(PS3-91) The Relationship Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Sextortion in a Young Adult Sample

Abstract Text: Online victimization and online stressors are salient for youth today. One type of online victimization is sextortion. Sextortion is the act of threatening to share explicit images (ICE, 2025), and victims of sextortion are more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem (Miguel-Alvaro et al., 2024). Preventing sextortion may require understanding risk factors, such as childhood experiences, that may make youth vulnerable online. Prior research has found that racial minority groups, LGTBQ+ individuals, and men are most at risk of experiencing sextortion (Henry & Umbach, 2024; Ray & Henry, 2024). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) disproportionately affect women and racial/ethnic minorities (Martin et al., 2023; Zhang & Monnat, 2021). Research has found a positive relationship between ACEs and likelihood of sexual exploitation (e.g. Diamond-Welch & Kosloski, 2020; Hamlin et al., 2024), however the relationship between ACEs and sextortion victimization has not been studied. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between ACEs and sextortion, as well as gender differences in sextortion experiences.
Participants (N = 442; Mage = 18.78, SD = 1.40) were recruited to complete an online survey through a university participant pool. Among participants, 265 identified as women (60.0%), 169 identified as men (38.2%), 10 identified as nonbinary (2.3%) and five identified as transgender (1.1%). Over a third of participants identified as Black or African American (N = 153, 34.6%), 151 participants identified as white (34.2%), and 119 participants (26.9%) identified as Hispanic or Latino. Sextortion was assessed with the item: “Has someone threatened to expose a sexual image of you to make you do something or for other reasons such as revenge or humiliation?” Response options ranged from never to [fill in]. ACES were measured with the Philadelphia Adverse Childhood Experiences (PHL ACEs) questionnaire, which assessed both household and community-level experiences with adversity.
Results indicated that 89% (N = 382) of participants never experienced sextortion, 7.5% (N = 35) experienced it once, and 3.5% (N = 15) experienced it at least a few times. Greater experiences of household adversity and community-level adversity correlated with more experiences of sextortion (household ACEs r = .23, p < .01; community r = .12, p < .05). There were no significant differences in rates of sextortion by gender, with 25 females (9.5%) and 22 males (13%) having experienced sextortion.
The findings show that ACEs and sextortion are related in this sample. For clinicians working with individuals with greater exposure to ACEs, these findings highlight the need to screen for sextortion and to provide psychoeducation to youth about safe online interactions.