Bareback porn withdrawn from sale after investigation
The BBC news programme Newsnight has reported that three porn films have been withdrawn from sale after the programme revealed that some performers are becoming infected with HIV.
Two of the DVD titles show eight young men having sex with each other “in various combinations” without using condoms. Four of them were diagnosed as HIV positive shortly after filming.
One of the men told Newsnight that he was “distressed that footage which he believed showed him becoming infected had been put on sale.”
So-called ‘bareback’ porn now accounts for 60% of all sales.
Ceri Evans, Senior Sexual Health Adviser at West London Centre for Sexual Health, told the BBC:
“I think that there is a possibility of something being called condom fatigue.
“We have been talking about condoms so long that people are bored or think they know it all.
“Education in schools is not what it could be, for anybody, for heterosexual but particularly if you are gay.”
Figures from the Health Protection Agency show that HIV infections from gay has increased by 55% in the past five years.
The number of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with HIV in the UK is at its highest rate since the start of the epidemic.
2,700 gay and bisexual men were newly diagnosed last year, the highest number ever.
Across the UK one in 20 gay and bisexual men are now living with HIV and estimates suggest this figure is as high as one in 10 in London.
Last week 48-year-old Rufus Ffoulkes, of Alexander Road in Lowestoft, was sentenced to two years and eleven months in prison for inciting a child into pornography.
Floulkes recruited young men for his homemade porn films from the website Gaydar – one brought along the 16-year-old boy.
Ffoulkes paid the teenager £500 to appear in a photoshoot then directed him in a bareback porn film.
The prosecution told the court that the 16-year-old was later concerned at having unprotected sex.
“Distasteful though this sort of activity is, the reality is that the gay pornography industry is sizeable and apart from the age of this young man, is legal,” Miranda Bevan, Ffoulkes’ lawyer, said, according to edp24.co.uk.
“Unprotected sex is standard in the gay porn industry.”
