Online Grooming
Online Grooming & Exploitation
Relationships, exploitation, and the space between
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Agree or disagree?
"You can always tell when someone is being exploited."
Quick hands. We'll come back to it, and I suspect some of you will change your mind.
What 16 changes
Age of consent is 16. Consent must be free: pressure, manipulation and intoxication corrode it.
Positions of trust, teachers, coaches, youth workers, faith leaders, sexual activity with 16 and 17-year-olds in their care is a crime.
What 16 does NOT change
Intimate images of under-18s are illegal. Full stop.
To make, hold or share. Even of yourself. Even in a couple where the relationship is legal. The image is always the lever, and the law knows it.
Also criminal
Sharing intimate images without consent. Threatening to share them. Sexually explicit deepfakes of real people, including classmates.
And controlling, coercive behaviour in a relationship, from age 16.
The daylight test
Healthy relationships survive daylight: friends have met them, nothing needs secrecy, nobody holds anything over the other.
The constellation to watch: age gap plus secrecy, isolation, demands for passwords and location, escalating asks, something held over you.
The hard truth
The person being controlled usually experiences it as love.
That is not stupidity. That is how control works. Which is why the view from outside, yours, about a friend, is often the accurate one.
Sextortion: the four moves
Don't pay, don't comply. Stop replying, keep everything. Block and report. Tell an adult, report to CEOP.
The demand collapses when an adult arrives. The offender's whole power was your silence.
Say it once, plainly
No image, real or AI-faked, is worth your life.
Every version of this, including the worst one you can imagine right now, is fixable.
Already out there?
Report Remove (Childline + IWF) takes down intimate images of under-18s, including AI fakes of you.
No real name needed. No judgement. It works.
Friends see it first
At your age, the friend is usually the first responder.
Bringing in an adult is not betrayal. It is what a good friend does with what they notice.
Where to get help
CEOP ceop.police.uk. Report Remove via Childline. Childline 0800 1111, up to 19.
School safeguarding team, today. 999 in an emergency.
Aligned with Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 and College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice. This resource is for education and prevention. It is not legal advice. In an emergency always call 999.