Family of sextortion victim speak out as cases soar by 54%

In their first interview, the parents of a sixteen-year-old boy who took his own life just hours after he was blackmailed by a scammer have told ITV News their "whole world has been shattered".

Murray Dowey, 16, from Dunblane was contacted on social media by someone claiming to be a young girl but was actually a scammer, who tricked him into sending an intimate image and then blackmailed him with it.

Sextortion, is when intimate images and/or videos are recorded and used for financial exploitation and coercion.

It is mostly committed by organised criminal gangs overseas.

Report by Covellm.

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