UW-Eau Claire professor releases findings from teen sextortion study

One out of every 20 teens reported being a victim to sextortion, according to a new study by a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor.

Dr. Justin Patchin and his research partner included questions about sextortion in a national survey of 5,500 middle and high school students, and the numbers of those affected were surprising to the experts. "Five percent isn't a huge number but it's still a lot of young people and so it's something we can't ignore,” said Dr. Justin Patchin,a criminal justice professor at UW-Eau Claire.

Sextortion among teens usually involves someone voluntarily sending an explicit image of themselves and then being threatened that the image could be used against them. "Most often what we hear are the threats are made to post the images online or send the images to classmates or share them to others,” Patchin said.

During the study, experts found that males were more likely to be a victim of sextortion, and even more likely to be an offender. "Which is surprising because most of the instances we hear about involve girls who share an image and then threats are made to disclose that image so it's happening more to boys even though we aren't hearing about it,” Patchin said.

Situations of sextortion are not likely to be reported; sometimes teens will tell a friend but not a trusted adult. "Young people are put in a difficult situation because technically speaking if a 15 or 16 year old shares an explicit image with somebody else, they have broken a law and so that person that they shared the image with has a lot of power over them,” Patchin said.

Nearly 95 percent of victims say the offender was a friend or someone close to them. Parents are making sure their kids stay safe and they know how to act appropriately while on their cell phones. "Just being careful on photos in general and just making sure that he knows that his body is his body and that type of thing,” said Brenda Crass, a mom from Eau Claire.

Parents are having difficult conversations, in hopes the message will sink in. "We need to provide opportunities for young people to come forward who make mistakes but still need help dealing with these situations,” Patchin said.

Since this was the first study of its kind, Patchin says they will continue to study sextortion and plans to dig deeper into the offender's motives and how teen sextortion situations have been successfully resolved in the past.