Sexually coerced extortion

 

Sexually coerced extortion or ‘sextortion' is a type of blackmail where someone tries to use intimate, naked or sexual photos or videos of a person to blackmail or extort them often for either more images or for money. Sometimes, these photos or videos are taken without the knowledge of the person pictured. The IWF can only assist in instances of sextortion where the victim is a child.

We saw 6 cases in 2021, which is when we first began logging this. In 2023, we saw 176 actionable cases.

Severity of abuse in sextortion reports

  • Category A - 12 (7%): Images involving penetrative sexual activity; images involving sexual activity with animals or sadism.
  • Category B - 28 (16%): Images involving non-penetrative sexual activity.
  • Category C - 136 (77%): Other indecent images not falling within categories A or B.

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This chart shows that most (136) of the reports of sexually coerced extortion depict Category C imagery.

 

Sex of children seen in sextortion reports

  • Girls - 10 (6%)
  • Boys - 161 (91%)
  • Both - 5 (3%)

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The majority (161) of the reports received were boys.

 

Ages of children seen in sextortion reports

  • 14-15 - 70 (40%)
  • 16-17 - 106 (60%)

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Three in five (60%) reports depict 16 and 17-year-olds.

 

Due to the increasing numbers of sextortion reports assessed by our analysts, we created a sextortion resource on our website. This is a trend that we will continue to track through 2024.