THE GUARDIAN — It can happen to any child’: parents of sextortion victim send out warning

“He was duped into think­ing he was talk­ing to a young girl,” Ros explains, “and she had an inti­mate pic­ture with her. As soon as shared his own, it became very clear it wasn’t a young girl he was speak­ing to, it was crim­i­nals who imme­di­ate­ly start­ed to extort him, ask­ing for card details and threat­en­ing to share his pic­ture with all his contacts.”

The effect on Mur­ray would have been cat­a­stroph­ic, says his moth­er. “He was very pri­vate and hat­ed being the cen­tre of atten­tion.” She describes the “fren­zied pan­ic” he must have felt: “That’s why they tar­get teenagers, because they don’t have the life expe­ri­ence to under­stand it will pass.”