WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 11, 2025 – The End Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children (OSEAC) Coalition, a group of organizations committed to advocacy to further policies that protect children online, hosted a virtual briefing on sextortion for Safer Internet Day: Unmasking the Sextortion Crisis Online: A Call to Action on Safer Internet Day.
Today’s briefing brought together a panel of sextortion experts, survivors, and leading child safety groups to discuss this horrendous crime and the urgent need for legislation to protect children online.
- Coco Lammers, Project Director for U.S. Policy on OSEAC, Childfund
- Paul Raffile, Sextortion Expert
- Harrison Haynes, End OSEAC Survivor’s Council Advisory Board
- Shelby Knox, Director of Tech Accountability Campaigns, Parents Together
- Sarah Gardner, CEO, Heat Initiative
- Haley McNamara, Senior Vice President, National Center on Sexual Exploitation
Financial sextortion is a crime where criminals coerce youth into sharing intimate photos or videos and then threaten to share the photos and cause harm in their lives unless they continually pay money. The crime is causing very real harms to children and teens and is the result of Big Tech’s failure to protect children from predators online. In 2023 alone, reports of financial sextortion received by NCMEC were up 148% from 2022.
“One life is enough. That’s why we’re all here. But when is it enough lives that these companies care? Because they are rationalizing this harm on the platforms by saying it is a small portion of what’s happening to kids,” said Sarah Gardner. “We need to demonstrate that all kids that are on any of these platforms are immediately at risk for sextortion – every single one of them.”
“This is not just isolated incidents of child exploitation but actually in fact a result of organized crime,” said Paul Raffile. “Many of these cases that we were seeing in the media and elsewhere were all linked to essentially one criminal group using the same motives on the same platforms using the same scripts and it was the same repeated scenario over and over.”
As The Guardian reported in August 2024, “Sextortion Guides and Manuals Found on Telegram and YouTube,” criminals circulate manuals with guides to sextorting children and teens online. Experts consider financial sextortion one of the deadliest scams in history. America’s children require greater protections online.
“The truth is that this crisis would not exist at this scale if proper protections were enforced from the beginning – if we focused on prevention – but current legal frameworks fail to give tech companies incentive to focus on prevention,” said Haley McNamara. “The Communications Decency Act Section 230, a relic of outdated legislation, enables Big Tech harms by allowing these platforms to tun a blind eye to trafficking, grooming, and illegal material because these companies assume that they are shielded with blanket immunity because of this law. And that shield really must be dismantled.”
“Parents in states from New Mexico to Nebraska, to South Carolina to New York are pushing for safety-by-design bills that require social media platforms to set children’s accounts to the most private by default and allow parents and kids more control over the algorithms that keep kids coming back over and over again in the first place,” said Shelby Knox. “No other product that harmed this many kids would be allowed to stay on the shelves. Its maker would be put out of business. It’s time for all of our elected representatives to step up to prevent more kids from becoming victims.”
When asked how survivors can engage with the online child safety movement, Harrison Haynes shared, “I think it starts with sharing your voice on the platforms where your abuse might have occurred or maybe just having a conversation. If you’ve never shared your story, maybe find a trusted peer or community member, leader, advocate to share your story with. I think it all starts really small.”
The Coalition urges Congress to pass legislation to make tech companies answer for their failure to protect children online and ensure perpetrators are held accountable for image based sexual abuse. “Please keep an eye out for key internet safety bills that will be coming up this year, including Take It Down, SHIELD, CDA 230, KOSA, and funding for key critical child safety accounts.” said Coco Lammers. “There is a real need for collaboration between lived experience experts, civil society, technology companies, law enforcement, parents, policymakers, and all of us to create a safer online environment for children.”
Watch the full recording: Unmasking the Sextortion Crisis Online: A Call to Action on Safer Internet Day.
About the End OSEAC Coalition
The End Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children (OSEAC) Coalition is a U.S. advocacy coalition that aims to improve U.S. government policies and programs to better prevent and address online sexual exploitation and abuse of children and provide appropriate support to survivors. Learn more about our mission to #ProtectKidsOnline: endoseac.org.
