Children wander through the dark dungeon of the internet largely without supervision so we shouldn't be shocked at the damage it causes. Photo / 123rf
OPINION:
I wish I could say that the scandal about a "rape culture" in UK private schools comes as a surprise.
More than 10,000 "testimonies" from young women (and a few guys) who have experienced sexual abuse have been posted on the website Everyone's Invited in the UK.
The stories range from boys pressuring girls to send them nude pictures to truly repulsive acts of personal humiliation.
Schools which feature in the roll call of shame include such eminent academic institutions as Dulwich College and Highgate.
Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who is heading a task force to investigate the allegations, has encouraged parents to report their own sons if they suspect them of sexual assault.
Good luck with that.
Older readers may think that sexual harassment in schools is hardly new.
But snogging behind the bike sheds and furtive gropes atop the pile of gym mats in the PE store look like a gentleman's calling card on a silver salver in Jane Austen compared with today's brutish couplings.
Eight years ago, I wrote a piece that many readers found deeply shocking.
It came about after a friend's daughter started at a mixed-sex boarding school.
When the mother asked how she was getting on, the girl said: "Okay, but you have to give the boys blow jobs or they get cross."
My startled friend protested that her darling 14-year-old did not have to do anything of the sort. "Oh, yes you do, Mummy," the girl replied, "and you have to shave down there or the boys don't like it."
There was one graphic piece of the story that I withheld.
Look away now if you're at all queasy.
As part of the initiation ceremony at the famous boarding UK school, the rugby team lined up between the goalposts and the new girls knelt down to service them.
Equality between the sexes was working out well, wasn't it? I said back then that it was enough to unleash my inner Mary Whitehouse, and I really meant it.
The campaigner with the perm of steel was much mocked for being a prude, but Mrs Whitehouse wasn't wrong about the corrupting influence of pornography.
The kind of dirty mags that boys had to pluck up courage to buy from the top shelf of the newsagent when I was a teenager was replaced by access-all-hours hardcore material on the internet.
Mobile phones then acted as rocket boosters, supercharging online access to depravity.
I remember my daughter's bemusement when I queried the social nicety of receiving a picture of a boy's penis before you'd actually met him.
"Everyone does dick pics, Mum," came the weary response.
My concern grew when I was having dinner with a group of women and the conversation turned to how we were supposed to raise sons and daughters capable of forming meaningful relationships when children had free access to the sewer of the internet.
Sue, a GP, said: "I'm afraid things are much worse than people suspect."
Sue had treated growing numbers of teenage girls with internal injuries caused by anal sex; not because her patient wanted it - on the contrary - but because a boy expected it of her. The girls were deeply ashamed at presenting with incontinence.
They had lied to their mothers and felt they couldn't confide in anyone else.
When Sue questioned them further, they said they were humiliated by the experience, but they felt they couldn't say no.
Anal sex was standard among teenagers now, even though the girls knew that it hurt. Sue worked in the leafy heart of Hampshire.
The girls were often under the age of consent and from loving, stable homes.
Just the sort of kids who, only two generations ago, would have been enjoying riding and ballet lessons, and still looking forward to their first kiss - not being coerced into violent sex by some youth who picked up his ideas on physical intimacy from a dogging video on his phone.
Pornography is ubiquitous; children are exposed to the nastiest imagery from a tender age.
They don't have to be looking for it - sickening pop-ups often just appear.
I make no excuses for the boys who feature in gross anecdotes on Everyone's Invited.
However, I do notice that many of the revolting things they have done to girls come straight out of the porn playbook.
Like the Russian jerk who urinated on his victim.
Just to cloud the already murky, malodorous waters, young girls have been warped by the same highly sexualised culture.
"You wouldn't believe the pics some girls send you," one child at a boarding school told me.
And not all boys subscribe to laddish culture, and many are deeply respectful around potential girlfriends. There are no easy answers here.
The school in Australia that made boys stand up in assembly and apologise to the girls for all the rapes committed by their gender made the error of blaming innocent young males for circumstances which are largely beyond their control.
My generation has allowed its offspring to wander through the dank dungeon of the internet largely unsupervised.
What right do we have to take the moral high ground when they imitate the foul things they found there? We could start by telling all our sons that pornography is not a primer for a relationship.
And telling our daughters not to tolerate anything that hurts or disgusts them.
Then erect an almighty paywall around internet porn and pray that impressionable minds don't get polluted too young.
- Allison Pearson is a British columnist and author