"They feel embarrassed' The counsellors helping victims regain control

It was a phone call that has become all too common for Childline counsellors in recent months.

- Dan Milmo

The 17-year-old boy said he was scared and did not know what to do.

He had been contacted by a "girl" on social media claiming to be his own age and, after an exchange of messages, had sent her an intimate image. And then the blackmail demands started.

This is financial sextortion, a distressing trend in internet fraud that is targeting British teenagers.

Rebekah Hipkiss, the Childline supervisor who took the call, said the frequency of these contacts with financial sextortion victims was daily and had increased "enormously" over the past 12 months. In the past year, Childline has encountered more than 100 cases of financial sextortion, the first data it has gathered since assigning a specific code to such incidents.

Hipkiss said the teenagers who contact Childline were embarrassed about being tricked and concerned that friends and family, who might be listed on the teenager's social media profile, will be sent the images being used to blackmail them. "What we're concerned with is the emotional impact it has had on them," said Hipkiss, who works at Childline's London base. "They feel extremely foolish, they feel very embarrassed.

They are concerned that family and friends will find out." She added: "Sometimes they've paid money, sometimes they haven't." Childline, part of the NSPCC children's charity, also operates a service that can remove indecent images of children from the internet if they have been published online and allows victims to report images or videos anonymously. It also aims to prevent them from being uploaded on platforms.