Publishing 'choking' porn online to be illegal

Pornography featuring strangulation or suffocation - often referred to as “choking” - is due to be criminalised, with a legal requirement placed on tech platforms to prevent UK users from seeing such material.

- Robyn Vinter

Possessing or publishing porn featuring choking will become a criminal offence under amendments to the crime and policing bill tabled in parliament yesterday.

In a separate amendment, victims of intimate image abuse will also have longer to come forward, with the time limit to prosecute extended from six months to three years.

The government said this would help break down unnecessary barriers victims faced when reporting a crime, “improving access to justice for those who need it the most”.

The choking ban comes after a recommendation from a government review into pornography that found it had contributed to establishing strangulation as a "sexual norm". The independent porn review, conducted by Gabby Bertin, which was commissioned by the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and published in February this year, recommended a ban on porn featuring strangulation.

Research shows strangulation is never a safe practice despite a widespread belief it can be. Though it often leaves no visible injury, oxygen deprivation, even for very short moments, causes changes to the fragile structures of the brain.