In August 2023, a video circulated on Russian-language Telegram channels in which little girls took adult products out of boxes and began to twirl them in their hands. We checked whether the descriptions under such publications are correct.
In the 32-second video attached to the posts, masked girls take turns removing various sex toys from boxes and try to guess what these items are for (the versions in Dutch are “rolling pin”, “opener” and “fly swatter”). As the description says, such gifts were given to children on a TV show.
With a similar comment, the video spread through resources such as “Mriya", "Zen", "VKontakte", "Main regional" And "I cried" The news gained particular popularity thanks to Telegram channels Topor Live (418,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Tough shit 18+"(340,000), "Veronica Stepanova" (319,000), "Observer"(206,000), Voblya (146,000) and "Bottle"(126,000).
Issues of sex education for minors in the West and the risks associated with it often attract the attention of Russian Media. Indeed, in many European countries there are sexuality education programs in schools, the main goal of which is to provide minors with all the necessary information so that the beginning of their sexual life is informed and safe. In particular, in the Netherlands, lessons about sexual and reproductive health appeared several decades ago; schoolchildren attend them compulsorily already in primary school (that is, from the age of four). According to statistics, on average, this practice does not reduce the age at which sexual activity begins, and among teenagers from the Netherlands, sexual debut occurs even later than many of their European or American peers. However, a TV show is not a school, TV presenters are not teachers, and sex toys are not an anatomical atlas, so the indignant reaction of users to posts with rather controversial images is quite understandable.
You can find the original source of the video using a reverse image search service. Google. How it turned out, video released by a Dutch public organization Free A Girl, which fights the sexual exploitation of underage girls. On the organization's website saidthat her efforts saved more than 7,000 children around the world. For this purpose, various methods are used - from organizing a hotline to placing social advertising. The video, which was distributed in the summer of 2023, was released back in 2017, on the eve of the Week against Child Prostitution.
IN original The video lasts not 32 seconds, but more than a minute and consists of two parts. In the first half of the recording, which went viral on the RuNet, Dutch children unpack objects that they have no idea about the sexual connotation. “Innocent fantasies for these girls,” the captions say. Suddenly, these images are replaced by much more terrible ones: a hidden video of the sexual exploitation of a girl in an Asian children's brothel. “A terrifying reality for millions of other people,” says the voiceover. Thus, the intention of the creators of the video was to show the contrast between the two worlds and urge society to pay more attention to the problems of disadvantaged countries, including the much lower protection of minors there. According to assessment In 2013, more than 10 million people around the world were involved in child prostitution.
Nevertheless, social advertising six years ago caused controversy in the West, because footage of albeit anonymous girls holding sex toys in their hands was not edited. To this the representatives of Free A Girl answeredthat child psychologists worked with all the children participating in the filming, and the script was carefully thought out. And yet the question of the admissibility of such a move, even if for good purposes, remains open, and YouTube channel The organization’s video can no longer be found.
One way or another, the captions with which the shortened video with the girls was distributed in 2023 in the Russian-language segment of the Internet (and not only in it) are incorrect. In the original, it was not a TV show, but a public service announcement, and in its full version the emphasis was on the fact that it is unacceptable to ignore the sexual exploitation of children in some countries while their peers live happily in others.
Cover photo: social networks
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