Eleven years ago this October, 15-year-old Amanda Todd posted a YouTube video sharing how she was being blackmailed by an online predator after she had exposed her breasts to him during a video call.
That same night, the teen from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia committed suicide.
Last August, a B.C. court convicted the perpetrator, Dutch national Aydin Coban, of sexual extortion, among other offenses. Coban was already serving a sentence in the Netherlands for similar crimes against 33 other victims when he was extradited to Canada to stand trial in Todd’s case.
The number of online child sexual exploitation and abuse incidents almost tripled between 2014 and 2020, according to Statistics Canada.
The national tipline Cybertip.ca says it receives an average of 40 child sextortion reports per week. It’s also seen an 815 per cent increase in reports of online sexual luring, from 220 cases in 2018 to 2,000 in 2022.
And police believe many sexual cyber crimes go unreported, says Corporal Philippe Gravel of the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre.
“This is a new phenomenon, and people don’t know if they should report it or not,” says Gravel, who has worked on sexual extortion cases in the RCMP’s Child Sexual Exploitation Unit in Quebec City.
Online sexual exploitation occurs when offenders make victims give them sexual content or acts for personal gain, according to the World Health Organization. Sexual exploitation includes sexual luring, where adults talk with minors online to get them to share or do sexual acts, and sexual extortion, where offenders blackmail victims into giving them money or sexual favours.
‘May not see it as criminal’
In November 2022, the Ontario Provincial Police arrested 107 people in the province and charged them with crimes related to sexual abuse and exploitation on the internet. The victims’ ages ranged from infancy to adulthood.
Victims can have a hard time deciding where to turn when someone close, like a friend or boyfriend, sexually exploits them, says Matthew Johnson, director of education at MediaSmarts.
One in five victims of child online sexual offences involved a family member, intimate partner or friend, according to Statistics Canada. Sixty-four per cent were victimized by a stranger or casual acquaintance.
“Young people and people in general are much less likely to turn to law enforcement when it is someone they know, when it’s a friend or peer or particularly an ex-romantic partner who’s doing this… They may not even see it as criminal,” says Johnson.
But “sharing intimate images without consent is a crime,” he says. “Whether there was deception or not.”
Child sexual-exploitation victims are predominantly female. Statistics Canada data shows that 73 per cent of victims are girls 12 to 17 years old. Another 13 per cent are girls younger than 12 years old, and 14 per cent are boys.
“There’s more victim blaming that occurs when a girl’s photo is shared, and there’s a greater impact on the girl socially,” says Johnson. “It certainly points to a double standard around sexting and sexuality more generally.”
‘The more they’ll ask for’
Last year, Manitoba teen Daniel Lints took his life after being blackmailed on Snapchat. Lints was the victim of a global sextortion scheme that largely targets teenage boys.
The vast majority of sexual-extortion victims are male, and they’re usually young boys, according to Cybertips.ca.
Extortionists may pose as a girl and send messages to boys and men, asking them to exchange nude photos or videos. Once the victim sends a photo or video, the extortionist starts threatening to share or post the images if the victim won’t pay.
Sexual extortion happens because it works, says Gravel. “Sadly, kids do send money. It’s an easy way to make money for the offenders.”
Victims often assume the extortionist will stop once they send the money. But frequently, they come back for more.
“The more money you send, the more money they’ll ask [for],” says Gravel. “The best way to go is [to] not send any money.”
Extortionists rarely follow through with their threats, Gravel says, because that’s when they lose their leverage.
He urges victims to report the crime to the police, who will work with other agencies to search the internet and remove the photo if the extortionist does post it.
In Gravel’s experience, about 95 per cent of extortionists are international actors from West Africa, such as in the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The RCMP works with organizations such as the international criminal police agency, Interpol, to prosecute foreign offenders.
‘These are all red flags’
Along with consulting online resources on the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and MediaSmarts websites, parents can teach their children to spot grooming tactics.
These include a contact flattering them, asking to move a conversation into an instant or private messaging platform and telling them to keep their conversation a secret from others.
“These are all red flags,” says Johnson.
From there, potential sexual offenders will introduce sexual topics, and start sharing real or fake sexual images of themselves. “We know [this] is often a first step in a sexploitation situation,” says Johnson.
Johnson says it’s imperative for parents to inform their children so they can recognize when an acquaintance or online friend “is attempting to groom for an inappropriate relationship.”
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