Sextortion (a portmanteau of sex and extortion ) employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion. [1]
As used to describe an abuse of power, sextortion is a form of corruption [2] in which people entrusted with power – such as government officials, judges, educators, law enforcement personnel, and employers – seek to extort sexual favors in exchange for something within their authority to grant or withhold. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Examples of such abuses of power include: government officials who request sexual favors to obtain licenses or permits, [8] [9] teachers who trade good grades for sex with students, [10] [11] and employers who make providing sexual favors a condition of obtaining a job.[ citation needed ]
Sextortion also refers to a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort money or sexual favors from the victim. [12] [13] Social media and text messages are often the source of the sexual material and the threatened means of sharing it with others. An example of this type of sextortion is where people are extorted with a nude image of themselves they shared on the Internet through sexting. They are later coerced into giving money, or performing sexual acts with the person doing the extorting or are coerced into posing or performing sexually on camera, thus producing hardcore pornography. [14] [13] This method of blackmail is also frequently used to out LGBT people who keep their true sexual orientation private. [15]
A video highlighting the dangers of sextortion has been released by the National Crime Agency [16] in the UK to educate people, especially given the fact that blackmail of a sexual nature may cause humiliation to a sufficient extent to cause the victim to take their own life, [17] in addition to other efforts to educate the public on the risks of sextortion. [18]
Sextortion using webcam content is concerning, especially for those who use them for flirting and cybersex. [18] [17] Often this involves a cybercriminal posing as someone else – such as an attractive person – initiating communication of a sexual nature with the victim (about 95% of victims are male). [17] Often, the cybercriminal simply shows the victim a pre-recorded video of a performer from a cybersex webcam site which they are sufficiently familiar with, then messages the victim at points in the video where the performer appears to be typing on the keyboard, to give the illusion that the performer in the video is messaging them. [19] The victim is then persuaded to undress in front of a webcam, and may also be persuaded to engage in sexual behaviour, such as masturbation. [19] The video is recorded by the cybercriminal, who then reveals their true intent and demands money or other services (such as more explicit images of the victim, in cases of online predation), and threatening to publicly release the video to video services like YouTube and send it to family members and friends of the victim if they do not comply. Sometimes threats to make false allegations of paedophilia against the victim are made as well. [19] This is known as webcam blackmail. [20] An increase in webcam blackmails have been reported, and it affects both young and old, male and female alike. [21] [22] Webcam blackmail is also connected with webcam trolling. [23]
An early use of the term appears in print in 1950 in California. [24]
Since early 2009, The Institute for Responsible Online and Cell-Phone Communication (iroc2.org) began warning the public about the trend of "Sextortion" via live events and websites including www.sextortion.org. This is a trend that grew based on the birth and growth of the trend known as "sexting" whereby compromising images and videos were being shared by individuals without a real understanding of the short and long term consequences of sharing "private" content on digital tools designed for sharing.
In 2009, the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ), in partnership with the Association of Women Judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Philippine Women Judges Association, and the Tanzania Women Judges Association, and with funding from the Government of the Netherlands, launched a three-year program on "Stopping the Abuse of Power through Sexual Exploitation: Naming, Shaming, and Ending Sextortion." [25] Presentations on sextortion were made to judges attending the 2010 [26] and 2012 Biennial World Conferences of the IAWJ [27] [28] and to NGOs attending the 2011 [29] and 2012 meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. [3]
There are also scientific studies describing the prevalence of sextortion in Europe, etc. in the Czech Republic (2017). [30]
In China, there are cases of sextortion as part of predatory lending to students. [31]
In 2022, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection noted a tripling of cases compared to previous years and a change away from female victims being sextorted for images towards young male victims being sextorted for money. [13]
Incidents of sextortion have been prosecuted under various criminal statutes, including as extortion, [32] [33] [34] bribery, [35] breach of trust, [36] corruption, [37] sexual coercion, [33] [38] sexual exploitation, [14] sexual assault, [34] child pornography, [34] [39] and computer hacking and wiretapping. [40]
This article contains wording that promotes the subject through exaggeration of unnoteworthy facts .(May 2020) |
Extortion is the practice of obtaining benefit through coercion. In most jurisdictions it is likely to constitute a criminal offence; the bulk of this article deals with such cases. Robbery is the simplest and most common form of extortion, although making unfounded threats in order to obtain an unfair business advantage is also a form of extortion.
Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat.
Pamela Joan Rogers is an American former elementary school physical education teacher and coach who taught in McMinnville, Tennessee. She was convicted of four counts of sexual battery in 2005 and two counts of solicitation of sexual exploitation of a minor in 2006 stemming from a three-month relationship with a 13-year-old boy who was her student at Centertown Elementary School. Her case made headlines and was covered by major news networks for being a notorious teacher who had an unlawful sexual relationship with one of her students. After getting released in 2012, she was taken into custody in 2015 for allegedly conspiring to smuggle contraband cell phones into a state prison and sentenced to 8 years in prison; her case brought headlines and national attention to the practice of cellphone smuggling in prison.
Technically speaking, Paraguayan law prohibits discrimination on grounds of gender, race, language, disability, or social status, but there is nonetheless widespread discrimination.
Internet safety, also known as online safety, cyber safety and electronic safety (e-safety), refers to the policies, practices and processes that reduce the harms to people that are enabled by the (mis)use of information technology.
Switzerland is primarily a destination and, to a lesser extent, a transit country for women trafficked from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Moldova, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Cameroon for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation. Swiss authorities noted an increase in the number of women trafficked from Eastern Europe, specifically Romania, for sexual exploitation. Limited cases of trafficking for the purpose of domestic servitude and labor exploitation also were reported. According to the U.S. Government's 2011 Trafficking in Persons report, Switzerland was rated in "Tier 2" for its efforts against human trafficking because it does not fully comply with international minimum requirements but is making "significant efforts to do so". However, the 2014 Trafficking in Persons report indicates that Switzerland is a "Tier 1" country, indicating that the government "fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking." For 2023 it's back to "Tier 2".
Taiwan is primarily a destination for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. It is also a source of women trafficked to Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Women and girls from the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) and Southeast Asian countries are trafficked to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages, deceptive employment offers, and illegal smuggling for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many trafficking victims are workers from rural areas of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, employed through recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low skilled work in Taiwan’s construction, fishing, and manufacturing industries, or to work as domestic servants. Such workers are often charged high job placement and service fees, up to $14,000, resulting in substantial debt that labor brokers or employers use as a tool for involuntary servitude. Many foreign workers remain vulnerable to trafficking because legal protections, oversight by authorities and enforcement efforts are inadequate.
Panama is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution. Although some Panamanian women and girls are found in forced prostitution in other countries in Latin America and in Europe, most Panamanian trafficking victims are exploited within the country. Although statistics were lacking, both NGOs and government officials anecdotally reported that commercial sexual exploitation of children was greater in rural areas and in the city of Colon than in Panama City. NGOs also report that some Panamanian children, mostly young girls, are subjected to involuntary domestic servitude. Weak controls along Panama's borders make the nation an easy transit point for irregular migrants, from Latin America, East Africa, and Asia, some of whom may fall victim to human trafficking.
Amanda Michelle Todd was a 15-year-old Canadian student and victim of cyberbullying who hanged herself at her home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. A month before her death, Todd posted a video on YouTube in which she used a series of flashcards to tell her experience of being blackmailed into exposing her breasts via webcam, and of being bullied and physically assaulted. The video went viral after her death, resulting in international media attention. The original video has had more than 15 million views as of May 2023, although mirrored copies of the video had received tens of millions of additional views shortly after her death; additionally, a YouTube video by React has a video of teens reacting to Todd's video which has garnered 44.7 million views as of May 2023, and various videos from news agencies around the world regarding the case have registered countless millions more. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia Coroners Service launched investigations into the suicide.
Cassidy Marie Wolf is an American tv host, model and beauty queen who was crowned Miss Teen USA 2013.
Blackshades is a malicious trojan horse used by hackers to control infected computers remotely. The malware targets computers using operating systems based on Microsoft Windows. According to US officials, over 500,000 computer systems have been infected worldwide with the software.
On August 31, 2014, a collection of nearly five hundred private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and swiftly disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. The leak was dubbed "The Fappening" or "Celebgate" by the public. The images were initially believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud, or a security issue in the iCloud API which allowed them to make unlimited attempts at guessing victims' passwords. Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via spear phishing attacks.
iSeeYou is a security bug affecting iSight cameras in some Apple laptops.
Prostitution in Barbados is legal but related activities such as brothel keeping and solicitation are prohibited. The country is a sex tourism destination, including female sex tourism.
The International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) is a non-profit non governmental organization founded in 1991 whose members are judges from around the world committed to equal justice for women.
GirlsDoPorn was an American pornographic website active from 2009 until 2020. In October and November 2019, six people involved were charged on counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion. In December 2019, two more individuals were charged with obstruction of sex trafficking enforcement. The website was removed in January 2020 after 22 victims won the civil case against the company. According to the United States Department of Justice, the website and its sister website GirlsDoToys generated over $17 million in revenue. Videos were featured on GirlsDoPorn.com as well as pornography aggregate websites such as Pornhub, where the channel reached the top 20 most viewed, with approximately 680 million views.
The "Nth Room" case is a criminal case involving blackmail, cybersex trafficking, and the spread of sexually exploitative videos via the Telegram app between 2018 and 2020 in South Korea. A man nicknamed god god sold sexual exploitation videos on Telegram channels and groups.
Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.
Buster Jim Hernandez is a sexual extortionist, child pornography producer and cyberterrorist from Bakersfield, California. He used the internet extensively to target hundreds of underage girls under many pseudonyms, most notoriously Brian Kil and Purge of Maine. In 2017, he was arrested after falling for a social engineering and hacking scheme by the FBI and Facebook, and in 2021, he was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison.
United States v. Ogoshi is a pending case in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan. It is considered part of Project Safe Childhood.
'Sextortion is the currency of corruption and eats the fabric of society and it is in all sectors of the society,' [Justice Binta Nyako] said.
Sextortion is a form of sexual exploitation and corruption that occurs when people in positions of authority – whether government officials, judges, educators, law enforcement personnel, or employers – seek to extort sexual favours in exchange for something within their power to grant or withhold.[ permanent dead link ]
When a boss asks an employee to have sex with him in exchange for a job promotion, that's 'sextortion,' a female magistrate said yesterday. So is a teacher seeking sexual favors from a student seeking better grades.
Sextortion ... is basically about an element of abuse of power by somebody entrusted with authority and somebody who is seeking either an advantage or justice from that person who holds the clout. And sadly, it is in all spheres of life – the judiciary, executive, legislator, media, police, army and indeed, every sector of the Nigerian life.
Another global plight ... is the one dubbed 'Sextortion' … [t]hese harassers insist on sexual favours in exchange for benefits they can dispense because of their positions in hierarchies including getting or keeping a job, favourable grades, recommendations, credentials, projects, promotion, orders, and other types of opportunities.[ permanent dead link ]
Mary Hallward-Driemeier … quantifie[d] the stories we all heard working in Africa: running a small business as a woman is also treacherous business. Many say they had to exchange sex with a person of authority (person in charge of a permit, border police, etc.) or a supplier in order to be able to go about their business.
'Sextortion,' researched by Mary Hallward Driemeier, Lead Economist for Financial and Private Sector Development at the World Bank Group, is where sexual favors are traded instead of money for routine business dealings.[ permanent dead link ]
In their 2010 book 'Half the Sky', Pulitzer Prize-winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn write about a disturbing but not uncommon problem in Southern Africa – male teachers who trade good grades for sex with students. … There's a word for this – 'sextortion'.
It is no longer a hidden complaint how students complain about lecturers demanding for sex for them to get good grades. So, if these instances are something that have been with us, then sextortion is also an age-long problem within our society ...[ permanent dead link ]
Sextortion is basically a type of extortion with a twist. Instead of extorting money or material goods from a victim, a sextortionist will extract sexual favors from the victim by using intimidation, fear, and blackmail.[ permanent dead link ]
A stranger said he had captured her image on the webcam and would post the pictures to her MySpace friends unless she posed for more explicit pictures and videos for him. On at least two occasions, the teen did what her blackmailer demanded. Finally, police and federal authorities became involved and indicted a 19-year-old Maryland man in June on charges of sexual exploitation. ... One federal affidavit includes a special term for the crime: sextortion.
Judges discussed 'sextortion' a mix of sex and corruption where people in authority demand sexual favours for anything, Hale says, from immigration to prosecution decisions.
The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles says 31-year-old Luis Mijangos hacked into computers to obtain personal data to extort sexually explicit videos, in exchange for keeping his victims' information private.
Vance … pleaded guilty in January to several charges including enticing or coercing someone into illegal sexual activity and violating the interstate communications law by extorting something of value and threatening to ruin someone's reputation.[ permanent dead link ]
A criminal complaint filed today charges Stancl with the bomb threats plus repeated sexual assault of same child (at least three violations of first or second degree sexual assault), possession of child pornography, second and third degree sexual assaults and five counts of child enticement.[ permanent dead link ]
A federal immigration officer who was caught on tape demanding sex in exchange for a green card pleaded guilty to ... felony charges of receiving a bribe and receiving a reward for official misconduct, and to misdemeanor charges of sexual misconduct, coercion and official misconduct.
A former immigration adjudicator in Toronto who promised to approve the refugee claim of a South Korean woman in exchange for sex, has been sentenced to 18 months in jail. … Ellis, 50, was convicted this spring of breach of trust under the Criminal Code and of violating the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
… Michael Ngilangwa … was charged under Section 25 of the Prevention of Corruption Act No. 11 of 2007 for demanding … sexual intercourse as a condition for favouring [the complainant] in English and Divinity examination results and other preferential treatment. He was convicted and sentenced to pay a fine of Tshs. 500,000/= or serve a term of imprisonment for one year.[ permanent dead link ]
Mijangos … pleaded guilty to one count each of computer hacking and wiretapping in March ….
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)