Sextortion

Sextortion (a portmanteau of sex and extortion) employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercion, as well as to the category of sexual exploitation in which threatened release of sexual images or information is the means of coercion.^[2]

As used to describe an abuse of power, sextortion is a form of corruption^[3] in which people entrusted with power – such as government officials, judges, educators, law enforcement personnel, and employers – seek to extort sexual favors in exchange for something within their authority to grant or withhold.^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Examples of such abuses of power include: government officials who request sexual favors to obtain licenses or permits,^[9][10] teachers who trade good grades for sex with students,^[11][12] and employers who make providing sexual favors a condition of obtaining a job or getting promoted.^{[citation needed]}. A Transparency International report on sextortion noted some challenges in prosecuting sextortion under existing anti-corruption and gender-based violence legal frameworks.^[13]

Sextortion also refers to a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort money or sexual favors from the victim.^[14][15] Social media and text messages are often the source of the sexual material and the threatened means of sharing it with others. An example of this type of sextortion is where people are extorted with a nude image of themselves they shared on the Internet through sexting. They are later coerced into giving money, or performing sexual acts with the person doing the extorting or are coerced into posing or performing sexually on camera, thus producing hardcore pornography.^[16][15] This method of blackmail is also frequently used to out LGBT people who keep their true sexual orientation private.^[17]

A video highlighting the dangers of sextortion has been released by the National Crime Agency^[18] in the UK to educate people, especially given the fact that blackmail of a sexual nature may cause humiliation to a sufficient extent to cause the victim to take their own life,^[19] in addition to other efforts to educate the public on the risks of sextortion.^[20]