A 'porn movie' created by Belgium's Child Focus Foundation is highlighting the sexual abuse of children by using adult actors to re-enact an instance of sexual abuse that happened to an 8-year-old girl.
"With this film, I aim to eradicate the biggest misconceptions surrounding the world of pornography. Instead of writing yet another article about this subject, I produced a video that clearly depicts the reality," is the statement of the director of the campaign video, Goedele Liekens, who is a well-known Belgian sexologist, psychologist and politician.
"The number of reports of images depicting sexual abuse is rising exponentially, both worldwide and in Belgium. This issue is shocking, but it is a reality. It is high time to make it a top priority," stated Child Focus, reports Het Laatste Nieuws.
The movie is an explicit reconstruction, by adult actors, of a video of sexual abuse of an 8-year-old girl that Child Focus received. The campaign was created for the European Day for the Protection of Children against Sexual Abuse on 18 November. Child Focus has placed the entire reenactment of the video, which contains graphic images, on the campaign page www.chaletfilm.be
Child Focus hopes to shock policymakers into action as well as create more awareness for the topic among the general public, urging them to report images of child pornography on the website stopchildporno.be, the organisation stated on their website.
"In this way, we also want to encourage our policymakers to make it a top priority and to include it as such in the future government coalition agreement. Production, possession, distribution and viewing of such images is punishable by law, but the issue, unfortunately, remains too invisible. It is high time to take up the fight against this injustice to the fullest," said Child Focus.
In 2018, Child Focus received 1,728 reports of images of child pornography, which is an increase of 136% compared to 2017. Additionally, the Federal Police received about 18.000 reports of child pornography images from the tech industry, of which 42% was officially labelled as sexual abuse, reports De Morgen.
However, the figures only show the tip of the iceberg, as many images are not reported. The organisation estimates that 19 million images of child sexual abuse are exchanged online every day.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
