How Sextortion Can Leave Victims Isolated and Suicidal

Initially, “John” felt flattered when a woman reached out to him on social media and sent him “kind and supportive” messages.

“Then they started flirting,” said John, who has a learning disability and wishes to remain anonymous.

The woman, who said she was a teacher, began sending him intimate photos and convinced him to do the same. But after he sent one back, her tone changed.

“Suddenly you’re pressured to do something and you do it without thinking,” John says. “That was all they needed to blackmail me.”

Soon more and more messages came in: sometimes as many as 50 a day.

“You dare block me on Twitter… watch my next move,” one said. “You think you can run away? I still have your picture,” read another.

The person demanded money and threatened to share John’s image online, a crime commonly known as sextortion. John lost over £3,000 when he tried to stop the blackmailer from sharing the image.

When he ran out of money to offer – fearing there was no way out – John considered committing suicide.

“I thought my life was over,” he says. “I thought they were going to ruin me.” He says that’s when he finally decided to tell someone he could trust.

John contacted a charity he knew supported people with learning disabilities. Kat Akass from SeeAbility was the first person he spoke to.

“I don’t think you can imagine how bad it was unless you were there,” she said. “We were really concerned for his personal safety. He was so upset. He really, honestly, thought his life was over.”

There are no official statistics on the number of sextortion cases in the UK. So BBC News sent a Freedom of Information Act request to every police force in the UK, asking how many reported blackmail offences contained the word ‘sextortion’ in the past decade.

The 33 police forces (out of a total of 45) that responded recorded almost 8,000 blackmail cases involving sextortion last year. The same number of police forces recorded 23 in 2014. All the police forces that responded were in England and Wales.

In the past decade, there have been at least 21,323 recorded offences involving the word sextortion. More than 18,000 of these have occurred since the pandemic.

According to data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of cases of blackmail has increased eighteenfold over the same period.

Earlier this year, the National Crime Agency (NCA) issued its first ever all-school warning, warning teenagers about the dangers of sextortion. The NCA knew it was a fast-growing crime but said it did not know how many victims there were.

The BBC showed the interview with John and the police evidence to Sean Sutton, from the NCA’s child sexual abuse team.

“It’s just devastating,” he said. “And we know that a number of people in the UK have already committed suicide.”

The NCA is so concerned that they have spoken to the coroner and suggested that in cases of unprovoked suicide the possibility of sextortion should be investigated.

The data obtained by the BBC is imperfect. It is difficult to know exactly how many victims there are, as this type of crime has so far been reported by the police under a number of different offences, mainly blackmail, but also cybercrime and child abuse.

Officers may have recorded it under a description other than “sextortion.” But that’s about to change.

The scale of this problem is so great that the NCA is about to identify it as a crime in its own right. It will be called financially motivated sexual exploitation and given its own unique crime code, allowing the NCA to finally keep track of how widespread it really is.

Mr Sutton fears the data only represents the tip of the iceberg because people are so reluctant to report these crimes.

“People think they pay a fee and these criminals go away,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s not our experience.”

He advises victims not to engage in conversation with people who threaten them online: “If they ask for money, don’t pay it, otherwise you will have to pay more and more.”

SeeAbility staff tried to help John by reporting the flood of messages and threats as they appeared.

“You can’t reach a real person to shut them down,” says Kat Akass. “You click a button and press report … and then you wait.”

Today, John is in therapy and says he lives in a constant state of fear. The power struggle with the scammers felt endless: reporting and blocking scammers and ignoring demands for money.

He eventually went to the police, but says he felt like a criminal. The NCA told us this should not have happened and plans to issue new guidelines for all forces soon.

“We understand the stigma in these cases,” a spokesperson told the BBC. “We try to remove the stigma and tell victims directly: ‘Get help. Get support. It’s not your fault.'”

Last week, two brothers from Nigeria who molested a 17-year-old in an extortion case were sentenced to 17 years and six months in prison in the US.

The Ogoshi brothers from Lagos lured Jordan DeMay into sending them explicit images by pretending to be a girl his own age, and then blackmailed him.

The teen committed suicide less than six hours after they connected on Instagram.

His act was one of at least 27 suicides committed by sextortion in the US alone.

John wants other victims not to be afraid to tell someone what happened to them.

“To the scammers I say I hope you rot in hell for what you did to me. But I speak because I want people to know that you can survive this. All you have to do is ask for help.”

If you have experienced any of the issues discussed in this story, you can get help and support via BBC Action Line.