Boy, 4, had to be chaperoned at Preschool to stop him assaulting other children in “sex games.”

Warning: This post deals with children and pornography and may be distressing for some readers. 

Superheroes, dress-ups, catch and craft.

That’s what your four-year-old is doing at preschool right?

Playing in the sandpit, building blocks.

Eating slices of cut-up fruit from his lunch box and gluing strips of crepe paper and glitter onto milk cartons to take home as a pirate’s treasure box.

It’s how we imagine the day of a four-year-old boy at preschool, innocent and safe.

So compare it with this…

Compare it with the day of this four-year-old.

A little boy from South Australia whose behaviour is so sexualized he has to be chaperoned at all times in case he starts playing “sex games” with the other children. A child’s whose behaviour has been so twisted after his young mind viewed online pornography that he plays at anal and oral sex.

Anal and oral sex instead of superheroes.

The shocking case has come to light in a Senate inquiry into the impact on children of online pornography.

Child safety expert Freda Briggs has accused schools and childcare centres of ignoring or covering up a spate of “child-on-child abuse’’ blaming online porn for the epidemic.

The case of the four-year-old who has to be chaperoned to stop him assaulting other children in “sex games” is the tip of the iceberg in a spate of incidents she says.

Professor Briggs has told the Senate inquiry the South Australian case is “typical of what is happening elsewhere’’ reports The Australian. 

Professor Briggs revealed that during interviews with more than 700 children for an Australian Research Council study young boys between the ages of six and eight admitted that they and their dads watched pornography together for “fun” because “that’s what guys do.”

She said in the case of the four-year-old boy, from a regional kindergarten in South Australia the staff “ignored anal and oral sex accompanied by threats and secrecy” she says they dismissed it as “normal developmentally ­appropriate behavior.”

“Parents removed victims from the kindergarten for their safety … the boy who initiated the behaviour is now accompanied by a supervising adult, at considerable expense to the taxpayer.

“Nevertheless, his behaviour has allegedly continued in the out-of-school-hours childcare centre and other children have re-enacted it.

“It is alleged that no one asked him where he had learned to play these ‘sex games’.’’

The Australian reports that South Australia’s Department for Education and Child Development said it was “working with the families involved’’.

“The department treats inappropriate sexualized behaviours with the utmost seriousness and any incidents of this kind are investigated and managed directly by senior staff,’’ a spokesman said yesterday. “The welfare of the children remains our priority. The department will continue to offer support to them and the broader community in an ongoing basis.

“This includes ongoing work with Freda Briggs, who has separately endorsed the state’s mandated child-protection curriculum which is taught in every year level between reception and Year 10.’’

Her submission, tabled in the Senate, lists a “litany of attacks on children by classmates” reports The Australian including a six-year-old boy who forced oral sex on kindergarten boys in the school cubby house.

She also cited a group of boys who followed a five-year-old girl into the toilets, held her down and urinated in a “golden shower”

In January the prestigious Trinity Grammar School made headlines when a six-year-old boy was removed from the school following a series of “sexualized” incidences where boys were getting naked and performing sex acts on each other in the school toilets and playground.

The year one boys had been encouraged by an “instigator” to engage in sex acts with at least four other victims.

“Six-year-old boys should not be doing this to other six-year-old boys at school,” said mother told News Limited “Clearly the playground and toilets were not supervised. Why didn’t they notice the boys were missing?”

National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell told The Australian that children’s access to online porn was “influencing their attitudes and risk-taking behaviours’’.

“They’re much more likely to think the kind of sexual activity that goes on in pornography is what they should expect in an intimate partner relationship and they take risks, including anal sex,’’ she said.

Access of online pornography is increasing problem for families, with the Australian Childhood Foundation saying over 90 per cent of boys under the age of 16 have visited a pornography site online and around 60 per cent of girls doing the same. Many children from the age of just 11.

Cybersafety expert Susan McLean has told a Sydney symposium that parents who think their children won’t be exposed to porn have their heads in the sand.

“They will find it, it will find them or someone will show it to them,” Ms McLean told AAP.

Ms McLean, a former police officer said that while porn can be blocked, banned or ignored it will eventually find your child.

“The results of early exposure and engagement can vary from bed-wetting to triggers for child-on-child sexual assaults, which are on the rise, Ms McLean says.

“They don’t have the capacity to say ‘that’s not how it works’”.