Sexting & Sextortion Scams

Jesus

Not even for money. Just for giggles

There is no punishment severe enough for these people

It sounds like this "Brad" easily could have been a school shooter in a slightly different scenario, but he found this outlet to hurt people instead
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The person in the online chat introduced himself as “Brad.” Using flattery and guile, he persuaded the 14-year-old girl to send a nude photo. It instantly became leverage.

Over the following two weeks in April 2021, he and other online predators threatened to send the image to the girl’s classmates in Oklahoma unless she live-streamed degrading and violent acts, the girl’s mother told The Washington Post.

They coerced her into carving their screen names deep into her thigh, drinking from a toilet bowl and beheading a pet hamster — all as they watched in a video chatroom on the social media platform Discord.

The pressure escalated until she faced one final demand: to kill herself on camera.

“You just don’t realize how quickly it can happen,” said the mother, who intervened before her daughter could act on the final demand. The mother agreed to talk about the experience to warn other parents but did so on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her daughter’s safety.

The abusers were part of an emerging international network of online groups that have targeted thousands of children with a sadistic form of social media terror that authorities and technology companies have struggled to control, according to an examination by The Washington Post, Wired Magazine, Der Spiegel in Germany and Recorder in Romania.

The perpetrators — identified by authorities as boys and men as old as mid-40s — seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera, the examination found. They belong to a set of evolving online groups, some of which have thousands of members, that often splinter and take on new names but have overlapping membership and use the same tactics.

Unlike many “sextortion” schemes that seek money or increasingly graphic images, these perpetrators are chasing notoriety in a community that glorifies cruelty, victims and law enforcement officials say. The FBI issued a public warning in September identifying eight such groups that target minors between the ages of 8 and 17, seeking to harm them for the members’ “own entertainment or their own sense of fame.”..............

The Oklahoma teenager’s experience with 764 started innocuously, her mother said in an interview. The girl downloaded the Discord app on her phone because her middle school art teacher encouraged students to use it to share their work. A fan of horror stories, she soon began searching for gory content.

She landed in a chatroom where she met “Brad,” who flattered her and invited her to the 764 server. The 14-year-old was typical of children victimized by these groups: She had a history of mental illness, having been hospitalized for depression the previous November, her mother said.

“He pretended to like her as a girlfriend,” the mother said. “She sent him videos or pictures. And then the manipulation and control started. ”

For more than two weeks, the girl complied with the demands of a handful of abusers in the 764 server, live-streaming some videos from inside her bedroom closet while her mother was in the house, according to her mother. They told the girl that if she didn’t comply they would send explicit photos of her to her social media followers, classmates and school principal. They threatened to hurt her younger brother.

The Post reviewed a video of the girl that was still circulating on Telegram late last year, a recording of a live stream on the 764 Discord server. The girl holds the family’s hamster in one hand and a razor blade in the other as three males berate her. “Bite the head off, or I’ll f--- up your life,” a male with the screen name “Felix” yells, as she sobs. “Stop crying,” says another male.

The girl’s mother said in an interview that “Brad” coerced her daughter into killing the hamster. The victim from Canada said she was in the Discord server at the time and confirmed that the 764 leader pressured the girl into mutilating the animal as dozens of people watched online.

The girl’s mother found out about the extortion later that same night in April 2021.

She heard the muffled sound of her daughter’s voice through the bathroom door, talking to someone as she bathed. She waited by the door until her daughter opened it. On her daughter’s torso were self-inflicted cuts the abusers had told her to make while she was in the bathtub, the mother said.

The girl told her mother that a cult was extorting her and that she had been instructed to take her own life the following day.

“I believe she was going to kill herself,” the mother said. “If I had not been at that bathroom door, I have no doubt I would have lost my daughter.”

The mother struggled to understand the depravity...............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...e7e8a6816fb1940/8/52/65f1ca4eec7af63555086a04