The children’s commissioner for England has said there is evidence to suggest that online pornography is influencing harmful child-on-child sexual behaviour.

As part of a second report in a series of papers exploring the impact of pornography on kids, children’s commissioner Dame Rachel De Souza requested data from one police force and a Sexual Abuse Referral Centre (SARC) where children had been referred because they had been sexually abused by another child.

The Office of the Children’s Commissioner carried out analysis of documents handed over by the police and the SARC to identify the role that pornography might play in these cases.

De Souza said that she found references to specific acts of sexual violence commonly seen in pornography in half of the interviews carried out after the sexual abuse had taken place.

The Office claims that an additional review of some of these cases found children suggesting direct links between pornography exposure and the harmful sexual behaviour exhibited.

"As the Online Safety Bill moves through Parliament, I want to use this opportunity to turn the tide on pornography’s harms to children," said De Souza. "I am clear that children should not be able to access pornography, and my office’s work in this space continues to demonstrate the harm it can cause to children and young people."

De Souza's first report, published in January, found that the average age at which children first view pornography is now 13.

But the research also found that 27 per cent of children had viewed pornography by the age of 11, while 10 per cent had seen it at as young as nine years old.

The children's commissioner says that the paper demonstrates a "significant link" between an early age of first exposure to pornography and frequency of exposure in later years.

The age of first exposure and frequency of exposure were also shown to be "closely linked" to the likelihood of a young person viewing violent content online, according to the research.

The report says that frequent users of pornography were also "more likely to have real-life experience of an aggressive or degrading sex act".

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