Family First NZ is stoked with a decision by Visa and Mastercard to cut ties with Pornhub following a report by the New York Times last week that alleged the website has videos of child sexual assaults and exploitations.

“Pornography sites that host videos with themes of violence against women, incest, racism, and videos of forced sex acts, sex trafficking and child sexual abuse victims should be banned. The lid has been lifted on Pornhub, but it has taken credit card businesses the guts to put these sites on notice, rather than weak political will,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director.

“Society is starting to catch up with the science on the harms of pornography. There has been an important New Zealand conversation around consent and ‘rape culture’. At the same time, there is increasing consumption and availability of online pornography and sexual violence. It’s time we connected the dots.”

“One just has to look at the huge amount of international and national research in this area on the effects on health. We need to find an urgent balance between appropriate censorship versus freedom of expression, the role and equipping of parents, and other issues that arise, to provide an achievable solution to this significant health issue.”

The Ministry of Health in its 2017 submission (responding to a 22,334-written petition calling for “an expert panel be appointed to investigate the public health effects and societal harms of pornography to both children and adults, and to make policy recommendations to Parliament") acknowledged that “the content of pornography has changed significantly over the last 20 years and has become more extreme, deviant and violent” and that “violence towards women and girls is depicted in 80% of online content. This has a variety of harmful impacts on children and young people’s sexual expectations, attitudes, and behaviour.”

“It is disappointing that New Zealand politicians are keen on virtue-signalling but are turning a blind eye to sites like Pornhub and other porn websites and their link to sexual violence, abuse and trafficking,” says Mr McCoskrie.

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