Today (27th February 2025) Baroness Bertin has published her findings from the independent pornography review.
In the report, ‘Creating a safer world: the challenge of regulating online pornography’, Baroness Bertin makes 32 recommendations to the government and the pornography industry to address the harmful impacts of pornography and to reduce abuse and exploitation.
Rape Crisis England & Wales welcomes this report and the recommendations to:
- Make harmful pornographic content that is illegal offline also illegal online – including degrading, violent, and misogynistic content, as well as that which could encourage an interest in child sex abuse.
- Make pornographic content that depicts incest illegal.
- Make pornography containing non-fatal strangulation (‘choking’) illegal to possess, distribute, and publish.
- Make non-consensual ‘taking’ and ‘making’ of intimate images (whether real or deepfake) an offence.
- Provide clearer guidance to schools on the role of teachers and staff in preventing harmful sexual behaviours.
We are also pleased to welcome recommendations to ban ‘nudification’ apps; increase public awareness about intimate image abuse; ensure support services are given specialist training to effectively support victims of intimate image abuses; and to recognise the mental and physical health impacts of pornography in existing health strategies.
Every day our Rape Crisis centres see the impact of pornography on the victims and survivors they support. The popularity of violent pornography contributes to rape culture, where women are objectified, have their boundaries ignored and their experiences of sexual violence minimised.
Ciara Bergman, CEO of Rape Crisis England & Wales says
We're encouraged by the Pornography Review's strong and clear calls for changes to an industry which causes such immense harm to so many women and girls, as well as men and boys.
The lack of any regulation in the pornography industry has enabled ever more violent material to be readily and easily accessed, and we are aware of a plethora of cases in which perpetrators of violence against women had been using violent pornography prior to offences being committed against their victims. That correlation must be acknowledged and addressed.
Violence against women and girls doesn't exist in a vacuum and isn't inevitable. Perpetrators of sexual violence and abuse, as well as other forms of VAWG, frequently harbour misogynistic attitudes, including a disregard for consent, a belief that women and girls exist only for the sexual gratification of men, and a belief that the humiliation, degradation and objectification of women and girls is acceptable, normal, and gratifying. These attitudes must be challenged and changed if VAWG is to be stopped.
We’d now like to see a clear timeline and plan for implementing the review's recommendations, and defined measures and sanctions for companies who fail to comply.