15-Year-Old Boy Commits Suicide After Social Media Extortion

[MePlus6]

Lord help this poor family. What an awful tragedy.

From the article:

A high school sophomore from upstate New York killed himself as he was being blackmailed over “personal” photos that he had sent on social media, his family said Monday.
...
“They continued to bombard him and bombard him, and finally they broke him,” his father Darren Basford told the newspaper. “He thought this was the only way out because he didn’t want to be embarrassed.”
...
Within hours of receiving the threats, the teen took his own life, the outlet reported.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/05/upstate-ny-teen-dies-by-suicide-after-being-blackmailed-over-photos/

 

[MichelleinFl]

That’s absolutely horrible :-( when I was in middle school (middle 1990s) we had a peer counseling class for 6weeks on rotation with all students in my grade. That class is very much needed today. I still to this day remember how I had to sit in the middle of the room on a stool and everyone had to say something nice about me, could be my looks, my integrity, personality...it didn’t matter, but at 38yrs old now, it made a huge impact. We learned about bullying and different things like that- but so very much needed. My daughter is 8 now and I try to reassure her of who she is and Whom she belongs too..we have a very open dialogue of everything that happens at school and how it made her feel, like how people treat others. Parenting is so tough, but if we don’t teach empathy and love, we will have kids grow up to follow the world and hate. Praying for this family to have peace and healing