Today's media storm centres around our popular soap opera EastEnders. The BBC has been inundated with complaints about the current storyline where the mother of a fifteen year old girl has a boyfriend who has apparently 'groomed' her since she was twelve. 'Outraged from Surbiton' complains that this is tea-time TV and as a family show EastEnders should not be running storylines like this that can be viewed by children.
Unfortunately (and I mean unfortunately) I have to disagree. Recent polls have shown that children today are far more sexually aware than they ever have been. With unfettered access to the Internet they are exposed to all sorts of sexual imagery and the means, via social networking sites and chartrooms, of forming close relationships with unlikely 'friends'. Interestingly despite all this exposure they remain largely uneducated about sex and consequently we are vaccinating young girls against cervical cancer and we continue to lead the teen pregnancy tables.
So a TV show dealing with very real issues like paedophilia is actually necessary. It is probably the best way of warning impressionable girls and boys how easily they can be misled by someone they may have in a position of trust. Nowadays when TV is all-influential I am glad that EastEnders has tackled this storyline. My main criticism of the BBC is of how quietly they have gone about this. They are working with the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) on this storyline and are certainly doing their best to give an accurate and sensitive portrayal. In my opinion they should have publicised their work with the NSPCC showing how important these storylines are rather than wait for the complaints to come rolling in?
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