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The risk of ‘sextortion’ of our kids is real
By Jeffery M. Leving® and James M. Hagler
Imagine watching your son joyfully open up a holiday gift and receiving the internet device he has long been wishing for. It may be hard for a parent to believe, but this gift could be the first step towards unimaginable tragedy.
On July 2022, 17-year-old Gavin Guffey reportedly committed suicide in his family’s South Carolina home, leaving his family shattered and wondering why. For weeks, the grieving family searched for signs of anything they’d missed. Then they found out that scammers masquerading as a young woman had sent Gavin nude photos – and asked him for similar images of himself. Once Gavin shared photos with them, they blackmailed him with a threat to publicize them if he didn’t pay.
Gavin had unwittingly become a victim of sexual extortion, or “sextortion,” a crime the FBI warns is increasingly targeting underage boys. Sextortion cases have gone up in the past year, federal officials said in a safety alert issued in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which reported that in 2023, it had received 26,718 reports of financial sextortion, up from 10,731 in 2022. The cases are contributing to an alarming number of suicides nationwide, the alert said.
At the time Gavin died, his father, Branden Guffy, was running for State House Representative in South Carolina, a race he would later win. Upon taking office, his first order of business was to introduce a state bill to criminalize the type of scam that led to his son’s death. The South Carolina State House passed the bill to the State Senators, who passed it and named it “Gavin’s Law.” Gov. Henry McMaster signed bill into law in August of 2023.
Once enacted, scammers who extort a minor or an at-risk adult will face up to 5 years in prison for a first offense, and many more for a second or third offence. Additionally, school districts will be required to implement a policy to educate and notify students of the provisions of the law which includes adequate notice to students, parents or guardians, the public, and school personnel of the change in law yearly.
In 2022, law enforcement agencies received over 7,000 reports related to the online sextortion of minors, according to news reports. Nearly half of those resulted in victims, a majority of them boys. Over a dozen of the sextortion victims died by suicide, the FBI says.
Predators typically trick their young male victims into believing they are talking to girls their own age, persuade them to send explicit photos and videos, and threaten to release those images if a payment is not sent.
In Gavin’s case, it was reported that the scammers received a whole $25 — the entire amount he had in his Venmo account — before he pleaded with them for more time.
As his father told CNN, “He was telling them he would get them more money, please don’t send these images out … they didn’t care. I think in his mind it was just too much, and he didn’t know how he would overcome that.”
As you can see from Gavin’s heartbreaking case, the threat that the images would be released to the public is the major crime in these cases, i.e. extortion, and not necessarily the amount of money swindled from victims.
Sextortion scams have increasingly made headlines nationwide. But law enforcement is increasingly fighting back.
In 2024, a federal judge in Marquette Michigan sentenced two brothers who had been extradited from Lagos, Nigeria, to 210 months each in prison for extorting teenage boys. One of those extorted caused the death of Jordan DeMay, 17, who died by suicide in March 2022 as a result of the brothers acts of sextortion.
And in San Jose, California, a man was convicted and sent to jail in a sextortion case that caused 17 year-old Ryan Last, who killed himself in February 2022 in San Jose, California after being victimized by a similar sextortion scam.
All states should strongly consider passing similar legislation to South Carolina, and Federal lawmakers should examine whether or not they can create federal laws as many of these scams seem to cross state lines and even U.S. borders.
While tougher laws will not necessarily keep every child and at-risk adult safe from scammers, tough penalties, even for first time offenses like Gavin’s Law has may discourage scammers from committing this type of crime.
We would also like to see strong awareness campaigns spread in high schools and colleges to inform students to be on-guard for these types of scams and to enforce the point that it is vital to report sextortions because they’re not the ones committing a crime.
Attorney Jeffery M. Leving is the recipient of the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. James M. Hagler is a leading family law attorney who has worked with Jeffery M. Leving for decades.
Leving can be found on Twitter and Instagram @Dadsrights
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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