An Edmonton teenager has been charged with extorting nude photos from a teen girl.
Edmonton’s Internet Child Exploitation team arrested the 16-year-old on Wednesday and charged him with extortion, possession of child pornography and luring.
Edmonton police said the case started in April when the victim was befriended on social media and pressured into sending nude photos.
The 16-year-old girl was allegedly threatened into complying, and threatened that if she didn’t continue to send nude photos she would be exposed to friends and family, police added. After the girl contacted authorities, ICE took over the investigation in June and they identified a suspect, who had been using fictitious online aliases, police said.
“I’d describe these people’s behaviour as predatory, they’re just trolling. They’re just throwing it out there – and they’re meeting people on various social media sites and then they hook one and they start to groom,” said Det. Ian McFatridge with ALERT’s Internet Child Exploitation Unit.
The suspect and victim weren’t known to each other.
While the suspect is in custody, police are searching for other victims.
“Right now at this point in the investigation we have reason to believe there is potentially other victims,” McFatridge said.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection reminds youth who are dealing with an online blackmail or extortion to never comply with a threat, stop all communication with the perpetrator, deactivate all accounts used to communicate with the person, speak to an adult about what has happened, and contact Cybertip.ca or police.
“First and foremost, these young folks that are using these various social media applications – they need to understand that whatever they put out there on the internet, it’s not retractable, it’s out there,” McFatridge said. “Some social media applications, they offer a false sense of security because of anonymity – clearly that’s not the case.”
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