Scottish Police Hunt Online Gangs Coercing Girls into Self-Harm
Police Scotland has joined international law enforcement targeting "The Com" networks, which groom and blackmail girls into self-harm. One arrest has been made in Scotland so far.
Scotland joins global crackdown on online networks forcing children to self-harm
Police Scotland has joined an international law enforcement operation targeting loose online networks that groom and coerce children — predominantly girls — into acts of self-harm, bbc.co.uk reports.
Detectives are hunting members of groups collectively known as "The Com", which primarily targets girls on gaming platforms and social media. The networks are largely comprised of teenage and young adult males and have grown in prominence in recent years, with cases spanning sextortion, hacking and self-harm encouragement.
One arrest has so far been made in Scotland. A handful of convictions have been secured in England.
The Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity supporting young people and families affected by the networks, said the groups "represent the gravest risk to children online".
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"Nearly a thousand images in this particular case"
A detective constable, identified only as Paul, works in Police Scotland's internet investigations unit at the force's Scottish Crime Campus. He spoke to the BBC while reviewing material flagged by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States and passed on via the National Crime Agency (NCA).
"Unfortunately, we are getting a lot of self-harm imagery," Paul told BBC News. "There's nearly a thousand images in this particular case, and we need to go through every single one of those."
The images include a young girl's arm covered in blood and blood used to mark a symbol on a bathroom wall. The girl is alleged to have been directed to harm herself by someone she met online — understood to be a young male in Scotland.
Craig, another officer working the case, said victims are typically between 11 and 17. "We're finding a lot of vulnerable young girls," he said. "Unfortunately, we discover down the line that there are other vulnerabilities that [perpetrators] are exploiting."
Craig noted that occult or Satanic symbols frequently appear among the material — used by abusers to project an extreme image. "It's about how much control you can get, up to the point that they're getting them to self-harm," he said.
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What is "The Com"?
The Com — short for "the community" — refers to a loose constellation of online groups involved in abuse, financial crimes and extremism. Among those featuring in recent court cases are "The 764" and "CVLT", though membership and group structures shift over time.
In May, the NCA said it was investigating around 200 cases linked to these networks. In August, 20-year-old Justin Swaddle was jailed for two years after blackmailing and coercing more than 100 victims into acts of self-harm, including carving his online username onto their bodies.
Det Ch Insp Craig Faulds, who leads Police Scotland's efforts targeting the groups' links to the country, described the crimes as "an evolution of online child abuse and sexual exploitation".
He told the BBC that abusers typically begin on gaming platforms before moving the contact to social media, messaging services and online forums. "We are seeing cases where perpetrators online are targeting young vulnerable people, usually girls, and they are manipulating them, they are coercing them into sharing indecent images of themselves," he said.
"Some of the more serious cases are seen by coercing individuals to cause acts of serious self-harm. We have identified victims and perpetrators in Scotland. And we are at the stage of mapping this threat to understand significance and the prevalence of it."
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"Low-volume, high-harm"
Hazel Stewart, of the NCA's Threat Leadership team, described Com group activity as "low-volume, high-harm". "The scale doesn't matter, it is the harm that is being caused," she told the BBC.
Stewart said abusers are often young males who have been socially isolated or bullied. "They find their own identity online, they can be whoever they want to be," she said. "And therefore they are encouraging those that are vulnerable, usually young females... seeking them out, say, on suicidal ideation sites or eating disorder sites, and encourage them into more private spaces."
She described a pattern of escalation: abusers initially present as supportive before steering victims toward increasingly harmful acts. "It might be a small cut at first. Or it might be harm to a pet, or a sibling," Stewart said. "That harm will escalate and the grooming and manipulation continues, and the victim is in a situation where they can't escape."
Stewart characterised the threat as a "global problem". The UK is currently working with law enforcement agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as Interpol and Europol.
Source: Google News UK — Crime (en)