Sextortion: In the Words of a Teenage Victim
Teenage boys in every school in America are being targeted by online sextortion scams. I hear it every day.
According to the FBI, there are more than 500,000 online predators active daily, and the average teenager spends more hours each year on social media than they do in school
Our children are in real and present danger online. We must do more to proactively educate them.
Below is a message that I received from a student after an online safety presentation.
All identifying information has been removed for privacy. The message is shared with permission and exactly as written.
Dear Mr. Tracy,
I would first like to introduce myself before I share my story of falling victim to these predators/online scammers. My name is [REDACTED], I am a 9th grade student at [REDACTED]. I attended your speech this morning. I want to say from the absolute bottom of my heart a very very big thank you for all of the work, dedication, and help you provide to people across the nation, including students like myself. Your speech inspired me to write this to you as it really made me reflect on what happened and how truly horrible the things these people do are. With that said, here’s my story as a 15 year old victim.
It started on Father’s Day weekend of this year. It was morning and me and my family were getting packed and ready to go to a hotel on the beach that day. I then got a notification on my phone saying I had a follow request on Instagram. It was an alleged 14 year old girl that was also from [REDACTED]. I thought it might have been a friend of a friend or someone I hadn’t met at school because at that time, summer courses were in session for [REDACTED]. I just wanted to meet new people. As you can imagine I accepted it and brushed it off. Then I get another notification and it's the same girl trying to start a conversation. I wasn’t exactly the type of person to turn down someone or ignore a conversation, so I was talking with her for a little and she seemed nice and sounded like a normal person.
It was when I started getting on the road that it went downhill. She started making comments that eventually lead to her asking to trade inappropriate images with me. She went as far as to send photos to me first despite me saying no many many times. At this point I had the block button right under my finger, little did I know in the background they had found my Snapchat and TikTok account. They all, from each app, sent me fake AI generated nude and vulgar pictures and online comments to me saying things that I would never in 100 million years even think of posting online.
They said “IF YOU DON’T PAY ME $600 RIGHT NOW I WILL SEND THIS TO YOUR FAMILY FRIENDS AND SCHOOL AND RUIN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE”. As well as “We have your IP and location we will find and kill you if you don’t send us the money right now”.
I was beside myself. The worst part? I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone at the time. I was in the car with my parents and little siblings. I went into full panic mode not knowing exactly what was going on. I tried to negotiate and beg for mercy, which obviously didn’t work. It wasn’t until 45 minutes later I told my parents. We hadn’t even checked in yet and I pulled both of them to the side. I called 911 as they told me to do and the operator then connected me to an FBI agent to help me with the situation. I spoke with him for about half an hour, in this hotel lobby with dozens of other people there trying to sort this crisis out. He asked me for all of the account info and screenshots of the images and photos of the comments that they had generated. He said and I quote, “We will get to the bottom of this and I will let you know if anything is found about these people”.
Turns out, it wasn’t a 14 year old girl from [REDACTED] at all. It was a group of 6 men, all older than 40 in the Bahamas. That’s the only information I received of them and I don’t know exactly where they are now, but we can only hope they are in a place where they are unable to do anything like that ever again, because I wouldn’t wish that situation upon anyone ever.
In conclusion, although this was a really long story that I really really did feel the need to share, I just want to say again that what you’re doing is really changing the world we live in. Step by step, school by school, student by student, YOU are changing lives and I never ever ever want you to stop doing what you’re doing, because this is truly the Lord’s work.
Resources
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