in particular, the thing that I'm trying to change is choking in pornography. This is legal online, but it is illegal offline.
"So, if you were to go to a sex shop and buy a pornography DVD, which is a bit old fashioned, then you wouldn't be able to watch very violent acts of choking on women. And I'm trying to make sure that the same applies online so that we can really stop this huge avalanche of violence towards women and girls.”
“I'm hoping the Government will look at my change that I'm putting forward next week in Parliament positively. If they were to take that forward and make it the law, then what would happen is that porn companies would be in breach of the law if they shared videos of choking.
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“That would give Ofcom, who are the regulator through the Online Safety Act the powers to have really big fines or in some cases start criminal proceedings. So I'm just asking for this particular content category, choking in particular, to be part of the Online Safety Act and for Ofcom to act if porn companies don't then take this stuff off their sites.”
Outlining how big an issue this is she continued: “About 40 per cent of men say that they have choked a woman during sex. But this is leading to things like spitting, slapping, and all things that actually many women say they, they don't want, they don't consent to.
“So technically that's criminal. And choking is never, ever safe. And there's some medical evidence now that women who are being choked time and time again during sex are suffering brain damage.
“We know from sexual assault referral centres that many of the victims who come in will have been choked without their consent. In some cases, that's leading them to go to A&E. It's leading them to have dizzy spells and to lose memory and so forth. This is actually a very, very harmful act.
"And so from my perspective, it's about time we saw this as both an issue to do with criminal justice. It's about protecting women against violence.”
Explaining why she was determined to push for change in this area she said: “When I worked for children's charity Barnardos, which was my job before I got into Parliament, we were seeing younger kids, like seven, eight, nine year olds coming into their services and addicted to watching pornography.
"And more recently I started to understand how this absolute epidemic is impacting deeply on our children.”
Outlining why it was vitally important to do more to ensure under 18’s aren’t appearing in porn, she said: “We know child sexual abuse material has absolutely spiralled out of control on the internet. And what we're finding is that many men who go on to develop an interest in children often start by watching online pornography and developing an interest in the teen strand, which is ubiquitous.
“It's the number one searched for term on pornography channels. And we are talking about very, very young looking adult actors. We don't know whether they're over 18. The porn companies say they are, but there's no way of proving it.
“That's one of the other amendments that I have down that I hope the Government might accept next week. And it's that porn companies have to prove that every single person who is engaged in the pornographic acts is over 18, so that we absolutely stop what is child pornography appearing on these channels. We need to stop this gateway.”
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