The harm caused by pornography is beyond question or doubt. Through best-in-class research, the experiences of parents and teachers and even the voices of children and young people themselves that question is settled.
We know that childhoods are being robbed, that healthy sexual development is being hijacked and that violent sexual acts are being normalised all to feed a billion-dollar commercial sex trade.
Community Foundation Ireland is fully aware of the damage being done. We know because of frontline partners like Women’s Aid, top class researchers like those at the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute and from those who work with our young people.
For those of us who are parents we know too from the conversations at home. Frequently uncomfortable, often embarrassing but necessary.
Community Foundation Ireland is a philanthropic hub on a mission of Equality For All in Thriving Communities. We work with 5,000 voluntary, community and charitable partners as well as donors and philanthropists to achieve that mission.
We all know our equality goal cannot be achieved if we live in communities and in a society where sexual violence has been normalised.
Our record on combatting gender-based violence stretches right back to the start of our Foundation in 2000.
Since then, we have together worked to keep the spotlight on sexual violence, to identify solutions and then using that information to achieve policy change.
Our philanthropists were there to support efforts to get coercive control recognised in Irish law.
We supported the successful campaign to introduce sex-buyer laws so that those who created demand for sexual exploitation were prosecuted and not the sellers. Now prostitution is officially recognised as gender-based violence.
We worked with partners to start the national conversation on consent, raise awareness and then advocated so that it is now being introduced into all educational curricula.
In addition, at key moments our donors are there to assist so that helplines are answered, new online support services developed, and more refuge spaces provided.
I mention these so you get an idea of our role.
We work with partners to identify the emerging issues, to identify solutions and then with our philanthropists to plan and implement those solutions.
That brings us to why we are here today.
This coming together, this convening by Women’s Aid in partnership with Community Foundation Ireland is an opportunity to share our knowledge, to work out solutions and to inform next steps.
Our experience as a Foundation which is greatly informed by our partners is that you cannot separate online and offline abuse. They are both intrinsically linked.
We see that in prostitution. We have had our policy successes but yet a billion-euro trade has developed workarounds and 1,000 women are placed for sale online in Ireland every week.
We see it too in the ‘sex for rent’ adverts which are so brazen that they are not hidden in some dark corner of the web – but are on even the most main-stream of platforms and sites. Our partnership with the National Women’s Council has secured Government commitments to outlaw this practice.
But perhaps most brazenly we see it with a ruthless pornography trade out to corrupt our children by normalisation of extreme and dangerous sexual acts. A trade which puts profit before everything else.
The dangers are huge. Our children and young people are being normalised to acts which could either see them in a hospital bed or worse, or else behind bars as perpetrators. The outcome is the same – lives ruined.
Nothing has made that clearer than the research undertaken by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute and Women’s Aid. We will hear about that shortly but suffice to say the reality has been laid bare.
Like their fellow criminals trading in arms and drugs, the sex trade is now fully online. Hiding in plain sight.
The research I have mentioned is why we are here.
The facts, as I said at the outset, are established. We know them. They are beyond dispute.
We know there are actions which must be taken. We know that this is such a challenge that it requires an all of society approach.
In classrooms, lecture halls, sportsgrounds and around the family table conversations need to be had and facilitated. Each requires training, education and resources.
We need men in sports, the arts, business, politics and all fields of life to stand up and be examples for boys – lets shatter the myth that online exploitation is just a modern extension of locker room talk or banter. It is not.
Rape is rape whether there is a camera in the room or not.
Hi-Tech, social media giants and Silicon Valley whether it is in California or amid the glass towers of Dublin’s Docklands must not be allowed to shirk or walk away from its responsibilities. They must be held to account and if that requires laws so be it.
Our time together over the next two days is an opportunity to consider these and many other questions. We will do so informed not just with the information from our own networks but with international experts gathered by Women’s Aid.
We are fortunate too to be able to draw on the insights and expertise of Frances Fitzgerald, a true leader in this area. Frances brings the perspective of a national parliamentarian, a cabinet minister and also a European policymaker, and of course an equality Championing.
This is the sort of gathering, knowledge sharing and convening which philanthropy makes happen.
Members of the Community Foundation team are here throughout the two days.
If they are not at your session or table, please do use the networking opportunities to tell them about your contribution and work in this space.
We are now drawing on 25-years’ experience of working with partners, our actions are always informed by our successes and of course setbacks along the way.
Throughout that period, we have demonstrated an ability through our network of partners to identify and work on emerging and pressing issues.
As we gather today, I think of few more pressing than the danger represented by pornography and the commercial sex trade. I look forward to our discussions.
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