Example that Icelandic youths are affecting their peers
Recently, there have been examples in Iceland where children of compulsory school age have suffered from sexual oppression by their Icelandic peers, as they have been required to pay large sums to prevent nudity images of them from being distributed.
This is stated by Kolbrún Hrund Sigurgeirsdóttir, project manager of violence and sexual health at Barnaheill. She says that in these cases, both the perpetrators and the offenders have been Icelandic boys in their teens.
Kolbrún states that these issues are an exception. In most cases where sexuality has come on the table of children’s charity or police, there are foreign crime groups involved. Then it is usually rather random who will be the target of the crime groups, where the groups are affecting a large group of people in the hope that someone will fall for the deception.
However, it is unlike in the cases that have entered into childcare, where Icelandic boys are both offenders and perpetrators. In these cases, the boys are selected systematically with the aim of striking them.
The concept of sexuality refers to the fact that a person is threatened with the distribution of sexual images, they do not pay a certain amount.
Perpetrators are most often in the boys’ local environment
Kolbrún says that in these cases, it is usually individuals in the immediate environment of the offenders involved. Then they create a social media account under a false flag and even use a picture and name of a girl who is also in the local community’s neighborhood, even though she has nothing to do with it.
« It often starts with friendship, but soon goes into sexual speech that ends with them being able to lure the person to send a sexual picture and start threatening it to distribute if they do not pay a certain amount, » says Kolbrún.
When asked, Kolbrún says that she knows only one example where a sexual image went into distribution in such a case as the payment claim was not met. In most cases, the image does not distribute.
Kolbrún Hrund Sigurgeirsdóttir, project manager of violence and sexual health at Barnaheill
Photo/Erla Stefánsdóttir
Experience a great deal of humiliation
Kolbrún says that the boys often experience a great deal of humiliation and suffer a mental shock when they are subject to sex. Most often it is the parents of the boys or the staff of the elementary schools who contact Children’s Health after they have opened up for the violence.
« We place great emphasis on receiving a lot of support afterwards and always have a direct contact with the police, » she says.
