Imagine your teenage son goes upstairs to do homework — and just hours later, you discover he has taken his own life. For too many families, this nightmare is a grim reality, the result of a rapidly growing and devastating crime known as sextortion.
Sextortion is a powerful form of exploitation where predators trick and coerce victims, often young boys, into sending explicit images online. The exploiters often pose as teen girls and reach out with flirtatious messages. This is no haphazard operation, research has found that thousands of Instagram accounts perpetrating sextortion were linked to only 20-25 individuals — in other words, this is often an organized criminal activity, something no teenager is prepared to go up against. They are trained and skilled at building trust quickly, shifting the conversation to sexual topics and eventually sending pictures or videos and requesting some in return.
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