NBC 7’s Omari Fleming spoke to parents and an anti-bullying expert about the risks of sextortion.
Some San Diego educators got a lesson Wednesday on how to stop sextortion — blackmailing a person by threatening to release evidence of sexual activity.
Law enforcement received over 7,000 sextortion reports related to minors in 2022, resulting in more than 3,000 victims, many of them boys, according to the F.B.I.
“My child was involved in, kind of, meeting a person online and then receiving messages and sending images that I would say as a parent are not appropriate," explained a mother who requested we not use her name.
She said her son was targeted via his social media account over President's Day Weekend. The person he met online threatened to send pictures to five of his social media contacts if he didn’t cough up $500.
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“I was scared as a parent. You know my spouse and I were scared of what would happen to him, where he was at emotionally. Like, we can deal with the consequences of behavior," said the concerned mom.
How predators reach out online is one of the many topics addressed in the NBC 7 special series "Stolen.”
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“I’ve dealt with eight different cases of sextortion in the past month, which is high, and they've all been male,” said Kim Karr, an anti-cyberbullying expert who was at the Town & Country Resort in Mission Valley Wednesday, schooling educators on how to safely help teens facing sextortion plots.
“Go right to the cops. Put your phones on airplane mode so they can no longer get a message to you and know you’re active so the person can no longer attack them until police get involved," Karr told educators.
It's a lesson one mother's daughter was taught when Karr, who founded the nonprofit Digital4Good, which empowers students to improve their communities, spoke to her class about online dangers. So when her brother was targeted she forced him to tell their parents.
It was an embarrassing moment for her son, but an opportunity to be open, honest and learn from bad choices.
“When a bad choice happens with young people or adults, we have to be willing to talk about it and see how we can move forward from it and all collectively grow. Because we're all learning in social media and in the way things change and the way our students can be exploited or our youth can be exploited," the mother explained.
Karr notes if teens are going to keep their social media profiles public instead of private, it’s important they try to do a good job of verifying the people they communicate with online so they don’t get catfished.
She also notes it’s important for parents to create a safe space with their children.
“Teenagers are going to make bad choices. Making sure they understand you are there no matter how embarrassing this is, even if they get in trouble, you’re their parent and are going to help them," Karr said.
Digital4Good is hosting a summit for students nationwide on March 12 and 13 in Santa Monica. Click here for more information.
