Heavy winds and monster waves hit the upper North Island as Cyclone Gabrielle moves in, how the bad weather’s affecting our transport and roads and the death toll in Turkey and Syria rises in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
WARNING: Distressing content
A Perth father has spoken out about the horrifying moment he discovered that his 10-year-old son had been exploited by online sex predators for two years.
The depraved sex scam – which took place on text messaging platform WhatsApp – is rife in Australia and is targeting children of all ages.
The dad said his son had met the unknown person on the popular video game Fortnite, before taking their “friendship” over to the messaging app.
His suspicions grew after noticing that the 10-year-old’s phone kept ringing at all hours of the day and night, with the caller ID only coming up as “best friend for life”.
Sextortion cases are causing detrimental distress to young people. Photo / Getty Images
His world then turned upside down after going through his child’s phone, only to discover he had sent a stranger explicit photos of himself in exchange for gaming vouchers.
The 10-year-old boy’s identity has also been withheld for legal reasons.
“One conversation would be like ‘hi, how are you?’ … back and forth and then one of the texts where he asks for the photo he goes, ‘I guess you don’t want that voucher?’
“Straight after my child sent photos.
“We have this mentality as a parent that this will never happen to my child. But it did.”
Making things worse, the father said much of his son’s conversations with the predator had been over the phone, making it impossible to know what was discussed.
Worrying statistics
This case appeared to be just one of many sick “sextortion” scams targeting kids around the country.
Kids Helpline revealed that based on their data from support calls, the current target for sextortion scams appeared to be young males between the ages of 14 to 17.
The youth counselling service reported that while most of its calls usually came from females, last year 78 per cent of calls related to sextortion were from young males, increasing from two young males in 2017 to 116 in 2022.
It follows a 60 per cent increase in reported sextortion cases in December 2022 to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation led by the Australian Federal Police.
The Centre said 90 per cent of victim reports came from young men.
Kids Helpline spokesperson Leo Hede said that given males were less likely to ask for help, there were likely to be many more cases going unsupported.
“This is sort of that tip of the iceberg,” he said.
“Our families and young people do need to be really aware that this is another one of the many online scams that they can fall victim to.”
Countless victims
In another example, a father and his 17-year-old son contacted the service for support after he was asked to send $5000 to stop naked photos of him from being sent to all his contacts.
Kids Helpline explained that the teenager thought he was talking to a 16-year-old female.
The person online sent him a nude photograph and requested one in return – and he agreed.
But the predator then threatened to send the photo to all his contacts unless he paid them $5000.
The young man immediately screenshotted the profile, blocked them and went to his father for help.
Kids Helpline implore all parents who find themselves in this unimaginable situation to contact police, a support service and make note of any details of the online person.
“Make sure you’re approachable and available for your child,” they advised.
“Remain calm, remind the young person it’s not their fault, that they are the victim of a criminal.”
