Cases of predators coercing children into producing sexual photos and videos of themselves have surged globally in the past year, a cruel phenomenon known as “sadistic online exploitation”, child safety experts and law enforcement officials warn.
What is sadistic online exploitation?
In cases of sadistic online exploitation, perpetrators target vulnerable teens on social media platforms and online games. These predators then compel their victims into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), harming themselves and others, or, in extreme cases, attempting suicide.
“We often see that the offenders will communicate with that child and, through that initial communication, ask them for nude or explicit imagery of themselves,” said Kathryn Rifenbark, a director at the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). “Then they’re using that as a leverage to cause the child to harm themselves or harm other children or other people in their home or create more explicit imagery of them or other children in their home.”
Recent cases and statistics
Recent cases include the June sentencing of a 21-year-old Maryland man to 30 years in prison for sexually exploiting 10 female minors and cyberstalking. The perpetrator “used the internet to create and share extreme content – such as gore, violence, and child sexual abuse material – to extort and blackmail vulnerable teenagers”, and the man sexually exploited his victims and encouraged them to engage in self-harm, according to a Department of Justice press release.
The NCMEC received more than 3,000 reports of sadistic online exploitation worldwide in 2025, a 125% increase from the previous year. But those cases represent only a small fraction of the total number of incidents, experts say, because the NCMEC is only notified if child sexual abuse material has been detected and reported.
How predators target children
Predators targeting children often belong to online networks, and are often teens or young adults themselves. To recruit their victims, the perpetrators engage with video games popular with children, such as Roblox and Minecraft. A spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns Minecraft, said: “Our goal is to make Minecraft one of the hardest places for bad actors to operate, and we have a variety of tools we use to help foster a safe online experience, such as parental controls, chat filtering, in-game reporting, and dedicated moderation teams.”
They may also search social media groups that focus on mental health issues such as eating disorders or suicide ideation because they are specifically looking for vulnerable children to target and groom, child safety experts interviewed said.
Forms of abuse and escalation
Perpetrators of sadistic online exploitation who coerce children into inflicting other forms of harm on themselves fall outside those reports. The coerced abuses can include forcing children to cut themselves, eat their own vomit, drink urine, die by suicide, or harm other children and pets in their homes. Some groups also engage in mass casualty planning, doxing and cyber-harassment.
A common form of abuse is forcing victims to carve perpetrators’ social media usernames on their bodies, said Amanda Goharian, director of research at Thorn, a child safety non-profit. “One of the key things in these groups is that the level of severity of the harms that are being committed are extreme, and they can rapidly develop into outcomes such as completed suicides,” said Goharian.
FBI warning and nihilistic violent extremism
In February, the FBI issued a warning to parents and caregivers about the “sharp increase” in the activity of violent online networks, including the “764” group, targeting and exploiting children and other vulnerable individuals. “The term nihilistic violent extremism (NVE) refers to what is motivating most of these subjects to commit criminal acts. They want to sow chaos and facilitate the destruction of society,” said the letter. “These subjects may be engaging in criminal activity for sexual gratification, social status, a sense of belonging, or for a mix of other reasons.”
Vulnerable children and platform dynamics
The predators target vulnerable children who have disclosed personal information online about the struggles they face, such as mental health challenges, eating disorders, self-harm or suicidal ideation, via gaming or social media platforms. These children are looking for connections and support online, which can render them more susceptible to manipulation, said the experts interviewed.
Predators typically invite victims to move the conversation to a messaging app such as Telegram, which, according to Rifenbark, “doesn’t report very much” to the NCMEC, meaning the organization has limited visibility into potential child sexual exploitation. It’s on these messaging platforms where the sadistic online exploitation takes place. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.
Perpetrator motivations and group dynamics
Many of the perpetrators have troubled lives or are socially isolated in real life, and are looking for notoriety online as a form of empowerment and attention from others, experts interviewed said. “These groups are focused on harming children and targeting children for the purposes of clout and like gaining hierarchy and power both within their groups and over the victims,” said Maria Thomas, investigator at Rise Information Security Foundation, a non-profit focused on cybersecurity. “Teens join them because it’s seen as a subversive and edgy thing to do.”
The perpetrators gain status within their groups from posting evidence of their abuse, images such as dossiers of photos and screenshots of messages with their victims, which are known as “lore books”. Typically, these collections are uploaded on to a Telegram channel labeled as “Victim Name Lore Book”, experts said. “Harm is perpetrated as a way to essentially gain clout within the network, and to be elevated,” said Goharian.
History and evolution of networks
Organized nihilistic violent extremism and sadistic online exploitation were first documented in the 2010s, when a youth cybergang called the Com, which focused on hacking and identity theft before some subsets shifted into child exploitation. Splinter networks, such as CVLT, an online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism and pedophilia as its core principles, were formed. The group 764 was formed in 2021 by a teenager in Texas who had learned grooming and exploitation methods as a member of CVLT.
Real-world violence and law enforcement response
Online exploitation can escalate into dramatic real-world violence, experts warn. In February, an 18-year-old man from Pennsylvania was arrested and charged with grooming a 13-year-old girl he met on social gaming platform Discord, allegedly convincing her to send him sexually explicit material of herself and images of self-harm. The man travelled across the country to engage in sexual activity with the girl in a motel, according to the US justice department. “Discord has a longstanding policy on Teen and Child Safety that prohibits sexual exploitation and predatory behavior, including content or communities that facilitate grooming,” said a Discord spokesperson.
“When law enforcement arrived at the motel room, they encountered [the man] and the victim and found condoms, a knife, lubricant, razor blades, bloody tissues,” stated a Department of Justice press release about the case. “The victim told law enforcement that [the man] and she had engaged in sexual conduct and that he had used a knife to repeatedly cut her.” In May, a 16-year-old boy from South Carolina was arrested for engaging in exploitation tied to 764 after receiving a tip from Discord regarding possible school violence.
Control and persistence of offenders
“Offenders have a very, very high level of control over the children. They are using that connection that they’ve built with that child to really try to control that child to do some pretty harmful things to themselves,” said Rifenbark. Rifenbark said the NCMEC had received reports from parents who discovered what was happening to their child and took away the child’s phone, only for the child to find another device in the home, such as an old device the family was no longer using, and use it to re-engage with the offenders online, probably due to the high levels of control and grooming they have been subjected to.
“A lot of times when victims are coming and reporting to us, they’re very scared, they’re scared of retaliation from offenders, they’re worried that their personal information might get leaked, because that’s something that the offenders are doing as part of their victimization,” Rifenbark said. According to Goharian, the networks are highly persistent, with individual perpetrators often operating hundreds of accounts. If one account is reported for violating a platform’s terms of service and removed, they can quickly switch to “shadow” accounts that are already established and immediately resume their activity.
Need for better interventions
According to a state prosecutor, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of concern for professional reprisals, some juveniles who commit sexual abuse do not outgrow the behavior but often go on to offend as adults. Better interventions are needed for young offenders before their behavior escalates, they said. “We just do a really bad job sometimes of recognizing dangerous kids,” said the prosecutor. “I don’t think these kids are going to grow out of it. I think they’re growing into it.”
