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The new pornography taskforce will propose legislation aimed at banning a type of content produced by porn star Bonnie Blue, known as “barely legal”.
It comes after Channel 4 broadcast a documentary about the porn star, called: “1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story”, which followed her for six months.
The show attracted significant criticism, with the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, accusing the show of “glamorising and normalising” extreme pornography.
The documentary shows Tia Billinger – who uses the stage name Bonnie Blue – preparing to film a scene with a group of models dressed in school uniform, who acknowledge that they have been picked for the scene because they look young.
“This content is pushing at the boundaries. We will be trying to address the ‘barely legal’ aspect legislatively”, Baroness Bertin told The Guardian.
She said she plans to raise amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill once Parliament returns from its summer recess to make it illegal for online platforms to host content that could encourage child sexual abuse. This would include content filmed by adults dressed up as children.
Bonnie Blue became famous after initially filming sexual content with young male students, who she dubbed “barely legal”. She later gained notoriety after filming stunts, including one which saw her have sex with more than 1,000 men in a 24-hour period.
Under rules that came into effect on July 25 as part of the Online Safety Act, online platforms including social media sites and search engines must take steps to prevent children from accessing harmful content such as pornography or material that encourages suicide.
The act also gave Ofcom the responsibility to monitor whether sites are protecting viewers from illegal material including child sexual abuse or extreme content such as portrayals of rape, bestiality and necrophilia.
But currently, adults role-playing as children in pornography is not prohibited online.
The Channel 4 documentary, which showed pixellated clips of Bonnie Blue having sex with more than 1,000 men, faced condemnation for failing to challenge her enough, with advertisers pulling support for the programme.
Card payment business Visa, juice maker Cawston Press and vodka brand Smirnoff all had ads which appeared online during the show, but they later told Channel 4 that they no longer wanted their products promoted during the programme as it did not align with their advertising guidelines or values.
Dame Rachel said: “For years we have been fighting to protect our children from the kind of degrading, violent sex that exists freely on their social media feeds. This documentary risks taking us a step back by glamorising, even normalising, the things young people tell me are frightening, confusing and damaging to their relationships.”
Baroness Bertin added: “Channel 4 showed a surprising lack of judgment in showing such explicit sex scenes. More widely the glamorisation and normalisation of content creators like Bonnie Blue does undoubtedly have an effect. In my opinion, this is a direction of travel that is not particularly helpful for society nor is it prudish to call it out as such.”
A Channel 4 spokesperson said: “The film looks at how Bonnie Blue has gained worldwide attention and earned millions of pounds in the last year, exploring changing attitudes to sex, success, porn and feminism in an ever-evolving online world.
“Director Victoria Silver puts a number of challenges to Bonnie throughout the documentary on the example she sets and how she is perceived, and the film clearly lays bare the tactics and strategies she uses, with the audience purposefully left to form their own opinions.”
