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Horrible stuff is so easily accessible these days ... I think first of all check your parental controls via your ISP. I’m with BT and have my controls to ban all pornography, much to my 17 year old’s disgust, but hey ho. I would also remove devices, not as a punishment but in order to keep her safe. She’s clearly very vulnerable and unless and until she can be safe online or on her devices then she can’t have them. As I say, it’s not about punishment but about you, as her parent, keeping her safe. It might also be worth speaking to her school. Where did she get the idea to look for this stuff? Had kids in school been talking about it? Not all parents are as disciplined about online content as you are! School may already be aware - and could possibly get school nurse/pcso in to talk generally to the class about online safety. Most school do this as a matter of course anyway. Do you have post adoption involved? Could they shed any light on what she may have witnessed in her birth family?

Thanks for your response. I will remove the devices then, certainly in the short term, I was worried it was almost make them more ilicit and appealing. I think in terms of where she's got the idea, she was obsessed with babies being born and I think one youtube search led to another, you can almost see the thread in the history. She's told me that she witnessed BD & BM having sex and she was terrified as she thought he was killing her. Now she's older and viewed it online she knows what it is. Her older sibling ( placed elsewhere) demonstragtes very sexualise behaviour. I'll speak to BT thanks for the advice. I'm so worried that it is going to affect her brain development it's so damaging. Thanks again

Bless her. You can set your own parental controls via your internet services provider. Mine just happens to be BT. If your provider has an app, you can do it through that. Has she had any formal sex ed or general puberty talks? If she’s curious about babies and how they’re made - but quite woolly with it - then it’s time to have that talk about how it all works. There are lots books to help open up the discussion. And maybe a referral to the ASF if you’re in England to get some therapeutic support for all of you

I have a vulnerable AD - a bit older than yours -and she has done some searching (and watching too). Instagram is really awful for porn, so it's not just the internet. To help keep her safe, I don't allow any electronic devices (including her mobile phone) upstairs. Any use of iPad, computer, TV etc is done downstairs. It hasn't stopped all searching, but greatly reduced it. We've talked about the issues with porn, and I there are some great child-friendly resources: ceop.police.uk has some useful links and the NSPCC website is good too. I have also careful controls about what's allowed on her phone (no social media). Doing some research and working out your strategy while your AD is young will really help...

Good advice about adjusting your ISP parental control settings: you can exclude various categories, not just pornography but e.g. gambling sites etc. as well. There is a growing consensus that unsupervised internet access for children under 16 is inherently damaging. Look at the blog and twitter of e.g. Katharine Birbalsingh, head teacher of the Michaela school in Brent. Gaming, social media and so on are so addictive and can wipe out family conversation, reading, any chance of concentrating properly on homework & exam revision, to say nothing of the actual harm caused by pornography, violence, extremism, pro anorexia/self-harm content and so on. We go along with this poison because we don't want our children to "miss out" or because we feel they have to learn how to negotiate the internet. Yet we wouldn't put them on the street corner alone late at night "to learn". It's easier if, like us, you home educate, but really with our very vulnerable children you just have to be the one to call it quits and protect them.

You have my sympathies. AS2 (also known as Artemis Fowl) sounds very like your daughter. I heard him telling his brother that his classmate saw a movie with ' a man kissing another man's willy' and ever since then he has been trying to find more of the same. And he was in Y1 at the time! Anyways, the ISP is the first port of call. But when the boys bring home a computer from school sometimes the school controls bypass the router controls or mischievous boys can reset computers. 'Artemis Fowl' is no longer allowed to bring home his school computer (per school...I had warned them he was up to no good). I don't think he's gotten too much of an eyeful but not for lack of trying. I would confiscate everything and tell school she cannot do anything on the computer at home. When you feel ready for her to have a go again, make sure you have good controls and she can't find out the wifi password. Good Luck! BdF

PS block YouTube on anything she has access to. Most of Artemis's searches currently involve 'bypass parental controls.'

PS block YouTube on anything she has access to. Most of Artemis's searches currently involve 'bypass parental controls.'

I think prevention by denial of access is important but the "Why" is equally as important. Had you said your daughter was 12 then I may have said this is not unexpected but 9 is a little young for this. I'd be asking myself, what is driving her to seek out this content? I'd also be careful that by denying the urge to look at this online she will simply look elsewhere to find it. We have experience of this with DD. Her sexualised behaviour came from a background of witnessing sex and abuse at a very young age. She was cared for by a specialist unit within the particular LA's CAMHS which helped understand the drivers for this but in terms of a "cure" we generally had to help her overcome her preoccupation with sexuality ourselves. She was around the age of your daughter when she began to come through it. In her mindset, sex was just a part of daily life and she was open about it without the filters an older child would normally apply. She had no access to online content but I had a few calls from the school when she had been caught in "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" scenarios. It became a process of helping her to understand basic morality, modesty and self control without framing normal sexual activity between consenting participants as a bad thing. We spoke openly with her and responded to any question she brought up no matter how graphic without any sense of shock or disgust. We explained what was normal and what was acceptable in a frank way, the genie was already out of the bottle and it wasn't going back in. She was driving the subject matter with her questions. What became clear was she was very confused about what she interpreted as being normal and with no guidance, had concocted her own "Theories" about what was going on, for example, she had no idea what sex was for. There was no causal link in her mind between the sexual act and the production of babies. That alone would have been a dangerous misconception to allow to run into her "Tween" years. This didn't happen overnight. These conversations happened over a period of about two years with long gaps between. As she began to understand what was happening and sort the confusion she had over what she had witnessed, she gradually settled into the normal sexuality level for a girl her age, albeit a well informed and guided one. We haven't had any problems at school in the last couple of years and although she is allowed internet access now, I monitor what she views remotely and there has been nothing to worry about. She has developed the healthy disgust with boys and their, as she puts it, "Nonsense" which most girls that age have, something that wasn't there before. I think the best way to tackle this is with openness, understanding and guidance. My fear would be that once this has been witnessed her mind will draw its own conclusions about what is happening. My view is that you need to get an understanding of the issues that are driving her to view this content.

Like your daughter, our daughters suffered non-contact sexual abuse. At the beginning they showed a lot of sexualised behaviours and had clearly no idea where boundaries were. We threw tons of body and puberty books at them, which they read with interest. Like Ford Prefect, we had lots of open conversations about the biological facts, about what is acceptable and how relationships and consent fit in. We were very relaxed and open in our conversations, but very clear when it came to boundaries. I agree that it is important to find out the reasons for this behaviour: did the birth family encourage this, are you sure there was only non-contact sexual abuse, what is going on in school, etc? How does she interpret what she is watching? I think it is also important to keep in mind that an interest in bodies and sex is normal even for very young children, so we tried not to over-interpret (I am not suggesting that watching porn is normal). Our goal was to help our children learn what is acceptable behaviour, to empower them and help them to feel good about their bodies, to teach them that they can make decisions about their bodies and to help them develop an attitude that will enable them to have happy relationships. They are very complex issues which are tricky to navigate in today's culture, particularly for girls. It took a few years, but - like Ford Prefect's daughter - our girls are now particularly well informed and behave in age-appropriate ways. Of course it is a work in progress, but just like with any other pre-teen.

This would be raised as a child protection issue by most professionals. I think you need expert support and possibly therapy for your daughter. I would suggest you contact pasw and ask for support asap. You are all at risk of allegations otherwise. She could easily tell someone at school for example. You need to pre empt this imo by approaching them first.

I do think this is a serious concern. There’s an addiction pattern here that’s one element but also her risk profile. Bernardo’s have done a lot in various places for children at risk of sexual exploitation. I wish I’d accessed them when Blossom was being deviant and permissive aged 9 & 10. Post Adoption are worth a shot. Re Sexual Abuse. Hm. We were told that no our kids weren’t abused. It turns out this was not true. But it wasn’t until we got our hands on the actual files that we knew for sure. In a way, does it matter- you are aiming for her behaviour and you know the cause is related to her trauma. That’s what you need to be armed with for the time being. It’s so dark. Isn’t it? For me, that’s the horror of it all that an adopted child or young person who has known love kindness and good things would seek and choose to wallow in such darkness. Shudder. How those early years change a person! Hold onto hope. She has a good grounding in you and you did ever so well reigning in your immediate (justified!) reaction and just chatting it through. Would you perhaps see someone at family futures with dd? Or perhaps look towards chrysalis associates in Sheffield or catchpoint in Bristol? They’d make a fair dent into what’s happening for her and what to do from here. All the best