Feeling enraged

[InfoSecInTheCity]

I am really struggling this morning to hold back my rage.

My DD is 10 years old. She doesn't have her own phone yet or any social media accounts but I allow her to use my WhatsApp account to stay in contact with her classmates as they do all have their own phones.

I have every parental control and limit available set up and check in realtime as she's chatting because I can see the messages on my phone while she's using the laptop.

Despite this, I've had to deal with the police and school this weekend after one of the 10yr old boys sent a whole load of porn videos to the group chat. Full frontal, shemale, blow jobs, women having ping pong balls shoved in their anus, you name it he sent it.

DD did the right thing and reported it straight away so we didn't even have to find it during a checks, we've been talking to her about online safety for years.

So now at 10 yrs old my daughter is officially a victim of sexual assault, has had a referral to the safeguarding team, is being offered trauma support and I'm having to maintain an 'it's all ok' type persona so she doesn't get upset by it all.

What the fuck has gone wrong with society that 10 yr old boys have access to this kind of material and think it's appropriate to share it with the class?

I'm sorry to hear that. I've heard some really awful things. That primary school boys are addicted to porn, that the age of sexual assault has got lower and the average age of seeing porn is really young.

His parents can't have any safeguarding messur s on his phone if he's able to access graphic porn. I think his parents should be done for neglect.

That's just horrifying. How is your DD feeling about it all? Smart girl for reporting it.

I noticed that you said you're maintaining a persona that's at odds with how you are feeling, and I get that, but I wonder if it would be helpful to her to discuss how this is genuinely upsetting stuff, plenty of adults hate seeing it too, none of it has anything to do with real sex and relationships, and if she's feeling shaken up or disturbed by what she saw, then that's something she can talk about. I do completely share your sense of despair at what sort of world we're living in, and I really feel for you too in this situation

We've explained that he shouldn't have had access to that material and shouldn't have shared it, that porn is not real and that children should never see it. We've spoken about her feelings about what she saw and I've had to tell the parents of all her friends who were in the same chat so they could do similar.

She's understandably worried that it will come back to her when the boys parents are contacted by the police. I'm trying to assuage her concerns about that while actually wanting to track down the parents and give them a mouthful.

I'm so sorry, OP. It's very hard.

Sorry this has happened op. It's enraging.

This really terrifies me. I doubt it's technically that hard to stop kids accessing this stuff - there's just no appetite for it from the people that have the power, or they don't want it to come at the cost of it maybe being a bit more difficult for adults to access. Honestly, if the choice is between 'porn for all people including kids' or 'porn for no-one' then obviously it's the latter. Burn it all down.

Still simmering, waiting for the local police to contact me and advise on next steps. School have been great and the headteacher has been in contact to let me know he's available if DD needs anything. She was nervous going in Monday but there were no discussions about it from her friends and so far nothing seems to have been said by the boy so she's calmed down a lot.

I just find it so incredibly irresponsible that he had access to it, what were his parents doing? We have parental controls implemented directly on the router, and via the firewall and within the installed browsers on the laptop/tablets. She doesn't have admin privileges on any device so can't install or remove any apps or software and can't make any changes to the config like the password setting, payment details and so on.

It's all free and just took a few minutes to set up.

God only knows what else this kid watches, based on previous school comms about how Squid Games is not age appropriate for any of the students in primary school to be watching, I'm guessing it's not just porn he'll have filling his developing brain.

This was the point we band large group chats like whole class ones and said they can only have smaller groups of actual friends. My dd1 was 13 but sent graphic hardcore stuff and like your dd, she came to us. In proud of that but I’m still wtf that it even happened. Thankfully school were amazing.

She's understandably worried that it will come back to her when the boys parents are contacted by the police.

No no no, she needs to change her mindset and any person who sends porn to an underaged child such as your DD needs to be contacted by the police as a matter of urgency.

For a start it may help the troubled young 10 year old boy who sent the porn if they get to the bottom of how he came across the material in the first place .

Maybe a grown adult sent the porn to him??

But your DD is of no fault whatsoever. She's done the right thing in the face of illegal activity and she can be proud of herself.

Situations like this make me wish the internet didn't exist.
Bad enough being sent that crap as an adult let alone a ten year old girl.
It's disturbing the boy knew how to look up that stuff.

The internet shouldn't exist for ten year olds. Why do people buy their children expensive smart phones etc.? I'm not talking about a ban, teenagers like to get around bans. Just have an agreement that the internet isn't suitable for children and was never meant for children.

I don't agree that they need it for their homework. There's a lot of false information on the internet. I know they are going to say 'All my friends have got one'.

One thing that you should consider is that the boy who supposedly sent the porn wasn't really the one who did it. That's just the sort of thing that someone would send to try to get someone else into trouble. People sometimes get access to other people's accounts.

Excellent choice of words there.

I would be furious too OP. But I'd also be feeling guilty because the minimum age for WhatsApp use in the UK is 13. And this is why. They don't need social media at 10. You can't be totally in control of what she gets sent.
The sooner social media is removed from kids the better.
Hope you get it all sorted.

Recently my 7 year old saw some year 6 boys looking at girls in bikinis laying on beds (as he described it) he was absolutely mortified, reported it to the head teacher and the boys have gotten in trouble, they reckon my son made it up but he didn't.
I was really shocked they were even looking at stuff like that aged all of 10/11?! I don't think I knew what sex was til I was 14.