Violent online porn drove pervert to kill my Jane: Mother, 81, believes daughter would still be alive if internet giants had listened to her calls to ban sick websites

Teacher Jane Longhurst was 31 when she was murdered by a man obsessed by violent online pornography. Since her daughter’s death, Liz Longhurst has fought for these sick websites to be banned. Here Mrs Longhurst, 81, tells the Mail how she believes her daughter would still be alive if the internet giants had listened to her.

My daughter, Jane, was murdered by a man who spent hours searching for the most hideous, explicit and extreme websites on the internet.

Had it not been for the ease with which he could access violent pornography then she would, I believe, still be alive.

Graham Coutts fed his sick fantasies of strangulation and necrophilia by spending hours visiting the most hideous, explicit and extreme websites.

Victim: Teacher Jane Longhurst was murdered by a man obsessed with violent online pornography in 2003

They had names such as ‘deathbyasphyxia’, ‘hanging bitches’ and ‘necrobabes’ and opened up an arena for him to explore his desires.

They told him his dark fantasies were shared by others and were somehow normal.

Sadly, since Jane’s death in 2003 we have seen more cases of men who are addicted to sick internet pornography go on to kill.

Vincent Tabak, who killed landscape architect Jo Yeates, was addicted to vile internet sites showing women being strangled during sex. Stuart Hazell, who pleaded guilty to killing 12-year-old Tia Sharp, had used Google on his mobile phone to search for child sex abuse images before the murder.

April Jones’s killer, Mark Bridger had a library of child pornography on his computer.

Cases like this are all the more awful because these terrible websites could easily be stopped.

Devastated: Liz Longhurst says that her daughter would still be alive if internet giants had listened to her calls to ban violent porn

But we are faced with companies such as Google who insist that the internet is about freedom. That makes my blood run cold because if you are free, you are free to do bad things.

The police told us that at the age of 15, Coutts developed a fantasy that he wanted to strangle a woman with a ligature.

I think he must have thought he was the only person in the world who thought this way. I’m told he did make one or two half-hearted attempts to get help, but once the internet came along he must have thought ‘wow, I’m not alone’.

These websites were there for him instantly and it normalised his thoughts in his own mind.

A lot of these people start on the internet with the safer stuff and then move on to more hardcore sites.

Then some act out their fantasies for real. For this reason alone the internet has got a lot to answer for.

What I can’t understand is why companies such as Google and the internet service providers don’t do more to stop it.

Google seems more than able to block websites in China on behalf of its government. That shows what it can do if it wants to. It leads me to believe that the only reason they don’t take action is financial.

We see the way Google exploits the tax system in its favour – finance is clearly something the company is very focused on.

Why doesn’t the Government make more of a song and dance about this? David Cameron is a father, so is Nick Clegg.

Tragic: There have been several cases of men who are addicted to sick internet pornography going on to kill since the murder of Jane, pictured, in 2003

If the pressure was put on Google and the ISPs then more could be done. Sadly, I feel something cataclysmic is going to have to happen before there is a movement for any kind of change.

Coutts, Tabak, Hazell and Bridger looked at this stuff – then went off and killed innocent women and children.

How can there not be a link? We are all affected by things we see – to deny that is nonsensical.

What the Government and the industry can do now is make sure that when computers are sold in the UK, safety filters are already in place.

Ripped apart: The Longhurst family are pictured in 1985, left, 18 years before Graham Coutts, right, murdered Jane

If people then want to surf the internet for adult material they should be forced to sign in to ensure they don’t search for anything illegal.

Some of the major phone companies have already introduced this system. If they can then surely a company such as Google can too.

These companies talk about freedom. But where was Jane’s freedom? Are some freedoms more important than others?

DAILYMAIL