The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) says that in the first six months of 2023 reports have risen substantially compared to the whole of 2022, with boys aged 14 to 17 most likely to be targeted.
Sexually coerced extortion, or “sextortion” as it’s often referred to, occurs when sexually explicit images or videos are exchanged online and the victim is subsequently blackmailed with threats to share the content with friends and family or more widely on the internet.
The IWF is a child protection hotline that finds and removes imagery of child sexual abuse from the internet, including images from cases of child sextortion.
In the first half of this year, it investigated an “unprecedented” 191 reports of suspected sextortion, compared with only 30 in the whole of 2022.
Of these, 75 constituted child sexual abuse material and the IWF took steps to have the images and videos blocked and removed from the internet.
Most of the reports came to the IWF via the joint IWF and Childline Report Remove service, which allows UK children and young people to report sexual images and videos of themselves that can be blocked if they are worried they have shared images which risk being circulated online.
IWF analysts believe many of the extortionists are adults posing as young girls, who use either fake profile images or subterfuge to convince teenage boys that they are having an online conversation with a female peer.
The IWF states: “Once they’ve received a sexual image, the abusers threaten to share the imagery more broadly if they are not paid money. In some cases, victims are pressured into providing more images.
“Victims report being frightened by the threats and demands for payment or more images – fearing that their lives will be ruined if their nude images are shared with peers or family. Many of the threatening messages from blackmailers include contact details of the victim’s friends and family.”
The IWF issues regular alerts about changing trends in the online abuse and exploitation of children.
A year ago, the charity warned about notable increases in the amount of child abuse imagery that is being self-generated – by the victims themselves often in their own bedrooms.
In the first half of 2022, the IWF received reports of almost 78,000 webpages of child abuse imagery including so-called “self-generated” content – an increase on the same period in 2021. The vast majority of all the victims are girls and, of these, more than 56,000 contained images of 11 to 13-year-olds, identifying a clear need for specific safeguarding education in key stage 3.
However, in the recent cases of sextortion handled by the IWF, older teens aged 14 to 17 seemed to be the most at risk, with boys apparently being targeted most often.
IWF senior analyst Zara* said: “Victims are scared, and they come to the IWF desperate to stop their images from being shared. If they report the imagery to us directly, we can hash and block the criminal image.
“The children come from all ethnicities and backgrounds, but they all share the same fear of their most intimate images being exposed online and shared.
“Some are afraid of going to the police and believe abuser’s threats that they are in the wrong, when in fact they are the victims here, and it is the blackmailers who have broken the law.”
* Zara is a pseudonym used to protect the analyst’s privacy.
For more on the work and research of the IWF, visit www.iwf.org.uk and to access the IWF/Childline Report Remove service go to www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/online-mobile-safety/report-remove