Sexual extortion, or ‘sextortion,’ is a form of online blackmail where a perpetrator coerces or tricks someone into sending sexual photos or videos of themselves and then threatens to share the images unless their demands for money, sexual favors, or more graphic images are met.
Researchers, law enforcement and online safety agencies have an understandable interest in child-related sextortion, but there’s been little research on its prevalence among adults. A new international study led by RMIT University, Melbourne, in collaboration with Google, has revealed that the issue is more common than first thought.
“A lack of standardized large-scale data can hinder our ability to effectively address the issue,” said Rebecca Umbach, Staff User Experience Researcher at Google and the study’s co-corresponding author. “Even assuming some amount of underreporting, our findings indicate that sextortion among adults is actually relatively common and deserves more research and resources.”
The researchers surveyed 16,693 adults, those over 18, from 10 countries: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, South Korea, Spain and the US. The mean age of participants was 46, with women accounting for 50.9%. In terms of prevalence, the researchers found that 14.5% of participants – around one in seven – had experienced at least one threat to have their intimate images disseminated. Some 4.8% reported being perpetrators of sextortion.
There was a clear distinction between countries regarding victims and perpetrators. Victimization was most common in Mexico (17.3%), the US (16%), Australia (15.9%), and South Korea (14.3%), whereas perpetration was significantly more common in South Korea (11.4%) compared to the other nine countries. The US and Australia had the equal second-highest percentage of reported perpetrators, 7.1%.
There were gender divisions, too. Across the 10 countries, more men (15.7%) than women (13.4%) reported being the victim of sextortion. Some 7.0% of men and 4.9% of women reported being perpetrators, making men’s risk of perpetrating 1.43 times that of women. While the overarching pattern showed that men were more likely to be victims and perpetrators of sextortion, South Korea was the notable exception. There, women were 2.06 times more likely than men to report victimization and 2.58 times more likely to report perpetration.
In total, 26.6% of LGBTQ+ participants indicated at least one instance of being threatened, compared to 12.8% of non-LGBTQ+ participants, making them more than twice as likely to experience sextortion. A similar pattern was seen when it came to perpetrating, with 12.1% of LGBTQ+ respondents reporting they’d threatened someone else compared to 4.8% of non-LGBTQ+ participants, making them two-and-a-half times more likely to report perpetration.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a significant relationship between age group and victimization, with younger study participants more likely to report being a victim. Those in the 18 to 24 range were 1.95 times more likely than those in the 35 to 49 age group and 3.07 times more likely than those in the 50 to 64 age group. People under 35 were also found to be more likely than over-35s to engage in sextortion behavior. Those aged 18 to 24 were 2.75 times more likely to report threatening someone compared to 35- to 49-year-olds and 8.17 times more likely compared to 50- to 64-year-olds.
To examine the overlap between victims and offenders, the researchers divided participants into “just perpetrators,” “just victims,” “neither,” or “other” (e.g., those who’d answered “prefer not to say”). The majority (85.2%) of perpetrators also indicated they’d been victims at some point.
“One possible explanation for this is that intimate images may be used in retaliation or in ‘tit-for-tat’ situations, where an individual who has threatened to share another person’s intimate images then experiences a threat themselves from that individual or from someone else,” said Nicola Henry, a professor at RMIT’s Social Equity Research Center and the study’s lead and co-corresponding author.
For both genders, current and former intimate partners were the most commonly reported perpetrators, regardless of the partner’s gender. Women were 1.52 times as likely as men to report being victimized by a former partner; men were more likely than women to report being the victim of a work colleague or carer.
Given its global prevalence, the researchers say the best way to combat sextortion is through education.
“First and foremost, prevention education at the school, university, and community levels needs to be tailored specifically to at-risk groups, especially boys and young men,” Henry said. “More funding and resources are needed for supporting victim-survivors of sextortion, including for counseling, legal advice, and mental health crisis support. Frontline workers also need to be trained to recognize the signs of sextortion and respond to disclosures in a trauma-informed and culturally appropriate way, and provide appropriate supports and referrals. Sextortion should be part of conversations about intimate partner violence and dating abuse, not just in the context of financial scams.”
This study resulted from the first of two Google grants awarded to Henry. The second grant will focus on research into AI-generated intimate imagery. Google hopes the research will expand understanding about the harms of image-based abuse and support innovations designed to combat the issue.
The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
Source: RMIT University
