Sextortion is a flourishing new illicit global online trade which has South African sexual predators increasingly targeting younger and younger victims.
For a Cape Town family, it’s a nightmare they are far too aware of.
For the past 16-months they’ve battled to have their teenage daughter’s sexual stalker arrested.
The Johannesburg man – released on R1000 bail in February – is due in court again this month.
The man, allegedly through the 16-year-old girl’s Facebook account, hacked into her phone, stealing five naked photographs of her.
The theft was discovered when the accused – who had taken over the girl’s Facebook account and changed her password – contacted her after she could not access her account.
He then allegedly sent her Whatsapp messages ordering her to take explicit photographs of herself which she was to send to him.
He sent her pictures of other naked teenage girls to prove his seriousness.
The girls’ mother, who cannot be named, said her daughter took the pictures while going through a weight problem.
“She took the photos to see where she could lose weight. If only I had known I would never have allowed her to take the photos with her cellphone.”
Twenty Pretoria High School boys were last year similarly exploited, with social media lawyers reporting dealing with victims as young as nine years old. A study by the Brookings Institute, a US-based think-tank, reveals a growing problem with sextortion, where victims are becoming younger, and demands are not for money, but more sexually explicit photographs.
The institute claims sextortion is surprisingly common and South African cyber-crime and social media and technology experts agree.
Danny Myburgh of Cyanre, The Computer Forensic Lab, whose company helped track the alleged exploiter of the 20 Pretoria High School boys, said sextortion in South Africa was rising.
“It works like sexual grooming. It starts with requests for photographs of a muscle – if boys are the target – before it precedes to full frontal pictures.
“Perpetrators harvest victims’ Facebook and social media profiles, threatening to disseminate the images to friends if more explicit images are not sent to them.”
Social media lawyer, Emma Sadleir, said “one of the youngest victims I dealt with was nine-years-old.
“Adults, who are targeted, are usually targeted out of revenge by former lovers or in a divorce. Sexting has become a societal norm, which makes people even more vulnerable,” she said. Online social media expert, Arthur Goldstuck, of World Wide Worx, said: “Social media plays a massive role in such crimes. For kids it’s to gain more images, for adults it’s usually about money.
“There are 23.5 million smartphones in South Africa, with a quarter of users new to such devices. This is a predator’s playground,” he said.
The institute’s study shows that individual predators, usually men, can have hundreds of victims from whom they extort thousands of images.
Sextortion either involves hacking into people’s computers or cellphones and stealing images from their photo albums.
The institute looked at 78 different cases in the US and three other countries. The perpetrators in the cases are believed to have potentially targeted up to 6500 people across the world.
The study cites one US investigation, where investigators discovered 15000 webcam-video captures, 900 audio recordings, and 13000 screen captures on a suspect’s computers.
The images were from over 230 people – 44 of them minors.
The study reads: “Sextortion cases involve what are effectively online, remote sexual assaults, sometimes over great distances, sometimes even crossing international borders. This is surely the tip of a very large iceberg.”
The report shows that of the cases studied:
71% involved only victims under the age of 18;
14% involved both minors and adults;
12% involved only adults, the majority of them women;
21% involved victims in other countries;
Social media manipulation is used in 91% of cases involving minors; and
Computer hacking is used in 43% of cases involving adults.
The study describes sextortion as brutal. “This is not a matter of playful consensual sexting. Sextortion, rather, is a form of sexual exploitation, coercion, and violence, often, but not always of children.
“In many cases, the perpetrators seem to take pleasure in their victims’ pleading and protestations that they are scared and underage. In multiple cases, victims contemplate, threaten, or even attempt suicide – sometimes to the apparent pleasure of their tormentors,” it said.
Youth being targeted in sextortion scourge
For a Cape Town family, it’s a nightmare they are far too aware of.
For the past 16-months they’ve battled to have their teenage daughter’s sexual stalker arrested.
The Johannesburg man – released on R1000 bail in February – is due in court again this month.
The man, allegedly through the 16-year-old girl’s Facebook account, hacked into her phone, stealing five naked photographs of her.
The theft was discovered when the accused – who had taken over the girl’s Facebook account and changed her password – contacted her after she could not access her account.
He then allegedly sent her Whatsapp messages ordering her to take explicit photographs of herself which she was to send to him.
He sent her pictures of other naked teenage girls to prove his seriousness.
The girls’ mother, who cannot be named, said her daughter took the pictures while going through a weight problem.
“She took the photos to see where she could lose weight. If only I had known I would never have allowed her to take the photos with her cellphone.”
Twenty Pretoria High School boys were last year similarly exploited, with social media lawyers reporting dealing with victims as young as nine years old. A study by the Brookings Institute, a US-based think-tank, reveals a growing problem with sextortion, where victims are becoming younger, and demands are not for money, but more sexually explicit photographs.
The institute claims sextortion is surprisingly common and South African cyber-crime and social media and technology experts agree.
Danny Myburgh of Cyanre, The Computer Forensic Lab, whose company helped track the alleged exploiter of the 20 Pretoria High School boys, said sextortion in South Africa was rising.
“It works like sexual grooming. It starts with requests for photographs of a muscle – if boys are the target – before it precedes to full frontal pictures.
“Perpetrators harvest victims’ Facebook and social media profiles, threatening to disseminate the images to friends if more explicit images are not sent to them.”
Social media lawyer, Emma Sadleir, said “one of the youngest victims I dealt with was nine-years-old.
“Adults, who are targeted, are usually targeted out of revenge by former lovers or in a divorce. Sexting has become a societal norm, which makes people even more vulnerable,” she said. Online social media expert, Arthur Goldstuck, of World Wide Worx, said: “Social media plays a massive role in such crimes. For kids it’s to gain more images, for adults it’s usually about money.
“There are 23.5 million smartphones in South Africa, with a quarter of users new to such devices. This is a predator’s playground,” he said.
The institute’s study shows that individual predators, usually men, can have hundreds of victims from whom they extort thousands of images.
Sextortion either involves hacking into people’s computers or cellphones and stealing images from their photo albums.
The institute looked at 78 different cases in the US and three other countries. The perpetrators in the cases are believed to have potentially targeted up to 6500 people across the world.
The study cites one US investigation, where investigators discovered 15000 webcam-video captures, 900 audio recordings, and 13000 screen captures on a suspect’s computers.
The images were from over 230 people – 44 of them minors.
The study reads: “Sextortion cases involve what are effectively online, remote sexual assaults, sometimes over great distances, sometimes even crossing international borders. This is surely the tip of a very large iceberg.”
The report shows that of the cases studied:
71% involved only victims under the age of 18;
14% involved both minors and adults;
12% involved only adults, the majority of them women;
21% involved victims in other countries;
Social media manipulation is used in 91% of cases involving minors; and
Computer hacking is used in 43% of cases involving adults.
The study describes sextortion as brutal. “This is not a matter of playful consensual sexting. Sextortion, rather, is a form of sexual exploitation, coercion, and violence, often, but not always of children.
“In many cases, the perpetrators seem to take pleasure in their victims’ pleading and protestations that they are scared and underage. In multiple cases, victims contemplate, threaten, or even attempt suicide – sometimes to the apparent pleasure of their tormentors,” it said.
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