Illustration: Avinash Weerasekera/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Illustration: Avinash Weerasekera/The Guardian Online abuse The sadistic online groomers targeting victims around the world – and a mother’s struggle to keep her daughter safe This month a predator with ties to the online extortion group known as 764 was sentenced to decades in prison. The mother of one of his victims wants parents to know the truth about this ‘harrowing’ global trend
Sadistic online exploitation: five warning signs for parents - and how to keep young people safe
“My beautiful, kind, intelligent, trusting daughter had the misfortune of stumbling across a link in a Discord server that led her to your evil and cruel group.
“The grooming of her started immediately, and what followed was unimaginably harrowing and traumatic. You were just one of the group members who abused her, who made her do things that no young person should ever be made to do.”
These are the words that came to an Australian mother, Olivia*, as Kyle Spitze was sentenced to 77 years in prison this month in Tennessee – the longest federal sentence yet imposed on what the US government has called a “nihilistic violent extremist”.
Spitze, 27, pleaded guilty to abetting the distribution of animal crushing videos and child sexual exploitation material (CSAM) offences, with victims around the world – some who have still not been identified. His lawyer said he plans to appeal the sentence.
The US Department of Justice said Spitze’s crimes occurred as part of his association with an online network known as “764” , known for its sadistic extortion of young and vulnerable people around the world.
Olivia told the Guardian the early days after she discovered her child’s abuse by these networks were terrifying.
“I had no idea what was happening or what to do, so I just focused on trying to keep my child as physically safe as possible while I tried to figure out what to do next,” she said
The platforms where her daughter had interacted with this network were not the “dark web”. They were apps like Discord, Telegram, Instagram and Snapchat. At the time, local police did not seem able to assist because the offenders were overseas.
Read more Years later, she could not believe it when she heard Spitze had received such a long sentence.
“Pretty soon the tears started as I was flooded with relief, but also as I reflected on how long and hard we’d fought to get to this point,” she said.
In December 2023, the chat platform Discord sent the FBI a 29-page report with a list of accounts it said were involved in “high harm activities”.
The users were, in Discord’s words, engaged in “sextortion, solicitation of minors to perform online sexual acts, self-harm coercion, swatting and conspiring to commit real world acts of violence”. Swatting is when someone calls in a fake threat to provoke an armed police response.
One username was “CRIMINALOLI”, prosecutors said. This was Spitze, then in his early 20s. Earlier that year, others had also sent tips to police alleging he was “grooming minors”.
Police found a video on a Telegram channel he ran that showed minor girls exposing their breasts and bodies, with his moniker sometimes “written in blood or carved on their bodies”.
He demanded one girl kill animals on video. If she hesitated, according to the prosecution, he threatened to dox and swat her and her parents. She was 12 when they met online, and thought she was his girlfriend.
In May, his fath…