Dd's friend has shown them porn!

[Justalittlelemondrizzle]

My dd's aged 8 & 9 went to play at a friends house earlier who's also 9. She told them to "look at this, it's weird. Don't tell your parents"
They said she typed something in youtube or google and shown them a video. From what they describe the video was of various acts of oral sex but possibly more. They've always had filters and strict parental controls on their tablets and on the computer and have never been subjected to anything like this before.
I am devastated. I don't know what to do!

I think I'd be wanting to know whether their friend had been having sex ed lessons at school. It sounds like a possible excuse. Also, the school could review their info to parents warning them about internet access.
I'd be concerned about their friend. She's not being adequately cared for if she can access that stuff. So negligent.
You sound as if you are dealing with it very well with your own DCs but it's sad. I'd be fuming too.

I'm confused. First of all, I posted upthread that exactly this had happened to my DD, and shared some of the details including that she WAS traumatised by it, and no one made a big deal. So that was ignored, I don't even think the OP read it.

I specifically said that some children do have a problem with this and need support, and others will simply shrug it off. It doesn't entirely depend on what the parents' reaction is. But that its important not to minimise it.

And then others are coming on saying by all means tell the school but don't catastrophize it, and it won't hurt 'em eh? Little bit of porn?

Or maybe there are posts on here I can't see, as some posters are talking about the other family involved being in denial etc. where did the OP say that? When I talked to the NSPCC about it, they said that the reaction of the other parents would be key in our deciding what steps to take next. So have you told the other parents OP?

Did you know that BT Parental Controls and other internet filters do not work on google images? Just typing in 'naked photos' and clicking on 'images' will bring up clearly pornographic images, including oral sex. You can't click through to anything, but the images can be viewed.

This doesn't work with Bing and some other search engines, but if your DC's friend has an older sibling to tell them to use google.com, that won't matter.

Google do have a 'safe search' function, but you have to sign in and set it up on each device. There's nothing to prevent children from signing out, plus it seems to randomly sign out after a while anyway, possibly with software updates.

My point is that many of us, like me, think they have all the bases covered. I thought my DS and his friend were playing minecraft. They were in the room next to me as I listened to DD read. The doors were open and they were almost within eyeshot.

Another one coming on to say it's incredibly worrying that young children had access to porn and should be followed up asap, but the impact on your DC may not be as bad as feared. My younger brother and I happened upon an extremely 'blue' channel when staying in a Finnish hotel with my parents. We were 8 & 11. We knew we were being naughty by looking at stuff you had to pay to view but other than that, not a clue. I can still picture exactly what we saw (some rather athletic oral sex around an open fire) but my brother has forgotten. We did fess up to my parents as we thought the video was so strange! I distinctly remember my brother saying "but they were eating each other!" Anyway, no harm done to us and very probably the same will apply to your DC.

I agree with burningbridges that seeing porn at a young age can be scary, damaging and confusing. I'm sorry your DD went through this OP and your daughter too bridges, and I'm glad your DD was offered therapy. I agree that you should definitely contact the parents and the girl's school and it wouldn't hurt to speak to the NSPCC to get advice. If it were my child I would talk to them and explain that it is what some adults do/look at and that it wasn't her fault for being shown it, that she was brave and a good girl for telling you.

BurningBridges OP posted I have spoken to the parents who have decided it was found by accident... which is why pp are saying that they are in denial.

When i was 9 or 10 i was round a mates house who lived in the same street, along with our other friend. We were playing hide and seek, i went to hide under her brother mattress, and found a stack of porn mags of her dads!. She saw me find them, next thing i know the other two (one same age, girl whose house it was a year younger) both having a right good nosey through it. I kept my distance but remember seeing a woman with her legs open in a very short plaid skirt, and another on her knees holding a mans erect penis right above her mouth (i don't remember if he was ejaculating or not, he might have been) but the grin on his face was creepy, and i was mortified. It made me incredibly uncomfortable but i never told my parents.

What was worse, is my mums uncle who had lived abroad moved back to England and eventually into the street i lived on, i'd visit regularly on my own. He was quite a letchy type, looking at much younger women, saying if he ever won the lottery or something he'd have a young 20's girlfriend etc. Turns out, he'd had a sexual relationship with his blood related niece starting when she was 15. She never told anyone, she even took me to see him voluntarily when we could have gone anywhere or done anything she'd specifically want to see him. It all came out when i was 9 (Aunt was in her 40's) and i remember my dad suddenly being at the door when i was there alone visiting him, practically dragging me out the door then right outside the doorstep, most scared expression i have ever seen on his face, kneeling looking me in the eye asking if he had ever touched me. I understood what he was asking but not why. Thankfully he hadn't, but my entire family disowned him but i wasn't told the truth, i was told he'd beaten his ex wife before he left her to move back to England. It wasn't until we passed him in the car when i was 18 my dad told me the truth. 22 years on, he still lives about 10 doors up the street.

Thanks Seamstress I have found it now, my mistake. Unfortunately then this was the sort of attitude that the NSPCC said should prompt me to take it further. As it was, one of the parents in my case came round and was extremely apologetic, but looking back we think it was a front.

My DD said she couldn't get the images out of her mind and wished she was dead but it was also the fact that my DD had trusted the older girl, they'd been friends since they were toddlers, yet she saw the delight on her "friends" face as she watched my DD become more and more frightened.

A couple of days after DD told me and it all came out, this girl was outside our house as usual, but it was the contempt with which she treated DD from that day onwards which has kept this in the front of our minds some years later - she still lives here, and her parents still maintain (now) that she did nothing wrong whatsoever.

We didn't report it in the end, but I reckon that had we done so, the other parents would have said MY DD instigated it, and the majority of people our very small and parochial village would have said there really was no harm done like some of the posters on this thread.

Sorry burning

I am in the 'saw some and did me. I harm camp' - and your story is very sad as it sounds like there was also an element of malicious bullying there which is even worse as it's hurtful for your DD

I am NOT minimizing the parents neglect here - but as so many of us came across 'a box of porn mags' at a similar age and were unfazed .....

I am sorry about your DD

"How can a nine year old find porn by accident?"

Tbf I have typed some perfectly innocent words or phrases into Google Image Search, and come up with some explicit images, which had nothing whatsoever to do with my search terms.

You get porn on mn if they don't check the ads properly - has happened quite a lot. I assure you I wasn't looking for it.

Small kids left alone with internet access = bad idea.

Thank you stop - I am glad you were ok, lets hope the OP's DCs are too - I wouldn't wish it on anyone, just want to keep on saying that its not OK even if it is OK, hope that makes sense.

"so many of us came across 'a box of porn mags' at a similar age"

Oh God, yes. I remember accompanying my older brother on a visit to the barbers when I was about 7 or 8, sitting in the waiting area, picking up a magazine and leafing through it, till my mum came over from speaking to the barber, said, "I don't think you want to be looking at that", and took it off me. Of course it was a bloody jazz mag. And yes, I remember the images vividly, nearly 40 years. But really, why, in a barbers shop? Because the first thing one thinks, while waiting for a haircut, is "I'd really like to look at naked bodies writhing around, now". Of course.

Me and my brother found my dads porn mag collection when we were 9 and 11, it hasn't scared me for life.

I would be angry if this happened to my kids though, and I would be worried about how a 9 year old could find porn online.

I would be contacting school and nspcc. But in my job I have a responsibility to whistle blow in these situations.

All a child has to type into Google is 'sex' and it will bring up videos that they shouldn't see. This is why parental controls are so important. Children are naturally curious it's just a shame that inappropriate stuff is so easily accessed. I watched a TED talk about this recently - it's all proper hardcore not the soft porn stuff that used be shown late at night. Even filters can be bypassed if you know the right links to click on (not that I'm suggesting children of this age would have any idea about that).

Only you can judge if there are safeguarding concerns here OP. I would be worried if they dismissed it as 'one of those things' - it's not.

I too was shown porn mags by a boy who lived on our street. He was younger than me and I must have been younger than 7 as we'd moved by then. It did have an impact on me. I didn't tell my mum - she was always prudish about sex and perhaps I knew it even then.

Anyway, when I was perhaps 9 I wrote a story in which a man weed on a woman and a boy weed on a girl as that's what I thought I'd seen. A friend told her parents, they told my mum and she was mortified, thinking she'd be blamed as a single parent. I've never really got over the shame of that and have never admitted it until now. Sex is still something I find kind of shameful.

I think you've obviously given them a safe place to talk about what they've seen, OP. That's important for them to feel they haven't done something shameful themselves (and perhaps that's a message the other girl needs to hear too. It shouldn't have been that accessible to her).

JenniferYellowHat1980 I think your experience is more common than we think. People living with so much shame.

If it's any consolation, my little sister was shown some full of intercourse porn when she was 6 by her friend and it didn't/hasn't had any lasting impact whatsoever. I think I was about 9 when the boys in our little 'street gang' used to smuggle their dad's porno magazines (scratch and sniff ) and show me and the others. Also had no lasting effect on me and I can't remember what was in the pictures or anything like that.

I would definitely speak to the child's mother as surely she would want to put blocks on things if she knew. Who knows how often her kid is watching it, that's pretty sick.

I'd try to make light of it to your girls by perhaps saying something like 'some crazy people on the internet do gross things, we don't watch anything like that.' Perhaps if they think it's a massive, awful thing that they watched it then they are more likely to remember it? Poor girls innocent eyes

Another one who would not have bothered speaking to the parents but would have gone straight to school. This can be either a child who'se been exposed to abuse or a child who needs guidance and that's something school NEED to know about.