Monitor Editor
GREEN COVE SPRINGS— The Clay County Sheriff’s Office is pointing out a little-known and under-reported crime that victimizes children, some under 13 years of age.
The agency said that one common scheme of online criminals is sextortion: persuading a minor to send nude images online and then using the images to blackmail the sender for sex or money.
In one survey, one in six youths between the ages of nine and 17 said they have sent nude images of themselves to another person online and half of those said they didn’t care if they knew the recipient in real life.
The sheriff’s office said that parents should talk to their kids about sexting and sextortion, telling them that they should never create, request or send inappropriate images. “Remember that one in four children report that they haven’t shared a nude image,” the agency said in an infographic. “One in four victims of sextortion were 13 or younger when threatened.”
The office also said that 60% of sextortion victims knew the perpetrator, 51% of victims did not report the crimes to family or friends and only 13% of the incidents were reported to law enforcement.
The agency’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigates sextortion and other cases of child sexual exploitation. Recent task force arrests include that of an Orange Park private school swim coach who solicited sex from a girl online and that of a New York man who tried to persuade a 13-year-old Clay County girl to send him nude photos.
