Roxy & Gay Longworth | Coercion, Consent and Consequences
Note: this episode may contain triggers regarding self-harming & mental health
Have you heard of sextortion? If you haven't, do a quick search on Google and you'll probably be horrified. We were.
Sexting of images or videos + threat of blackmail (money, loss of reputation etc) = sextortion and it's on the rise, in a big way, aimed at adolescents and young adults. Many parents think their kid is way too smart to fall victim to sending, receiving or asking for explicit images but please don't be naive. Statistics from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation show that 60% of children in the UK have been asked for a sexual image or video. The FBI are taking it so seriously that they've launched a national campaign in the States.
In this episode we talk to Roxy and Gay Longworth who are the authors of 'When You Lose It', described by Claudia Winkelman as an "extraordinary and important book" suggesting parents "read it immediately". It details the brutally honest true story told from the perspectives of mother and daughter separately, detailing the consequences of 13 year old Roxy being coerced by an older boy to send explicit images, resulting in a psychotic mental breakdown, self-harming and suicide attempts as her life unravelled around her.
Our chat with Roxy and Gay is personal and raw. They are incredibly brave to share their story to raise awareness. Roxy's story happened because of boys at her school, caring so little about her reputation that they were eventually playing Top Trumps with her images.
But she's just one of thousands who have been exploited for their vulnerability. Young men are heavily targeted by organised crime, impersonating peers who gain their trust and then ask for explicit images before swiftly demanding money in exchange for not publishing them everywhere. Universities and colleges are very aware of this practice and of the devastating consequences when young people have taken their own lives, believing that their life as they know it is effectively over.
We were staggered that the younger generation are not absolutely outraged by the normalisation of sending images (which is a criminal act if under 18 to both send or receive). "Oh yeah, lots of people do that" we heard. But do they know that police can get involved and enhanced background checks might raise flags years later when starting work? They could end up on the sex offenders register just for receiving an image and not deleting it immediately!
We definitely don't have all the answers but we do want to highlight this issue and recommend that everyone talks to their kids about sextortion, when they're young and get a phone, when they're in middle school & discovering boys or girls for the first time, when they're leaving the nest for college.
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