PRESS RELEASE: NEW SITE TO EXPOSE THE HARM OF PORNOGRAPHY

The Centre to End Sexual Exploitation (CEASE) has launched a new site to support people of all ages who have been harmed by pornography. Expose The Harm, which launched this week, is a space for people to share, safely and anonymously, about the ways pornography has harmed them.

Expose the harm was announced at a conference in Westminster this week as well as being highlighted at a Child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and pornography event at the US Congress in Washington DC by CEASE’s CEO Vanessa Morse.

CEASE established Expose the harm in order to give a voice and a support network to the thousands of men, women and children whose lives have been negatively impacted by pornography. 

“For too long, the adult industry and its vested interests have controlled the narrative, making pornography out to be “harmless fun”. But the reality is that pornography represents the public health crisis of the digital age, undermining the health and well-being of individuals, communities and culture as a whole.”

Vanessa Morse, CEO of CEASE

Online pornography sites receive 130 million visitors per day1Financial Times P.Nilsson (17.12.2020) MindGeek: the secretive owner of Pornhub and RedTube and the industry is worth an estimated $100 billion globally.2 NBC News (business news) (updated 20.01.2015) Things Are Looking Up in America’s Porn Industry These sites received more website traffic in 2020 than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Zoom, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined.3SEMrush, 2020; Visual Capitalist, 2021

CEASE, and other campaigners are highlighting that the influence of online pornography is felt everywhere and its viewing has become normal and ubiquitous, as pornography has steadily migrated from the pop-culture margins to the mainstream. 

Vanessa Morse added:

“Soft pornography has blurred into light entertainment, and there’s been a marked rise in hypersexualised portrayals of women and girls. We see porn’s influence in art, music, film, television and fashion. 
Evidence of pornography’s harms lies all around us – in popular culture, contemporary news and criminal law cases. Despite the vast amount of academic research from a range of disciples exposing porn’s negative effects, the pornography industry has been allowed to act unchecked for years.”

The harms of pornography are increasingly hard to deny and include:

“Celebrities such as Billie Eilish and Terry Crews are increasingly breaking the conspiracy of silence that surrounds pornography’s harms. As a charity, we at CEASE want to give ordinary members of the public the opportunity to join them.

In the course of our work, we hear many heartbreaking stories about the harms of pornography. Porn users tell us how their lives have been devastated by addiction, isolation and poor mental health; parents share their deep concerns about how pornography is hindering their child’s emotional, social and cognitive development; and girls express how they feel that pornography is fuelling sexual harassment and “rape culture”. 

We are painfully aware that what we hear is only the tip of the iceberg. Some stories are scattered in forums all across the internet and others have not yet been told. It’s high time that we exposed the harm being driven by online pornography in the hope that we can wake  governments and policy makers up to the urgent need for intervention and industry regulation.”

Vanessa Morse, CEO of CEASE

Visit exposetheharm.com to find out more or to share your story. 

#exposetheharm

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