File: Pornography illustration
A Behavioural Change and Public Health Communication Consultant, Prof. Ehiz Odigie-Okpataku, has said exposure to pornography may lower inhibitions and contribute to sexually predatory behaviour.
She warned that sexual offences against children cannot be explained by high libido alone.
Odigie-Okpataku stated this on Thursday during an appearance on the Nigeria Television Authority’s programme, Good Morning Nigeria, while discussing the psychological factors behind sexual abuse, including offences involving children.
She said rape and sexual abuse were often wrongly viewed as expressions of excessive sexual desire, arguing that the desire to dominate or exercise power over victims could also drive such acts.
“We often think that rape is a sexual expression or sexual molestation is sexual expression of a high libido. It is often an oppressive tendency, so you want to conquer that person.
“That is why somebody hates a person, despises a person, but tries to now conquer that person. And then the person does that, expresses that through sexual abuse or violence,” she said.
Addressing the sexual abuse of children within families, the consultant said it was important to consider the psychological factors involved, including paedophilia and incest.
She linked repeated exposure to pornography with the possible weakening of an individual’s boundaries around acceptable sexual behaviour, particularly when the material involves children or sexualised family relationships.
“When I mentioned earlier on, pornography, what you feed your mind is what grows. We have different genres in pornography. Pornography is poison to the mind because what it does is that it kills your inhibitions. In terms of what you think is right or wrong, so it blurs those lines. It begins to create a curiosity in that area,” she said.
Odigie-Okpataku warned that some people deliberately consume pornographic material involving children or family members, arguing that such content could encourage curiosity about acting out what they had watched.
“There are people who don’t just watch pornography, but they feed their mind with child porn. Then some of them feed it with — they’ll say mother-daughter, mother-son trope, we have father-daughter trope, schoolgirl and man trope, neighbour, young neighbour.
“You understand? So, when you start going into those subdivisions of all those things, you have people who are now curious in wanting to find out what it means,” she said.
She added that such curiosity could, in some cases, translate into attempts to reproduce the acts in real life.
“So, there’s that expression or wanting to express that in real life. You understand? So, it makes predators, or it feeds that desire, or that curiosity, or that need to want to express that,” she said.
The consultant further argued that sexual offending was not necessarily dependent on a person’s ability to engage in sexual intercourse, citing cases involving offenders with erectile dysfunction.
“We’ve had people who have erectile dysfunction and are predators, and are on sexual sex offenders registers abroad. Some of them have, some of them are even castrated, but they are still sex offenders. So, it tells you it is in the mind, not only just in the genitals,” she said.
Her comments followed a question from a presenter about whether high libido could explain why some men sexually abuse children, including toddlers.
Responding, Odigie-Okpataku maintained that sexual violence should not automatically be attributed to uncontrollable sexual desire, stressing the need to consider the psychological and behavioural factors that may contribute to offending.
She argued that understanding those factors was important to addressing sexual abuse and protecting children.