The Guardian recently reported on the surge in online ‘sextortion’ of children (the “Article”). Broadly speaking, sextortion is where a victim is threatened or blackmailed to share sexual images, videos or information. Links have been drawn between this increase and sophisticated offender manuals, ‘Com networks’[1] and gaps created by end-to-end encryption.
Details
- Volume and platform data – tech-firm referrals for adult-grooming to the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (the “NCMEC”) rose 192% between 2023-24 to 546,000 reports. As many as 9,600 of these came from the UK in the first sixth months of 2024.
- Sophisticated offender methodology – sextortion manuals are becoming more accessible and chillingly detailed on how users can ‘best’ exploit children.
- Encryption tensions – end-to-end encryption provided by some tech firms makes it harder to spot harmful or abusive content.
- Suicidal ideation – organisations, including both the NCMEC and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (the “NSPCC”), reiterate the devastating impact of sextortion and other financially motivated sexual crimes on children, which affect children’s ability to trust, seek help and, in some cases, leads to suicide.
Commentary
Under English criminal law, a child in possession of an indecent image is viewed as an offender. However, the same child may be a victim of grooming under child-protection policy. With this disjunction in mind, practitioners working with children who are in danger of being criminalised in sexting or image offences, should consider the current culture of sextortion and whether their child clients might have been sexually exploited.
The following practical tips arise from the Article for practitioners supporting potentially sexually exploited children in the criminal justice system:
- Scrutinise charging decisions closely: sextortion fact patterns rarely satisfy public-interest criteria for prosecution of the child[2] and need to have regard to the welfare of the child[3].
- Legitimate-reason defence: where the child retains the image solely to report, Section 160(2)(a) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988[4] and Section 1(4)(a) of the Protection of Children Act 1978[5] provides a defence if proved.
- Seek trauma-informed disposals where necessary: referral orders with bespoke therapeutic conditions, or conditional cautions incorporating restorative work, align with the principles of a ‘Child First’ youth justice system and mitigate suicide risk. This is relevant not only for children who are being investigated in respect of images which turn out to be directly linked to sextortion, but also to children who go on to commit sexual offences (image-related or other) having been impacted by sexual exploitation themselves.
The shocking scale of this problem as highlighted by the Article suggests that image-related cases will continue to form an increasingly significant area of work for youth justice specialists. YJLC’s revised legal guide on children facing allegations of sexual offending will be published at the end of this month. YJLC’s legal guide on sexting (also soon to be relaunched) can be accessed here.
[1] “…online communities where mostly young men share sadistic and misogynistic material and encourage each other to commit crimes” – the Article
[2]Para. 4.14(d), Code for Crown Prosecutors