Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
OGDEN — Weber County sheriff's deputies want parents to know the risks of allowing children unrestricted access to the internet, and how to prevent them from becoming the victim of a sextortion scheme.
"This happens every single day," said Dustin Stewart, an Internet Crimes Against Children task force detective with the Weber County Sheriff's Office. He said parents should be concerned about letting their children use the internet unrestricted or without close supervision because of the growing and increasingly devious practices of child predators who have resorted to using seemingly benign online social arenas like Roblox or Fortnite to entice, and even extort children to often tragic results.
"This is probably happening right now somewhere here in the county," Stewart said during the sheriff's online safety night event this week.
The National Center of Missing and Exploited Children defines sextortion as a form of child sexual exploitation, where children are enticed by and blackmailed by predators online in an attempt to elicit further child sexual abuse material, sexual encounters or money from children. Stewart said it is not unheard of for victims to be as young as 6 or 7 years old, with the average age of sextortion victims being 15.
A typical case of sextortion often involves attempts to blackmail children for money after obtaining explicit images with the threat of spreading those images to people the victim knows unless the victim pays the predator a certain amount of money. A big red flag, investigators say, is for strangers on the internet attempting contact through multiple social media sites or internet platforms so that they can begin to build an understanding about the child's life and the people involved in it so they can make their threats as specific as possible.
Platforms commonly used by predators include applications frequently used by children and teens, like Instagram and Snapchat, where predators can find out almost anything about the victim they are targeting, including their close contacts, location, hobbies and often insecurities.
"In 2022, 39.4 million images and 37.7 million videos were intercepted through cyber tips," Stewart said, revealing the amount of suspected child sex abuse material in the national database as of 2022. It also includes 6.1 million children who can be positively identified through gathered pieces of child sex abuse material, as being victims of online predators.
This is probably happening right now, somewhere here in the county.
– Weber County sheriff's detective Dustin Stewart
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children generates tips through partnerships it creates with social media platforms that deploy certain filters and monitoring systems meant to identify instances where child sexual abuse material is suspected of being exchanged or created, as well as suspicious accounts that are trying to entice or communicate with accounts belonging to minors. Once the tips are generated and locations can be ascertained, detectives in that jurisdiction can open a case and begin an investigation.
"If you come across someone on the internet that you don't know in real life, the likelihood of them being who they say they are is very low," Stewart explained, adding that parents should be having conversations with their children and warning them against sending pictures of any kind to strangers on the internet.
"You have to sit down and have conversations with your kid — and continue to have those conversations with your kid — about the dangers of the internet and why it's important to not have conversations on the internet with people you don't know," he said.
The data shows that children are not only victimized by strangers on the internet but also by parents and guardians, as well as neighbors and family friends, making constant monitoring of a child's activity on the internet important to protecting them.
Stewart explained the best way to mitigate instances where a child may become a part of a sextortion scheme is to have parents or trusted adults monitor or inquire about the child's activity on the internet, including what applications they are using, whom they are talking to and how much time they are spending on internet platforms that allow them to potentially chat with strangers. The consequences for children who get caught up in schemes like this has in some cases ended with victims choosing to end their own lives out of shame or feeling they've reached a point of no return.
Both children and adults can become victims of sextortion, Stewart explained, in the event that you do become a victim of a sextortion scheme, it is recommended that you block the predator, cease communications, preserve the evidence and file a report with the local police department. Stewart said he believes children are becoming more comfortable with self-reporting or telling their parents when they might be a victim.
The detective counseled that victims of a sextortion plot should never give in to a predator's demands for money because this is unlikely to make the interaction stop, as they will continue to ask for more money — especially if the victim has already shown cooperation in sending them money.
"If kids are able to see the red flags ahead of time, we can prevent extortion tenfold," Stewart said. He said red flags, when chatting with someone online, can include broken grammar, them asking for pictures from the victim early on in the interaction, or when a stranger asks to be followed on other social media platforms.
Parents and caregivers are encouraged to buy children under 14 devices that don't have an app store, use software that monitors activity on their kids' phones and closely monitor what they are doing on the internet.
The Weber County Sheriff's Office holds internet safety presentations every month, and more information can be found on its Facebook and Instagram pages.
