'Sextortion' on the rise after app designed to remove sexual images maliciously posted online reveals shocking rise in crime
Danny has gone through every parent's nightmare - twice.
The proud father of two teenage girls spent more than two years dealing with the emotional turmoil and distress of compromising sexual videos of both his daughters being shared online.
And Daniel's Wolverhampton family is not alone, 2023 will be the year remembered for when children began being blackmailed over sexual images and videos.
In the first six months of this year there were more cases of "sextortion" reported than all of 2022 and 2021 put together.
The weaponsing of explicit sexual images of children, often taken by other children, has led the NSPCC to launch Report Remove, an app which allows youngsters to permanently erase compromising content of them,
Law enforcement agencies, including local police forces and the National Crime Agency, are now diverting resources to clampdown on "sextortion".
Speaking to the Express & Star in a cafe Danny's knuckles turn white as he holds his cup of coffee and describes the "living hell" his family has been through.
He said: "I would not wish this on my worst enemy, knowing there was videos circulating around the school and then the area of my eldest daughter was bad enough, but for the same to happen to my youngest destroyed me.
"Fathers are supposed to stay strong for their children but I could not hide my anger from anyone. You know as a parent when there is something wrong, and I can't imagine what it was like for them to tell me they were videos of them online. They were petrified I'd be sent the videos before they told me themselves.
"Their only crime was being too trusting, its not like they were uploading pictures and videos to OnlyFans they were both with boyfriends, who then either maliciously shared pictures and videos or were bullied themselves into sharing them."
He added: "They were obviously in a very vulnerable position and that's when I heard the term Sextortion for the first time, but in our case it was more bullying. But, it was so stressful I probably would have paid for it to all go away. We got the school and police involved but both did not seem to have a clue what they were dealing with.
"I've been reported for abuse for just trying to get to the bottom of it all, but I'm lucky I am not up for murder, if this happened when I was a younger man who knows what I would have done. Now, I just want to move out the area completely and give the girls a fresh start."
