Cork gardaí urge young people being blackmailed over sex videos and pictures to come forward

Chief Superintendent Vincent O’Sullivan of Cork county Garda division is urging young people not to be afraid to come forward if they are being blackmailed as a result of sharing videos or images of themselves performing sexual activities with someone they met online. 

Demands for sums of money to prevent the images being shared online to friends and acquaintances of the targeted person can range from €500 to several thousand euro.

Chief Supt O’Sullivan said gardaí in Cork county dealt with a number of such cases in the past year, but he believes others have been targeted who have not come forward out of shame or fear.

“Our advice would be to first and foremost, shut it down and report it. You would probably want to do a reset on your phone as well because you just don’t know what kind of programmes or anything are running in the background,” he said.

There are cases around the country and in the north where people have taken their own lives over this, so it is something we are very conscious of. The message I would say is that they have the power, but once you don’t engage with it, you take the power away from them. 

"The numbers we are seeing are low enough, but there are a few of them going on. We would probably have maybe around a dozen last year, but there are all the ones then that are not being reported.” 

He said while some of the sums of money being demanded are small, in the region of €500, “that could be a lot for a teenager".

He urged young people who have been targeted to come forward: “Talk to someone they know and trust — a parent, a friend that they trust. But we are there as well. They are not in any trouble with us. It is their wellbeing that is the priority for us.” 

In its 2023 report, online watchdog Hotline.ie recorded a 210% increase from 2022 in sexual extortion reports, with 274 such cases. 

Its 2024 report, published last month, showed a decrease in reports, with a fall to 62 cases — 83% of the reports were from male victims, with 15% of cases involving victims under 18.

In 2017, a Romanian national was sentenced in a Romanian court to four years in prison for blackmailing a teenager in Tyrone and producing and distributing indecent pictures of a child. Europol said the 17-year-old teenager died by suicide after being tricked into sharing intimate photographs of himself by posing as a girl online.