OTHER forms of online criminal abuse include adults contacting children and talking to them about sexual behavior, asking for or sending nude photographs or videos of themselves, and persuading children to expose themselves. This was what happened to Jay, 17, in Michigan.
Jay was contacted through Instagram by a person posing as a potential girlfriend. He responded and began sharing sexually explicit photos with this person.
Soon, he received text messages demanding that he send money or else the compromising photos and videos he shared would be posted on social media and sent to his family, friends and teachers.
It was clearly a sextortion scam, and the Nigeria-based criminals demanded money that he could not pay. They increased the pressure and goaded him to go ahead and commit suicide, which he did. A beautiful young life extinguished by the mockery and greed of criminals.
Hundreds of teenagers kill themselves every year because of such scams. The three people who blackmailed Jay were identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and extradited to the US, and are now serving long prison sentences.
A Catholic priest is in prison and on trial in Tuguegarao, Cagayan province, for the charge of repeatedly raping and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. She said he secretly videotaped the crimes and threatened to send the images to her family and friends, as well as post these on social media, if she reported the abuse and resisted him. She eventually told friends about it and he was arrested. He claimed it was all consensual.
In a report, the United Nations Children’s Fund said that “[i]n 2021 alone, two million children in the Philippines were subjected to online sexual abuse and exploitation. Children reported that they experienced grooming and received offers of gifts or money in exchange for sexual acts. Some were threatened or blackmailed to engage in sexual acts. Due to stigma, disclosure is disproportionately low — despite various reporting channels.”
Despite the advocacy of concerned agencies and nongovernmental organizations, very few children are actually rescued from online sexual abusers and referred to therapeutic homes for protection and healing. The government has few shelters and won very few convictions for them. The abusers are mostly family members or relatives, and much of the abuse now is committed through mobile phones connected to the internet.
Few of these online abusers get caught and convicted. From 1996, the children at the Preda Foundation’s therapeutic home for trafficked, sexually abused children and victims of online sexual exploitation won an average of 10 convictions a year.
By 2020, that number rose to 20. In 2024, Preda children won 27 convictions. As of June 15, 10 convictions were won, most of them in the Family Court of Zambales, presided by Judge Maribel Mariano Beltran, and Family Court of Olongapo City, presided by Judge Gemma Theresa Hilario-Logronio. The children are ably represented in court by public prosecutors in Zambales and Olongapo City. Thanks to them, the abusers received mostly life sentences./PN
