60 cases daily: Alarming threat of online sextortion of children
Sextortion is increasingly becoming a threat to many girls. Laws like the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018, aim to protect children from online predators.
What you need to know:
- Survivors of exploitation rarely receive the help they desperately need.
It is not just poverty and desperation that expose children to online abusers, but also a broken social structure.
Seventeen-year-old Amina met a young man on Facebook who promised her a letter of employment. But then, there was a condition she had to fulfil before securing the job: send him her private pictures.
In desperation and hopelessly in need of a means of earning an income, she obliged. What followed was a nightmare for the girl. “After I sent them, he started to blackmail me and forced me to perform sexual acts in exchange for the employment offer,” she said.
Amina, as identified in Equality Now’s latest report on online sexual exploitation and abuse in Kenya, is one of the children who narrated their experiences in the study. The global human rights organisation established that predators are increasingly targeting children through online platforms for sexual exploitation and abuse.
The researchers interviewed girls and women aged 14–36 living in Mombasa, Kilifi, Nakuru, Kisii, Kiambu and Nairobi. To ensure the protection of the survivors whose accounts were captured in the report, their names and those of perpetrators were changed.
The report focused on three manifestations of digital violence: image-based sexual abuse, including non-consensual sharing of intimate images and deep fakes; technology-facilitated sex trafficking, where perpetrators exploit digital platforms to lure women and girls by false pretences of employment or migration; and online sexual coercion and extortion, often involving blackmail, threats and manipulation.
It is not just poverty and desperation that expose children to online abusers, but also a broken social structure.
Martha, for instance, aged 14, was traded off to paedophiles by her maternal aunt. “She deceived my mother into agreeing to let me go with her so I could go to school instead of living in the village. But little did my mother know that she would use me as a sex tool,” she narrated.
“The sexual encounters I had with the men, the buyers found by my aunt, were recorded and shared online. My aunt later blackmailed my mother, asking her for money to pay for my secondary education,” she added.
For Cynthia, 15, it is a case of cruel breakdown of social structures that fail to recognise the child’s right to protection, care, love, and justice when violated. Instead, they punish the child for the crimes committed against her, pushing her into more abuse.
“A family member sexually abused me, and my family disowned me. My father refused to pay for my education because I am a girl,” Cynthia said.
“I was very naive and did not know about online safety. I ended up being groomed on social media. I was asked to share intimate images of myself. I later experienced sexual coercion and extortion when people started contacting me after seeing the images I had shared,” she added.
The researchers established that digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok and dating apps are central tools in recruitment, coercion and abuse. These platforms could play a role in prevention and redress, however, survivors reported opaque, slow, or unhelpful responses and weak accountability.
They also cited existing laws, such as the Sexual Offences Act (2006), the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Act (2010), the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (2018), and the Children’s Act (2022), which, although offering some protections, are poorly enforced.
Even when survivors consider reporting to the police, fear of stigma, questions about why they took and shared the photos, mistrust and fear of retaliation prevent them from reporting and seeking justice altogether.
Reporting platforms
To encourage child survivors to report, it was recommended that the government establishes confidential and secure reporting platforms, such as mobile apps or web-based portals, ensuring they are accessible in both rural and urban areas.
Similarly, collaboration with survivor groups, organisations, social media companies and tech firms in designing these platforms is essential, ensuring they are survivor-friendly, responsive to their needs, and usable for reporting abuses.
Lawrence Okoth, a detective at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit (Cyber Division), said that each day they receive about 60 cases related to online sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
“We receive these cases from the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, which indicates the backlog we have,” he said on November 27, during a forum organised by Fida-Kenya to mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
The centre is a US-based child protection non-state organisation. While he did not specify how many cases have been successfully investigated, prosecuted, or are ongoing in court, he mentioned that some cases have gone through the judicial process.
Last July, the DCI reported that a team of detectives from the Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Protection Unit and DCI Changamwe arrested two suspects in Mombasa for alleged exploitation and online solicitation of minors.
One of the suspects was a mother, who is alleged to have used the dating site AfroIntroductions, run by Cupid Media, to offer her three children—aged 13, seven, and four (two girls and one boy)—for sexual exploitation. Investigations revealed that the woman was generating income by sharing sexually explicit content involving her children.
Mr Okoth emphasised that safeguarding children requires collective effort. He urged the public to report any such violations immediately through Fichua kwa DCI (0800 722 203) or the Communications Authority’s KE-CIRT app (Kenya Computer Incident Response Team).
