A new awareness and education campaign is aiming to educate people on how to recognize sextortion and where to find help.
The new poster campaign was launched in partnership between the RCMP and Canadian Centre for Child Protection, and is reported to highlight several messages including “letting victims know they are not alone, there is help available, sextortion is not their fault, and most importantly that there is life after images.”
RCMP officials report that the threat continues to grow for those between the ages of 14 to 24, not just in Alberta but globally. An example police are providing of sextortion is having someone threaten to send a photo of a victim to their friends or family unless they pay a certain amount of money.
In October of last year, Detective Dean Jacobs with the ALERT Southern Alberta Internet Child Exploitation Unit told mylethbridgenow.com that most victims are between 14 and 17 years old, while most suspects are from Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.
“For [Child Sexual Abuse Material], people want more pictures of girls, more videos of girls,” Jacobs said. “For the financial sextortion, we’re finding it’s a lot of boys, high school aged, junior high age. I’d say anywhere between 10 and 17 years of age.”
The new poster campaign includes a QR code that will take the user to ccybertip.ca, which has more information about sextortion along with access to support. Officials are hoping that the poster will be shared across the country and on social media channels to help get the information out to the public, and work towards interrupting the harm caused.