Important Conversations: Sextortion
My mentee wasn’t at the coffee shop across the high school where we agreed to meet. After several calls, I learned she’d gone home with a guy. I knew we needed to talk.
Despite the awkward conversation, my mentee listened.
Similarly, a camper and young lady in our youth group recently shared how uncomfortable she felt when her boyfriend played with her belly button.
When I told her she had a voice, the girl said, “But, I’m nice. I don’t want to be mean.”
Of course, that opened an entire conversation. She groaned saying, “You went all Mom on me.” But she admitted learning something.
Talking to these young ladies reminded me that even streetwise kids don’t know everything. Deep-down they appreciate our forthright dialogue about subjects that are important.
This is one of our whys behind the Teen Reach Protection Plan. We don’t want to assume these youth know the dangers of sex trafficking. We want to empower them with a voice to speak up if something seems off.
The June 3 issue of the Culture Translator (www.axis.org) featured an article entitled, “Sextortion on the Rise.”
“Sextortion” typically works like this: an adult, posing as a teen, strikes up a conversation with a minor . . . the target is encouraged to send an explicit photograph or video . . . (then) the perpetrator threatens to publicly release the compromising material if monetary demands aren’t met . . . Several victims of these plots have died by suicide already this year . . . let your teens know that if something like this does happen to them, they don’t have to face it alone.
It’s essential that you have conversations with your teen about this because it can happen to anyone. Connection is something that humans crave right in the core of our being. When we’re missing it, and someone offers it, it’s easy to justify doing almost anything to fill that craving. Emphasize to your teen that there is no shame in making mistakes, even big ones, even if those mistakes seem like the end of the world. They aren’t.
Here are great questions to get a conversation started:
How much do you know about sextortion? How can you protect yourself against it, and how would you react if it happened to you?
Do you believe you are valuable to God? What do you think makes you valuable?
Do you feel you have ways to find connections in real life?
Encourage your camp counselors and mentors to have these tough conversations. Teens want to hear, even if they act like they know everything. The youth we serve are already vulnerable; let’s be vigilant to keep them safe.
