Those who follow the trending online crime say social media platforms can and must do more. But ultimately, the best prevention begins at home.
AURORA, Mo.—Kari Boettler could not comprehend what she found on her late son’s cellphone on Feb. 5, 2024. She was searching the metadata to determine why 16-year-old Evan had shot himself in their backyard that January.
Sitting on the sofa in the same living room in which Evan had just celebrated Christmas with his family, only feet from the spot where he died, Boettler tried to make sense of the explicit photos and threatening text messages she found on Evan’s smartphone.
Sexual exploration is a natural part of growing up. Curiosity, biology, and questions about love and romance have always driven teens to experiment. But today’s teens live life with instant access to information through smartphones and the internet.
According to Thorn, a California-based nonprofit that tracks teen online sexual activity, almost one-quarter of children aged 9 to 17 reported in a 2023 survey that sharing nude pictures with their peers was normal.
The explicit images and messages on Evan’s phone had been exchanged in the final hours of his life but had been missed during previous searches. What the police did find told them much about Evan’s life.
“[The police found] videos and pictures of hunting and fishing and soccer, meal prep, stuff like that,” Evan’s father, Brad Boettler, told The Epoch Times. “It wasn’t like he was out looking for inappropriate content or anything like that.”
Evan was a victim of “sextortion.” In sextortion, an online predator convinces his underage victim to exchange sexually explicit pictures or videos, known as child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Once the predator has the CSAM, he uses it to extort money or more CSAM, or simply to harass the victim.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported that in 2021, its CyberTipline received roughly 62,000 reports of online enticement. By the end of 2023, that had increased by 300 percent to 186,800. By October 2024, that number was 456,000.
Gregory Kehoe is the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida. He said the growth in the number of sextortion cases and expansion into other forms of the crime match the growth of technology.
Kehoe said sextortion began mainly as a way for pedophiles to get CSAM for themselves and to trade with other predators.
Social media platforms and online gaming provide easy, anonymous access to children for the online predator, he said. The predator can assume whatever persona he needs to attract a victim.
The predator can present himself as a 16-year-old cheerleader who thinks that the victim is cute or a 12-year-old boy who shares similar interests. He can be a sympathetic adult willing to listen and provide a virtual shoulder for a confused child to cry on.
The predator needs only to build a little trust.
“Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it happens over a period of time,“ Kehoe told The Epoch Times. ”Once they get that [trust], then they start using that information, those pictures, to extort these people, these victims, to do any number of things.”
He said that once the predator has that trust, he continues to build a relationship with the victim. This can be a romantic relationship, a close friendship, or a sexual game.
Once the CSAM is sent, the relationship changes.
The case of a Bangladeshi man attending medical school in Malaysia is instructive of how sextortion scams work.
