Nashville, Tennessee – This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Tamia and Tim Woods’ reality becomes a “nightmare” on November 19, 2022, when their 17-year-old, American son commits suicide after becoming the victim of a rape. Sextortion scheme on Instagram.
That day, James became another young victim. social media crime trend in which users are tricked – and often forced – into sending explicit photos to a scammer who is posing as someone else in an attempt to blackmail the victim for money or more explicit photos. In many cases, scammers target teenage boys by posing as teenage girls.
“It’s scary. … It was a nightmare, and we didn’t know exactly what was going on or what had happened,” Tamia Woods told Fox News Digital at CrimeCon, an annual true-crime convention held over the weekend in Nashville.
Tamia and Tim came to the conference from their hometown of Streetsboro, Ohio, to educate others about the dangers of extortion, a relatively new and rapidly growing crime that is harming American children and adults.
Tamia and Tim Jones lost their son to suicide on November 19, 2022, after he became the victim of a sextortion attempt on Instagram. (Handout for family)
“Many times this results in self-harm, or in some cases, it can even be fatal,” Tamia said.
It was only after their son’s death that Tamia and Tim learned through the police that their son had been the victim of a sextortion scam. Prior to that conversation, they had never heard of sextortion.
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James Woods received sextortion threats. (Handout for family)
“It was brand new at the time. And (police) said it was financial sextortion,” Tamia said. “And what we were about to see was extremely hard to read. We found out later that James had received 200 messages in 19½ hours. And we didn’t know who was next. They were taking screenshots of a lot of Jim’s Instagram friends. They had already started sending pictures and threats to James’ friends. And so we had to work quickly to make sure this didn’t happen to anyone else.”
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An imposter posing as a girl contacted James on Instagram in November 2022 and exchanged over 200 messages with him in a span of 19 hours. (Handout for family)
A Meta spokesperson said the company has rules against sharing or threatening to share intimate photos of someone else. It also prevents adults over 18 from initiating private messages on Instagram and Messenger with teens they aren’t connected with and defaults to strict messaging settings for teens under 16.
In April, Meta announced new features to combat sextortion, including nudity protection, which will be on by default for users under the age of 18, blur nude images sent via direct messages (DMs) on the app and send users messages when the app detects nudity in a user’s DMs. Additionally, users will get “tips” when they send or receive nude images, reminding them of the potential risks of sending such images.
They have also teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create a free service called “Take It Down” that aims to help victims of sextortion delete explicit images of victims or prevent bad actors from sharing them online. This tool can be accessed here https://takeitdown.ncmec.org.
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James Woods loved to run, play, and joke around with his friends and family. (Handout for family)
The FBI defines sextortion as a criminal act in which the perpetrator contacts a victim online and forces the victim to send explicit images or videos in exchange for more explicit material or money. The FBI received more than 13,000 reports of online financial fraud At least 12,600 victims sexually abused Between October 2021 to March 2023.
“I am more determined to make your life rot than to make it a waste, a garbage, a shame, a disgrace, a hell, a real disaster, a hell on earth…”
Woods says her son was a happy and talented teenager who was excited about his college prospects.
Woods says her son was a happy and talented teenager who was excited about his college prospects. (Handout for family)
“He was friendly and had charisma. He was an athlete,” Tim Woods said. “He loved sports. He loved people. He was fun to be around. He loved helping people all the time. He was really thoughtful and kind.”
Following their son’s death, the Woods couple launched the James Woods Foundation, which aims to protect children not only from sextortion, but also “rape, molestation, harassment, cyberbullying and suicide,” Tamia said.
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Following their son’s death, the Woods couple launched the James Woods Foundation, which aims to protect children not only from sextortion, but also “rape, molestation, harassment, cyberbullying and suicide,” Tamia said. (Handout for family)
“We’ve found out that our youth have a dire need to make sure that we help lift them up. A lot of times, they don’t understand that … we want them to be held accountable for their mistakes, but never to the point of death — never to something that extreme,” Tamia explained.
“And we also teach kids how to recognize that they’re victims. We encourage them to speak up. And even though we’ve only been doing this for a year and a half, we’ve helped influence kids to speak up, which resulted in two pedophiles being caught. We’ve actually prevented several suicides and have also helped kids who were actively being sextorted during sextortion.”
Woods also spoke at the conference. South Carolina State Representative Brandon GuffeyLost her 17-year-old son to suicide in July 2022 following a sextortion scandal on Instagram.
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South Carolina state Representative Brandon Guffey encouraged people who may be victims of sextortion to contact police. (Brandon Guffey)
Guffey sued Meta earlier this year after his son met a sextortionist posing as a girl on the photo-sharing app.
“Within the first four months of taking office, we passed Gavin’s Law. And according to Gavin’s Law … if you target a minor, you can go up to 15 years in prison. And if there’s serious bodily harm or death, that can be an additional 15 years,” Guffey told Fox News Digital at CrimeCon.
“In addition, we made it mandatory that Gavin’s Law and sextortion be taught in all schools across South Carolina. That was the first step.”
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Guffey also said he wants children to own their “name, image and likeness”, just as athletes are, so that strangers cannot use their images against them in extortion schemes, artificial intelligence-generated pornography or other crimes on social media.
“And if we go back and look at the big tobacco companies … the first step was to just put warning labels on cans. Yet Apple and Google were allowing 13-year-olds to enter into these agreements to download apps without any major warnings,” Guffey explained.
“First of all, I don’t think it’s legal. But once these apps are out, they allow child sexual abuse material to be transferred through other apps like Snap and Instagram. I’ve heard of such content on Discord and even gaming platforms.”
Brandon Guffey (right) is highlighting the dangers of sextortion following the death by suicide of his son Gavin (second from right) last year. (Brandon Guffey)
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Guffey and Woods have many of the same goals, but the most important one right now is to spread awareness about the existence and prevalence of sextortion schemes on social media.
“I can’t tell you how many kids or how many parents have called just because they heard me speak or talked to their kids and found out that this is happening,” Guffey said. “And that’s what keeps me going. That’s the fuel to know that I’m actually reaching people.”
