The Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB), which specialises in sexual violence and domestic abuse, has said that \u201cnonfatal strangulation is a leading indicator of escalating violence in a relationship and a significant risk factor for homicide in women.\u201d This is one of the reasons why non-fatal strangulation finally became a stand-alone offence in 2023<\/a>, as legislators in the Republic joined an international trend of lawmakers recognising the undeniable pattern of men who graduate from strangling women non-fatally to killing them. <\/p>\n Violence towards women, including strangulation, is now a dominant theme of mass-market, super-accessible pornography. A 2010 study of themes of aggression in porn videos found that strangulation was almost niche. But what was on the margins is now mainstream. Porn, like most other forms of content online, has become exponentially more extreme as it competes for our attention. <\/p>\n Even by 2019 the \u201cethical\u201d female pornographer Erika Lust said that violent acts such as slapping and \u201cchoking\u201d (strangling) women had become \u201cthe alpha and omega of any porn scene\u201d. \u201cThese are presented as standard ways to have sex when, in fact, they are niches,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n \u201cChoke me, Daddy\u201d is a staggeringly normal part of the modern online vernacular \u2013 well beyond the boundaries of porn sites. Studies have shown that a boy watching porn today is very likely to see a woman being strangled, even if he doesn\u2019t seek it out. And frontline domestic violence services, garda\u00ed and even Government officials now fear that a girl in Ireland could die at the hands of a boy who does not fully understand what he is doing to her. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are really worried \u2013 really worried that we are going to have a boy do something and terrible harm will happen, and the perpetrator of that harm will be a child,\u201d Sarah Benson, the chief executive of Women\u2019s Aid, said. \u201cStrangulation is already a criminal offence, but the problem is what\u2019s encouraging it and what\u2019s fostering it is this wide-open, unregulated industry. And it\u2019s not just the porn sites. A lot of people are seeing it on regular platforms.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2024, Ms Benson\u2019s organisation commissioned a report from the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy (SERP) Institute to investigate the link between porn and violence against women. It found that children had unfettered access to extreme sexual content: most porn websites have effectively useless age-verification protocols, where a child just needs to click a box to claim that they are 18 in order to access the website.<\/p>\n [\u00a0\u2018Significant\u2019 increase in cases of child-on-child online sexual abuse, garda\u00ed sayOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Porn, Ms Benson said, \u201cis telling boys what they ought to do, and it\u2019s also telling girls what they need to accept being done to them\u201d. There have already been a number of deeply worrying cases in Ireland, where porn has been blamed for having a malign influence on children who went on to attack other children. After Boy A was convicted alongside Boy B of the 2018 murder of 14-year-old Ana Kriegel<\/a>, it emerged that the then 13-year-old Boy A had thousands of violent pornographic images on his phone. <\/p>\n In December, a High Court judge expressed deep concern about children\u2019s early access to pornography when sentencing a boy who, at the age of 13, orally raped his six-year-old sister and shared images of the abuse online. The boy had been given a device at a very early age and started watching porn when he was in primary school. <\/p>\n \u201cThat a child was given a tablet at the age of five years old and by the age of seven was accessing pornography, takes my breath away,\u201d Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring said. <\/p>\n In 2024, garda\u00ed identified 73 victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation in Ireland. This included a significant increase in child-on-child sexual abuse. Children are now committing half of all reported sexual offences in the UK, up from 33 per cent in 2022.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Violent pornography\u2019s pervasive role in child development must be disrupted, doctors hearOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Last October, senior officials at a Cabinet Committee on Justice, Migration and Social Affairs heard how \u201cviolent online pornography is now a highly accessible and commercially powerful force shaping sexual development and behaviour in Ireland\u201d, in particular for children. The same meeting was told that An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na is now working with Cuan, the state agency for sexual violence, and the media regulator Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n, to examine ways to prevent children from accessing pornography. <\/p>\n The strangulation that you see in pornography, that\u2019s not play acting. That is happening \u2013 that harm is happening<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Sarah Benson, chief executive of Women\u2019s Aid<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan told The Irish Times that social media was presenting a \u201crepulsive and distorted\u201d image of the ways young men and boys should behave in relationships. He said he was \u201cconscious\u201d and deeply concerned about the dangers and prevalence of violent pornography, especially on young people. \u201cThis invasive, insidious, toxic material often pushes a world view that men are entitled to control women, with violence and sexual violence part of that control. Unfortunately, this content is increasingly accessible, and increasingly normalised,\u201d Mr O\u2019Callaghan said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need men to teach their sons that true strength lies in dignity and compassion, and to show their daughters that equality and safety are non-negotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephanie O\u2019Keeffe, the chief executive of Cuan, last year identified violent porn as a new threat to women and girls. In a speech last May<\/a>, later published<\/a> in the Irish Probation Journal, she noted that violence is typically used against teenage girls more than adult women in porn. <\/p>\n \u201cPornography is seen as a cause and accelerant in the perpetration of violence against women, girls and boys by (predominantly) men and boys, and particularly in rising levels of cases where sexual violence is perpetrated by children on other children. This is something that DSGBV services, child protection services, and garda\u00ed are seeing more of,\u201d Ms O\u2019Keeffe said. She also said anecdotal evidence from prison and probation services suggested that mainstream pornography played a significant role in the violent behaviour of men \u201cwith a history of sexual violence\u201d.<\/p>\n Even anecdotal evidence of the harm porn is doing to Irish children can be chilling. The SERP study had heard from Dr Richard Hogan, a family psychotherapist, who described the experience of having Irish boys coming to him trying to manage a porn addiction. He also described talking to young men who had done something during sex that resulted in an allegation being made against them, who could not understand how a girl had responded so differently to the placid way women in porn respond to violence. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd they\u2019re trying to think, \u2018What the hell happened? Why did she say I was aggressive with her?\u2019\u201d Dr Hogan said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re annoyed with her, and then they\u2019re kind of confused \u2026 they\u2019re really just at sea. They don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing.\u201d <\/p>\n Secondary schoolteacher Eoghan Cleary told the same report that the effect of porn meant \u201cchildren assuming that in their first sexual encounter that they might have to have anal sex or might have to be choked the first time\u201d. <\/p>\n Ms Benson said Women\u2019s Aid is now \u201cinterested\u201d in recent legal changes in the UK, which sought to introduce new \u201crobust\u201d age limits for pornography. The new laws came into effect last summer. While more people started to use VPNs to evade the restrictions, research showed that traffic to porn sites plummeted. In December, one porn website finally introduced age checks after being served with a \u00a31 million fine by the UK media regulator Ofcom. <\/p>\n The successful campaign to change the law in the UK was partly driven by a concern about the effect of strangulation, and an interrogation of whether or not strangulation could ever be consensual. A campaign group had collected evidence of 250 cases where British women had been fatally strangled by men during sex, where the men\u2019s legal teams tried to argue that the woman had consented in order to try to avoid a murder prosecution. Groups such as Cease UK, which campaigns against sexual exploitation, have also linked the influence of porn to an increase in teenagers accessing child-sex-abuse imagery. <\/p>\n The State is planning to bring in a new digital wallet this year [2026], with a view to using it as a form of verified online ID. Much of the discussion around the new online ID, which would be linked to a person\u2019s PPS number, has focused on the possibility of using it to set robust age limits for social media similar to Australia\u2019s ban for under-16s. The Government believes such a policy would have to be agreed at EU level under the Digital Services Act. But it is possible for member states to pass a domestic law setting strict age limits for pornography websites, as France has done. This year, Pornhub announced it was leaving France over a new legal requirement to take steps to verify the ages of its users. In response, the French minister for gender equality said: \u201cAu revoir.\u201d <\/p>\n [\u00a0I\u2019ve seen men watch porn in my workplaces. I reported it and was called a prudeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Last month, Fianna F\u00e1il MEP Barry Andrews was one of a number of politicians who signed a letter calling on European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to take stronger action to protect children from harmful content. The commission has been accused by some, including Minister for Media Patrick O\u2019Donovan, of not doing enough about online child safety. <\/p>\n Mr Andrews believes that the new digital wallet could and should be used to set age limits for porn websites in the State. \u201cAge limits make it more difficult to access pornography for children, so it protects them from the worst type of pornography. It protects them from all types of pornography, honestly. So that\u2019s why I think it\u2019s really, really important that we do this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The online wallet, which could be piloted on 2,000 people in the coming weeks, has already sparked privacy and digital-rights concerns. Mr Andrews said digital wallets such as that being trialled are designed to be secure. But he added that rights are not absolute, and \u201cthe right to privacy is subject to the common good\u201d. <\/p>\n![\"'Ethical'](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7ZBR6UFXX7MMMBL4L25C2BAR2Q.jpg\")
‘Ethical’ pornographer Erika Lust who in 2019 said violent acts such as slapping and ‘choking’ (strangling) women had become ‘the alpha and omega of any porn scene’ <\/p>\n![\"Ana](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/CXBYTMIGOBD2NAD3OR2BTNQ5NA.jpg\")
Ana Kriegel: Two boys murdered the 14-year-old in Lucan, Dublin, when they were aged 13. Photograph: PA <\/p>\n\n
![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/K4IVRCRLYTYY2GDOXKSGAM6YSU.jpg\")
Sarah Benson, chief executive of Women’s Aid, and Jim O\u2019Callaghan, Minister for Justice. Photograph: Leon Farrell\/Rollingnews.ie <\/p>\n