MMouse, there is a big difference between two kids expressing curiosity in a mutual fashion, and a child who is forced or coerced into sexual activity by either another child or an adult.
Children exploring and being curious about one another - this is so normal as to be common. When it's mutual, there generally is no lasting damage, either.
When coercion is involved, even if no actual sex takes place, then you have a situation of inequitable power and the likelihood of long-term damage, even if what actually happened was not "all the way" or even close. Sexual assault is a crime of violence rather than primarily a sexual act.
Children WILL be curious about sex and sexuality. Even if you teach them absolutely nothing, they will almost instinctively work things out. In fact, if you DO fail to teach them (as you did not) their attempts to "work out how everything works" can lead to a lot more trouble. But you are very definite that you took care of that angle. I only mention it, because my mother did not. I was kept in TOTAL ignorance about the facts of life, with the result that I was moderately active in discussing things with very close friends as well as the "let's show each other" stuff. By the time I was 14 and a 10 year old friend told me "the facts of life" I thought she was making it up, it sounded too far-fetched!
I don't know exactly what your kids did. From what you have told us, something has been going on since they were 8 and 9, and they are now 14 & 13. It doesn't involve the sexual act, specifically. So I can assume it also doesn't involve oral sex? Because despite what certain ex-Presidents and a lot of teens seem to think, that IS still qualifying as a sexual act.
if this was a once-off, back a few years ago, AND if there was no coercion involved (merely curiosity) AND if it stopped ages ago - then I think you are in danger of causing far more harm by getting upset about it now.
If, on the other hand, some level of sexual experimentation (short of actual sex) has been continuing, AND it's mutual, then again, it needs to be handled sensitively to avoid causing damage now, by a massive over-reaction.
If at any stage force or coercion was involved, then this needs to be sorted so the children BOTH know that it's not OK to force anyone to do anything (sexual or otherwise) that they feel uncomfortable about. This can then become a useful teaching tool - "hey, kids, you know that nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach that says this is not right? Learn to recognise it and listen to it because when you hit your teens and you're dealing with other teens who are less caring about what is right and wrong, then YOUR conscience can have more chance of protecting you."
Children are sexual creatures. Who here (of the parents of boys) HASN'T at some stage had to deal with the greasy hand stains on the front of their trousers, when they were about 2 years old? (In our family, we were still dealing with this when the boys were 7 and 8). It feels good, it reassures them, it is a very hard habit to break. [For the record - a bar of damp soap, rubbed across the stains before the garment is put into the wash, has a good chance of shifting those stains).]
Children are also innocent. It is our job to teach them what is appropriate, as they get older.
While there are cases of children who are also sexual predators, and unfortunately we've seen too many here (although ONE is too many), it is far more common to find that children who play like this often are just curious. Of course it needs to be directed, with curiosity perhaps satisfied in more appropriate ways.
I grew up a child in a household of (mostly female) adults. A good friend of mine when we were very little, had two older brothers. I remember sharing a bath with all of us in together, and being fascinated at what those boys could do with that curious little appendage. For quite a while after that I wanted to be a boy, so I too could "water the garden" and especially so I didn't have to laboriously undress every time I had to use the toilet. Boys could get the job done much more quickly and get back out to play, it just wasn't fair. It may have been that very young exposure that led my mother to shelter me afterwards, so extremely.
MMouse, I hope you can resolve what has happened and help the kids move beyond this.
And about the porn - boys WILL do this. It also depends on what level of porn. There is some ghastly, graphic and damaging stuff out there as well as images that have been so thoroughly whitewashed and air-brushed as to bear little resemblance to the original person photographed.
Boys looking at porn - it's almost a rite of passage. I suspect the cousin was probably the one sharing his access. If the cousin is younger then it was his way of 'big-noting' himself ("See - I can view this any time I want, I'm not such a little kid after all"). If he was older then it was probably done in a spirit of misguided brotherly indoctrination - "Us menfolk gotta educate one another."
I knew difficult child 1 was looking at porn (hard copy; a younger neighbourhood boy was swiping big brother's porn magazines and selling them to difficult child 1) when I found the stuff in his schoolbag.
The way I handed it was a bit different but VERY effective - I sat him down with me at the computer and together we researched the topic, "Dead Porn Stars". The moral of the lesson - porn exploits the people who work in the industry. Nobody is untouched by it. People die.
We discussed the various causes of why people died, what they had originally hoped to gain by being involved in porn, and how their dreams had been destroyed by the business. I asked him how he would feel if I had posed for porn in my younger days, and he was browsing online one day and found himself ogling a picture which turned out to be me - how would he feel? How would he feel if his grandmother had done it?
[please note - I didn't, and neither did mother in law or my mother].
He got the message - the images he was looking at represented someone's sister, someone's daughter, someone's sweet innocent child trying to make a living.
For a teenage boy, having your father do this is far less embarrassing than having your mother give you a guided tour of the seamy side of online porn. I don't think he's ever looked at it again. husband & I have a secret software package which gives us the history of all sites looked at, and we can account for all of it.
But this is something that boys will do (unfortunately).
I teach a volunteer chess class at the local primary school. This is for kids aged 5 to 11. They have computers in the classrooms with internet connections. The school has Net Nanny program which I have seen these kids beat. One day I was teaching, and I saw the boys going through the classroom computer files. The Internet was not on at the time so what the boys were looking at was stuff they had already downloaded earlier.
What I saw was NOT nice, but the boys all thought this was funny. I did not react other than to say that we were there to play chess and not to look at people's files. Most of what the kids had downloaded was trashy toilet humour but there was enough smattering of gratuitous nudity to tell me they had probably seen far more (and just not thought it funny enough to download).
We all went back to playing chess - and next opportunity I had, I dobbed them all in. The principal said, "No, our kids can't access porn online because our software system locks it out."
I told him to go look on the computers and check through the student files. I said, "These kids are more computer-savvy than you're giving credit. They can beat your system, and have done so. They are now sharing porn files amongst themselves".
These kids were no older than 11, remember. Some were younger than 10 years old.
The school cleaned up its computer systems.
The thing is, boys will do this, if only to say that they can. It does not mean your child is about to turn into a sexual predator.
The trouble is, as soon as a kid starts surfing for porn online, they risk so many things in terms of their own safety. Plus there's the really strong stuff - I wouldn't want ANY child of mine, not even the adult ones, to see this stuff. I hate to think what it would do emotionally to a ten year old who stumbled on it. Probably put him off sex for life. It is so bad I won't even describe it here. The only reason I've seen anything like this, is because we went through a phase of being sent (unasked for) catalogues from a business selling porn videos of such a sleazy nature that even in the freest and easiest Aussie states, they were illegal. husband & I dobbed the business into the Vice Squad. And I would love to get my hands on the ratbag who thought it would be funny, to put husband's & my names down on the business's mailing list to receive this muck.
You cancelled sleepovers until this is sorted - I think that is a really effective natural consequence. You're not the ogre here, it's the lack of trust. In a lot of ways it sounds like the kids have just been relegated back to pre-teen levels of trust and responsibility, until you feel you know them again.
Marg