Canadian tip line says it receives about 50 sextortion reports every week

Following the suicide death of a 12-year-old B.C. boy, after he fell victim to online sextortion, the national tip line for online child sexual abuse and exploitation says the crime is a huge problem in Canada.

The senior manager of Cybertip.ca says that, over the last five years, they’ve seen an 815 per cent increase in reports of luring, which includes sextortion, a crime they get about eight to 10 reports of every single day.

“Really, we know that that’s only the tip of the iceberg, we know this is happening to a lot more kids, a lot more families around, across Canada, and we’re only seeing a very small portion of what’s actually occurring,” said Catherine Tabak.

“Certainly we are seeing our numbers climb, it hasn’t plateaued in any way.”

Sextortion is when someone threatens to expose sexual content of you if you don’t send them money or more content. Tabak says most victims are male and between the ages of 14 and 17, but she’s seen victims as young as 12 years old.

The Coquitlam RCMP says it’s seen an increase in sextortion reports over the last few years but it’s very hard to get a conviction because the offender is usually outside of Canada.

“For the international cases, we’re talking months and years before we’re actually able to get charges approved and then additional months and years, if the offender is out of country, to figure out if we are able to get some sort of conviction,” said Cpl. Alexa Hodgins.

Cybertip.ca says most sextortion incidents happen on Instagram or Snapchat.

“One of the things that we really need to start focusing on, is what is the role of these platforms actually in these circumstances? What are they doing to better protect kids online?” said Tabak.

CityNews reached out to both Meta, which owns Instagram, for comment on the matter.

Snapchat says it routinely works alongside safety experts and law enforcement to help combat exploitation.

“We have also rolled out new in-app safety features and tools … with the goal of giving parents more insight into who their teens are communicating with,” it said in a statement.

Tabak says she’d like to see the government regulate these kinds of platforms.

On Wednesday, Canada’s prime minister was asked when his government would table long-promised legislation designed to mitigate online harms.

“When it comes to protecting our kids, I think we all agree that we have to do everything we possibly can and that is why we have spent such a significant amount of time working with communities, including racialized communities, working with experts, moving forward, in the right way, to keep our kids safe,” said Justin Trudeau in response.

But, Tabak says we’re still playing catch-up.

“We really hit this wall where we need governments to step in,” she said.