Giving their son unrestricted access to pornography was a smart thing to do, especially considering, as explained in the article, he could get it either way.
If your child is smart and educated about the potential dangers associated with online sex chatrooms and the like, there are only benefits to reap.
Pornography does the world a load of good. In countries that are sexually liberal, and where sex is not as taboo as it is in other countries, the population has less sexual crime. The opposite is true of sexually repressive countries. Why this is so shouldn't be difficult to understand.
Pornography gives sexually charged males an outlet, one that does not involve raping and abusing women.
What matters most with respect to porn, is not whether someone has access to it, or even the sort of porn they watch, but their own character, which determines how they react to it.
Or would you have preferred that they block his internet access (a futile endeavor as explained in the article), made him resent and rebel against his parents more, and forced him at the age of 9 to turn his sexual drive and impulses toward the underage girls around him? Turning off the porn doesn't turn off natural sexual urges, if anything, it ensures they're at the forefront of his consciousness. Any honest person with a penis can tell you that.
For a child in his position, he turned out remarkably well. This should not be surprising considering the excellent parenting he received. They didn't give up on him, they home-schooled him and taught him well, and they gave him freedom to learn from his own mistakes:
Alex took the therapist at his word and walked out of the office to go live with his girlfriend. He was 15. I reported the incident and the therapist to the Department of Human Services and called the police, who monitored Alex from the distance. Two-and-a-half difficult days passed before Alex returned home, his body language meek and his words—to me, at least—repentant. He barely spoke to his father.
Down the road, Alex realized how blessed he was to have such great parents:
A strict vegan, Alex had just apprised me of new research on latent carcinogens in poultry as well as the news that he was to receive the award for the university’s Outstanding Computer Science Student of 2010. Holding a corn chip midway to his mouth, he said, “I appreciate all that you do for me. I know I couldn’t have come this far without you.”