'Sextortion' is an online 'epidemic' against children (Cont.)
http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/02/sextortion-teens-online/11992529/
Five months ago, Dutch police arrested Aydin Coban, 35, and accused him of extorting Amanda and dozens of other girls, as well as adult men, in Canada, the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.
"In the back of my mind, I never thought of a predator," says her mother, Carol Todd. "I thought the person who wanted the pictures was an older teen. I was never thinking it was a 35-year-old man on the other end.
"I've learned about the whole dark world that's out there on the Internet."
She tells her daughter's story as a cautionary tale, urging parents to talk often with their teens about how they lead their virtual lives.
The increase in sextortion cases has led authorities to go beyond law enforcement to also educate parents and teens about online safety. Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has started a program called iGuardian in which agents visit elementary, middle and high schools.
They use real-life examples to warn kids never to send nude photos of themselves electronically or share identifying information such as their school or address.
"Predators used to stalk playgrounds. This is the new playground," says Brock Nicholson, HSI special agent in charge in Atlanta. "I would argue that this is an epidemic and people have no idea."
What sets this crime apart is that one suspect can victimize hundreds of children anywhere in the world, says Patrick Redling, head of the child exploitation unit at HSI's Cyber Crimes Center.
Victims suffer emotionally
From his mother's apartment in suburban Atlanta, Hutchinson was targeting dozens of victims, most in Georgia, says HSI special agent Tony Scott, who investigated the case in the spring of 2012. After his arrest, Scott says, Hutchinson admitted to raping four girls, several of whom he met on online while pretending to be a teenage boy. The youngest rape victim was 11. Authorities had no idea until the family of the 15-year-old girl came forward.
USA TODAY does not name victims of sexual abuse. To protect the identity of the victim, her name and her father's name are being withheld.
The girl met someone who told her he was 15 on Tagged.com, her father says. They talked for a week or so before the boy asked for a partially nude photo. The girl sent it.
When Hutchinson demanded more explicit photos, she balked, her father says. Hutchinson threatened to have her beaten up in school and said vaguely at one point, "You don't want to end up like the other girl" who didn't give in to his demands.
Then he ordered her to do the unthinkable: Perform oral sex on her 13-year-old brother and send a photo.
She panicked and told her brother. They staged a photo, pretending to do what he ordered, and sent it to Hutchinson.
"She felt that if she sent the picture, he would leave her alone," her father says. "It's easy to ask why she didn't go to her parents, but you aren't in that situation. You are not in the mind of a 15-year-old girl.
"She was genuinely afraid," he says. "She thought she could handle it, and it got out of control."
Amy Allen, a forensics interview specialist at Homeland Security Investigations who talks with victims, says preteens and teenagers are targets of predators because they are at an age where they experiment sexually and take risks, but their brains are still developing and they can make bad decisions.
The girl's pretense didn't work. Hutchinson became angry that the photo was not graphic enough, the girl's father says, and sent the photo back. She wasn't using her own phone, because it couldn't send pictures — and he knew it.
The photo went to her aunt, who ran to the girl's mother. Thinking her daughter was molesting her son, the mother called the police. The truth soon came out.
Hutchinson was charged with extorting 16 child victims, including the four rape victims and three sets of siblings that he ordered to engage in sexual activities.
"The guy was a terrorist," Scott says. "He terrorized these children. That's the only term for this."
Hutchinson pleaded guilty in December to several charges and was sentenced to life in prison for what the judge called "a reign of terror."
The crime has taken an emotional toll, the girl's father says. His son, who never had direct contact with Hutchinson, was angry but has been able to move on.
His daughter, though, talked about suicide, began cutting herself and went into therapy. Her grades plummeted. Her relationship with her parents and brother, once close, fractured.
She has gone to live with relatives in another state.
"She just wanted to get away," her father says.
At Hutchinson's sentencing in December, her father and parents of the other victims told heartbreaking tales of suicidal girls who barely went out, no longer had friends and in one case refused to bathe, thinking that would make her less attractive to men.
The father of the 15-year-old spoke for all of them when he told the defendant, "You have left a permanent scar on my family."
Tremaine Hutchinson was arrested in April 2012 for what a federal judge called at his sentencing "a six-month reign of terror" online against young girls.
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