Troubling Childhood Innocence: Reframing the Debate over the Media Sexualisation of Children (Report‪)‬

Introduction THE NEXUS OF YOUNG CHILDREN and sexuality is inflammatory. It usually provokes a conundrum of effects, emotions and understandings and evokes heightened adult anxieties about the loss of childhood innocence and the dangers of child sexual abuse (Jones, 2004; Levine, 2002; Robinson, 2005, 2008; Taylor, 2007). The most recent manifestation of this conundrum can be found in the debate over the media sexualisation of children, which is not exclusive to Australia but has intensified in this country over recent years. The debate was precipitated by the 2006 release of the controversial Australian Institute Discussion Paper, Corporate paedophilia: Sexualisation of children in australia (Rush & La Nauze, 2006a) and culminated in the 2008 Australian Senate Inquiry into The sexualisation of children in the contemporary media (Senate Standing Committee on the Environment, Communications and the Arts, 2008).