Sextortion: advice for parents and carers
If you are reading this because it is happening right now, skip to the first hour. Your child is not in trouble, this is a crime committed against them, and it is fixable.
What it actually is
Sextortion is blackmail. Someone obtains an intimate image of your child, or claims to have one, then threatens to send it to family, friends or the whole school unless they are paid.
It rarely looks like a stranger danger story. It usually starts with an ordinary friend request from someone who appears to be a similar age, a few days of normal conversation, then a move to a private app. The person on the other end is very often an adult working from a script, and frequently part of an organised group.
Who it targets, and why it surprises people
Most parents assume the risk is to girls. For sextortion specifically, it is overwhelmingly boys aged 14 to 17, and the demand is almost always money rather than more images. Girls are more often coerced for further images. Both happen, and children as young as 11 have been targeted.
The first hour
What happens in the first hour matters more than anything else. There are five things, in this order.
Do these five things
- Tell your child plainly that they are not in trouble and you are not angry. Say it out loud, early, and mean it. Their silence is the thing the offender is relying on.
- Stop all contact. Do not reply again, and do not pay anything.
- Screenshot everything first: the profile, the messages, the account name and any payment details. Then block. Do not delete the account or the conversation, because that is the evidence.
- Report it. CEOP is the route for under 18s.
- Start the removal process through Report Remove, run by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation. It is free and confidential, and nobody your child knows has to see the image.
Do not pay, even a small amount
Paying is the single most common instinct and it does not work. It confirms the account is live and that someone is willing to pay, so the demands continue and usually increase. If money has already been sent, that is not a disaster and it is not a reason for shame, it just means telling the bank as well.
The mistake that is easy to make
The most natural parental reaction is to take the phone away. It feels like safety, and to a frightened teenager it lands as punishment for telling you. It also removes the evidence and cuts them off from friends at the exact moment they feel most alone.
If you need to change something about the device, explain what and why, and do it with them rather than to them. The goal is that they tell you the next time too, and that they tell a friend to tell someone as well.
Fake images made with AI
There is a related problem that works differently. Apps can now take an ordinary photo, a school picture or a selfie, and generate a fake image that appears to show the person undressed. Here the victims are mostly girls aged 14 and under, and the person responsible is usually a classmate rather than a stranger.
Two things are worth knowing. It is a criminal offence to create or share a sexual image of anyone under 18 even when the image is fake, including when the person making it is also a child. And image removal services accept AI generated fakes, not just real photographs, so the same route applies.
The conversation to have before anything happens
You do not need a big formal talk, and going through the mechanics of how these scams work is less useful than one sentence, said casually and more than once.
Something close to: if anything ever goes wrong online, including something you feel stupid about, you can tell me and you will not lose your phone and you will not be in trouble.
That sentence is doing the real work. Offenders succeed because a teenager decides that being blackmailed is less frightening than telling a parent. Removing that calculation in advance is the most protective thing available to you, and it costs nothing.
Where to get help
- Report Remove to get an image removed, run by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation.
- CEOP to report what has happened.
- Free confidential support for your child from Childline on 0800 1111, any time of day.
- If your child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number.
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