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Adults consistently tell students to watch out for the world around them, but sometimes forget to look at the world behind the screen. Recently sextortion cases have spiked in Colorado with students coming out about their experiences of feeling pressured to send explicit pictures of themselves to adults online only to later be threatened with the pictures for money.

Sextortion is a form of scamming where you send an explicit picture to someone you met online or someone you know. In return, they save the image and threaten to expose those pictures to your friends, your family, or your job. Officer Shaw Gifford is with the Englewood Police Department and EHS School Resource Officer, “So I’ve actually dealt with many cases involving sextortion where we (Law Enforcement) don’t always call it sextortion as far as the law goes, because it’s getting into a lot of different types of internet luring, different criminal statutes, and different types of sextortion can use different forms of manipulating and controlling an individual.”

At the end of January, 2024, at least six Aurora High School students were targeted by a so-called “sextortion” scheme. According to the Aurora police, students said they were direct targets of the sextortion scheme after someone reached out on Instagram. Police also say in dozens of other recent cases students got unsolicited invitations to pay to join a private Instagram “Close Friends” list with sexually explicit material. Aurora detectives have taken reports from Rangeview High, Smoky Hill High, Gateway High, Vista Peak, Cherokee Trail, Overland, Aurora Hills Middle and Mrachek Middle, all schools on the front range in Colorado.

Officer Gifford says students at Englewood High School are at risk as well, “It’s definitely a huge problem, especially with the age of social media, and even just technology and the way technology is developing and getting more rampant. It’s tough to deal with because it’s hard to track.”

With these cases on the rise, people need to understand the importance of internet safety and how imperative it can be to speak out about experiences they have had online. In a lot of sextortion cases in the past, victims have been devastated by the thought of being exposed and took their own lifes believing it was the only thing left to do.

Over the past two years sextorion cases have been investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security they report receiving over 13,000 reports of sextortion cases involving finacle motives from the exploiter. The victims of these reports have been primarily boys and have lead to at least 20 suicides of victims with suicides and attempts rising as the amount of cases increase.

Englewood High School junior Venus Koyama has not dealt with sextortion but has fallen victim to multiple scams once resulting in her oldest account being hacked and deleted. She says it is hard to feel safe online, “As a woman no, and as someone under 18? Absolutely not.”

Computer generated images from Artificial Intelligence have changed the game as well, “So there’s different ways of using this AI technology to change a person’s body type to be nude. So those are the ones you see and then it’s getting used as blackmail,” Officer Gifford said.

The extortion of children online doesn’t stop at sextortion. In some cases, children have been exploited online by their own parents. This is shown with the rise of family vloggers. Online crime experts say some people see a video of a child as suggestive. “Parents need to be careful with how they post their children, because sadly posting them eating fruit or in their tutus etc, etc. Gives creeps full access to what some people would consider suggestive content of children especially children under the age of 13.” said Koyama.

Officer Gifford says to report these cases to officials at the social media platform and the federal level like the FBI, “At the city level, we don’t have as many resources to go out and track down these perpetrators. But at the federal level, the FBI does a lot of these cases, and they tend to be the ones you want to contact.”

The most important thing is to be safe online, not only in the context of sextortion but it’s important to protect yourself online from people you don’t know in many ways. You should always be aware of what you’re posting and the audience it’s going out to make sure your accounts are private and the people messaging you are only people you know and trust, Officer Gifford said, “We need to just think before posting right? Also on the other end, who am I speaking to if I ever engage in a conversation, we don’t always know who’s on the other side.”

Experts say all technology can be dangerous but there are many ways to protect yourself against harm,”Social media outlets have all the technology to make sure that we can help ourselves to be more safe (privacy settings), but anything online comes with a level of danger,” Gifford said, “It’s important to remember that nothing you send disappears. Don’t send these types of pictures, or give these perpetrators what they want.”

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Hello and welcome to EHS Bleacher Report, Pirates at Play.

Fall sports have been a roller coaster of ups and downs this year but are coming to an end. It is time to wrap up each season. Some are done and some are chasing the playoffs. The show starts now.

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Englewood Football takes on The Classical Academy on Thursday at 7 p.m. at home in Penn Stadium. The team is 4-2 on the season. The athletes are coming off a big win against Alameda 40-0. It is senior night, and football players, and cheerleaders are honored for their hard work the past four years. Joselyn Abrego has our story.

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(tag)The student section should dress in Pink, It is a pink out for breast cancer awareness.

The boy’s cross-country team finished 8th out of 20 teams at their home meet this weekend. 7 out of 8 runners ran personal bests for 5k, led by Jack McGirl’s 10th place finish. He is only a sophomore and showing great promise. Camilla Perez Cervantes has more with McGirl and other runners.

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The team returns to action this Saturday at the Frontier League championship.

Volleyball is wrapping up its season in the next two weeks. The varsity team is still getting used to the new teams on the roster but grew stronger as the season continued. On Thursday the team is on the road to Kipp Denver, then on Monday they head to Bennett.

Mieke (mee-kah) Waanders (wanders) is the senior catcher for EHS softball. She is what we call an all-around athlete. She also plays shortstop and is someone the athletes look up to. Jason Selby has more.

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(tag) The season ended with a nearly even win-loss record.

EHS boys soccer is chasing the playoffs with a 5-6-1 on the season. Brandon Mendoza, Miguel Rodriguez, and Marco Lopez lead the charge. Danny Tobias has the story.

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Playoffs start at the end of October.

The golf team wrapped up its first season with a tournament at Broken Tee. The team got stronger as the season went on. This is the first time in several years that boys golf is an option for athletes.

That’s all the time we have, for all the sports highlights from the season, go to thepirateer.com. Have a great day.