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. [2]
As used to describe an abuse of power, sextortion is a form of corruption [3] 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. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Examples of such abuses of power include: government officials who request sexual favors to obtain licenses or permits, [9] [10] teachers who trade good grades for sex with students, [11] [12] and employers who make providing sexual favors a condition of obtaining a job or getting promoted.[ citation needed ]. A Transparency International report on sextortion noted some challenges in prosecuting sextortion under existing anti-corruption and gender-based violence legal frameworks. [13]
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. [14] [15] 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. [16] [15] This method of blackmail is also frequently used to out LGBT people who keep their true sexual orientation private. [17]
A video highlighting the dangers of sextortion has been released by the National Crime Agency [18] 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, [19] in addition to other efforts to educate the public on the risks of sextortion. [20]
Sextortion using webcam content is concerning, especially for those who use them for flirting and cybersex. [20] [19] 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). [19] 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. [21] 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. [21] 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. [21] This is known as webcam blackmail. [22] An increase in webcam blackmails have been reported, and it affects both young and old, male and female alike. [23] [24] Webcam blackmail is also connected with webcam trolling. [25]
An early use of the term appears in print in 1950 in California. [26]
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." [27] Presentations on sextortion were made to judges attending the 2010 [28] and 2012 Biennial World Conferences of the IAWJ [29] [30] and to NGOs attending the 2011 [31] and 2012 meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. [4]
There are also scientific studies describing the prevalence of sextortion in Europe, etc. in the Czech Republic (2017). [32]
In China, there are cases of sextortion as part of predatory lending to students. [33]
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. [15]
In 2023, the U.S. saw a 150% rise in sextortion attempts according to data by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). [34] [35]
Incidents of sextortion have been prosecuted under various criminal statutes, including as extortion, [36] [37] [38] bribery, [39] breach of trust, [40] corruption, [41] sexual coercion, [37] [42] sexual exploitation, [16] sexual assault, [38] child pornography, [38] [43] and computer hacking and wiretapping. [44]
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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.
Pamela Joan Rogers is an American sex offender and a 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 eight years in prison; her case brought headlines and national attention to the practice of cellphone smuggling in prison.
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.
Sexting is sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages, photographs, or videos, primarily between mobile phones. It may also include the use of a computer or any digital device. The term was first popularized early in the 21st century and is a portmanteau of sex and texting, where the latter is meant in the wide sense of sending a text possibly with images. Sexting is not an isolated phenomenon but one of many different types of sexual interaction in digital contexts that is related to sexual arousal.
The United States Penitentiary, Tucson is a high-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Arizona. It is part of the Tucson Federal Correctional Complex and is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a satellite prison camp for minimum-security male offenders.
Camfecting, in the field of computer security, is the process of attempting to hack into a person's webcam and activate it without the webcam owner's permission. The remotely activated webcam can be used to watch anything within the webcam's field of vision, sometimes including the webcam owner themselves. Camfecting is most often carried out by infecting the victim's computer with a virus that can provide the hacker access to their webcam. This attack is specifically targeted at the victim's webcam, and hence the name camfecting, a portmanteau of the words camera and infecting.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Elkton is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates near Elkton, Ohio. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. It also has an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses low and minimum-security male inmates.
The response of the Haredi Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York City, to allegations of sexual abuse against its spiritual leaders has drawn scrutiny from inside and outside the Jewish community. When teachers, rabbis, and other leaders have been accused of sexual abuse, authorities in the Haredi community have often failed to report offenses to Brooklyn police, intimidated witnesses, and encouraged shunning against victims and those members of the community who speak out against cases of abuse, although work has been done within Jewish communities to begin to address the issue of sexual abuse.
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 on the livestreaming and online chat service Blogger, 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.
Ralph Allan Lee Shortey is an American convicted sex offender and former politician and businessman. A member of the Republican Party, he was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 2010, defeating several challengers in primary elections, re-elected in 2014 and served his term until 2017. During his tenure, he established a Republican consulting firm. Shortey was the state campaign chair for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
iSeeYou is a security bug affecting iSight cameras in some Apple laptops.
Austin Henry Jones is an American convicted sex offender and former musician, who was active as a YouTuber from 2007 to 2017, prior to his conviction for receipt of child pornography in 2019.
Matthew Alexander Falder is an English convicted serial sex offender and blackmailer. From a period of time between 2009 and 2017, he coerced his victims online into sending him degrading images of themselves or into committing crimes against a third person such as rape or assault. He managed this by making threats to the victim by saying he would send their family or friends degrading information or revealing pictures of them if they did not comply with his commands. Falder hid behind anonymous accounts on the web and then re-posted the images to gain a higher status on the dark web. Investigators said that he "revelled" in getting images to share on hurtcore websites. The National Crime Agency (NCA), described him as "one of the most prolific and depraved offenders they had ever encountered."
GirlsDoPorn was an American pornographic website active from 2009 until 2020. In October and November 2019, six people involved with the website 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.
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.
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)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 a form of blackmail where perpetrators threaten to reveal intimate images or videos unless the victim complies with their demands. This heinous act not only violates privacy but also leaves victims feeling vulnerable and powerless.
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.
Mijangos … pleaded guilty to one count each of computer hacking and wiretapping in March ….