Richard Hogan: We need to wake up to what is happening with our boys

It looks at all aspects of a teenage boy's world; his family, his relationship with masculinity, his school environment, knife crime, his views on girls, technology, misogyny and social media influencers. It is a grim watch. Something myself and others working in this field have been saying for many years. 

We are watching the greatest experiment ever perpetrated on adolescence and childhood right in front of our eyes. We have been supine, no hands on the wheel, praying it all works out. While this is a dramatization, it is based on real events. 

Stephen Graham, the Liverpudlian actor, who plays the father in the programme said that he had read the news about a boy stabbing a girl and then read a similar story in a different part of England and wondered: what is happening to our boys that they are attacking girls like this? What indeed?

This is a complicated issue but one that requires immediate action by parents and the government. Firstly, while this is a dramatization of a seemingly ordinary young boy and his terrible crime, Jamie is not an outlier. We all need to wake up to that fact. 

We have had one of our own teenage girls, in this country, murdered by two of her classmates in 2018. I’m sure we all remember the heinous murder of Ana Kriégel, a 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered by her classmates. They called for her, she went out with them and she never came home. 

We have far too many cases of girls going out and not coming home in this country. What has happened that some boys and men view women in such a way that makes them think they can do whatever they want to them? 

The first part of this complicated issue is pornography. I have been saying this for many years; we have to stop, as a matter of urgency, the easy access children have to hardcore extreme material. 

They are being swamped with ideas that girls like to have consent taken from them, enjoy being choked, spat on and dominated by men as part of sexual desire. I really don’t know what more we need to hear than those words, to motivate us into action and prevent this from happening.

We can show Adolescence all we want, like the Tánaiste suggested, but in reality if we want to prevent our boys from developing pathological ideas about girls we have to stop letting them see the pornified view of intimacy that is foisted on them every single day of their lives. 

In Ana Kriegel’s case Boy A had consumed thousands of images of bestiality and BDSM hardcore extreme material. Is this a coincidence or a contributing factor? When are we going to put our children first, and say to these companies that create such content; that poison that you are feeding our kids, that gets turned off right now! 

If we did that, we would be removing from the psychology of our children negative and violent ideas about sexual desire. It would also help to ameliorate the fragile sense of manhood pornography propagates; you’re only a man if you dominate and control women. 

If I was a politician, blocking hardcore material would be the first thing I would be working on. I wouldn’t rest until I had shut this stuff down. So boys and girls can explore their sexual curiosity in a healthy way, at a healthy age.

We are at a touching point here. This programme has sparked a huge debate. Adolescent male heroes like Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor no longer have the appeal they once had. 

Now is the time for positive male role models to step in. When I think of my own childhood, I realise I never really had a positive male role model. And I think that is the lived experience of many young men. 

That’s why people like Tate have such power with teenage boys. They fill this vacuum with their nonsensical misogynistic waffle. I can see that as an adult male, but to a teenage boy who has been excluded and made to feel there is something inherently toxic about being a boy, Tate and others like him are alluring and comforting. 

I have been warning parents about this for many years. It isn’t good enough to simply blame Tate. We have to look at ourselves and say, "Why are our boys leaning into a message like that? What must they be feeling? And what are we doing to help protect our children from grifters like Tate?" 

Those answers might be a little uncomfortable to hear. I have been talking in schools with young men for many years, listening to them and hearing how they feel about being young men and the messages they receive at home, in school and on social media. 

There is a deep sense of confusion about what being a man means today. They don’t have the skills to process their emotions. Anger and aggression are fear antidotes. 

We have to educate them on how to process emotional turmoil. Tate is no longer what he was, they are beginning to see through him, they see him as a buffoon now, McGregor too. The whitewashing of the iconic mural in Scully Fitness Gym illuminates that shift. 

So, what we need now is positive male role models. Men who espouse all that is good about masculinity and being a man in the world. 

We have to teach boys that being broken up with or rejected by a girl isn’t an afront to their masculinity and very identity, but a normal part of early relationships. 

Emotions are not weaknesses but are healthy and should be expressed. As fathers, we have a responsibility to role model positive masculinity. 

We need more education in schools and far better digital literacy. There has been a lot of talk about who will be the next President of this great country. 

Whoever it is, I only hope they have childhood and what has happened to adolescence in recent years at the forefront of their thoughts and actions. 

We need a positive role model for our boys and girls to look up to more than ever.