Norwegian health authorities have launched an advertising campaign on Pornhub, the largest online pornography platform, to prevent child crime by offering help to people with pedophilic inclinations.
“We are determined to prevent and prevent sexual abuse against children, and we therefore need to rethink how to precisely reach the target audience,” the head of the Norwegian Directorate of Health, Cathrine Lofthus, explained to AFP on Thursday. Sexually assaulting a child “is one of the worst things you can imagine, and if we can prevent just one attack on just one child, then it’s worth all the money in the world,” she said.
A public agency under the Norwegian Ministry of Health, the Health Directorate spent 75,000 crowns (nearly 6,000 €) to launch this campaign which began this week and will last a month.
Referral to a help site
In practice, searching on Pornhub for certain keywords such as “teens”, “preteens” or “barely legal” triggers the appearance of an insert on which the question “Do you have sexual thoughts about children?” and which links to a specialized help site. Such campaigns have already been carried out in Canada, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.
Preceded by ethical reflections, the initiative encountered resistance within the agency itself, but ultimately saw the light of day, because prevention attempts on more traditional platforms struggle to reach the target population, according to Ms. Lofthus.
“We manage taxpayers’ money, so we knew there would be reactions to the fact that, as a health department, we were choosing to advertise on a platform like Pornhub,” she said. “But ultimately for us it’s about prevention: we want to prevent child sexual abuse, intervene early and reach people who have sexual fantasies about children,” she said.
At the end of 2020, an investigation by the “New York Times” highlighted the presence on Pornhub and Youporn, another pornographic site, of videos of rape and abusive pornography. The two sites have since been bought by the Canadian fund Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) which has undertaken to clean them up.
130,000 people attracted by children
Based on international studies, the Health Directorate estimates that 100,000 men and 30,000 women over the age of 18 have a sexual attraction to children in Norway, a country of 5.6 million inhabitants.
