The British government has announced that it will make possession of extreme and violent pornography a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in jail. Under the Obscene Publications Act, it already is illegal to distribute or publish such images in Britain, but many continue to access the material online.
The new law announced Wednesday would outlaw any material that features violence that was, or appears to be, life threatening or likely to result in a serious and disabling injury.
The action is a victory for the family of Jane Longhurst, a 31-year-old teacher murdered in 2003 by a man obsessed with viewing necrophilia websites, who campaigned to block access to such material in Great Britain. The man convicted of her murder has won an appeal against his conviction and is now facing a possible retrial.
“My daughter Sue [Barnett] and myself are very pleased that after 30 months of intensive campaigning, we have persuaded the government to take action against these horrific Internet sites, which can have such a corrupting influence and glorify extreme sexual violence,” Longhurst’s mother, Liz, told the BBC.
The mother of the victim helped organize a petition with 50,000 signatures objecting to extreme websites. The petition was presented to parliament and won the backing of a number of MPs.
“The vast majority of people find these forms of violent and extreme pornography deeply abhorrent,” says Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker. “Such material has no place in our society, but the advent of the Internet has meant that this material is more easily available and means existing controls are being by-passed—we must move to tackle this.”
Coaker says the government will bring in new laws as soon as possible to ban possession of porn depicting “scenes of extreme sexual violence” and other obscene material, such as bestiality and necrophilia. The move will cover porn both online and offline.
Coaker adds, “By banning the possession of such material, the government is sending out a strong message: that it is totally unacceptable, and those who access it will be held to account.”
A Home Office spokesman says the new law was not intended to target people who accidentally come into contact with obscene pornography, and nor would it hit the mainstream adult entertainment industry, which works within current obscenity laws.
The new ruling will apply to England and Wales, and plans are being made to extend it to Northern Ireland, but the Scottish Executive will announce its plans separately.
