A priest famous for his humanitarian work, particularly with victims of childhood sexual abuse, Fr Shay Cullen of the Preda Foundation has criticised one of Netflix’s latest offering Cuties, describing it as “playing into the whole paedophilia-sex industry”.
The film follows a group of 11-year-old girls as they take to ‘twerking’ – a dance form generally associated with being sexually provocative. The film also sees the minors discuss pornography and one taking a picture of their genitalia.
Critics of the film have emerged from many quarters, with Fr Shay speaking to The Irish Catholic about it.
“I think those are minors, actually – they’re all young children. I think it’s another step of mass media sexualising a form of child abuse, and actually playing into the whole paedophilia-sex industry.
“There should be legislation protecting children as we have here in the Philippines. We worked here for that legislation at the Preda Foundation, to stop it. There should be a very strong reaction against it, because it’s a terrible form of child abuse, sexualising young children, and of course, promoting paedophilia and sex tourism for children,” he said.
Damage
Speaking of the damaging effects this content can wreak, he mentioned some of the cases he’s seen through his own work in the Philippines.
“We are now here, the problem is that child abuse images are devastating children, young kids.
Distribution
“We just received here now three young boys, 10 and 11-years-old, sexually abusing a six-year-old. They have been viewing these child abuse images, which are on these smartphones. It’s everywhere, as you might say, and it’s being distributed here in the Philippines on smartphones…(that’s) the challenge, not only for Netflix, but for all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), who are allowing all of this child abuse to pass through their servers,” he said.
His understanding is that this kind of content cannot be allowed to pass through undetected and without consequence.
“Netflix are a distribution company and they’re distributing what’s basically child abuse imagery, and they should be penalised. People should take court cases against them; that’s what we would do.”
Read more here: Netflix’s ‘misunderstood’ film Cuties misunderstands child abuse