Scottish police join international hunt for online gangs coercing children into self-harm

Detectives are hunting members of the loose networks, known as 'The Com', short for 'the community', which are made up mostly of teenage and young adult males and mainly target girls on gaming platforms and social media. The groups have risen in prominence in recent years after cases involving sextortion and hacking, as well as self-harm encouragement. Groups involved in recent court cases include 'The 764' and 'CVLT'.

A detective constable in Police Scotland's internet investigations unit, identified as Paul, not his real name, said officers were dealing with large volumes of self-harm imagery. "Unfortunately, we are getting a lot of self-harm imagery," he told the BBC, adding that one case involved nearly a thousand images that had to be gone through one by one.

Det Ch Insp Craig Faulds, who leads efforts targeting the groups' links to Scotland, described the crimes as "an evolution of online child abuse and sexual exploitation". He said victims and perpetrators had been identified in Scotland and the force was at the stage of mapping the threat to understand its significance and prevalence. Abusers often target victims on "innocuous gaming platforms" before moving to social media, messaging services and online forums, he said, coercing them into sharing indecent images and, in the most serious cases, into causing acts of serious self-harm. Police say the abuse is often carried out for "kudos", or clout, from peers.

Hazel Stewart of the National Crime Agency's Threat Leadership team described Com groups as "low-volume, high-harm", saying the scale did not matter, the harm did. Abusers, she said, are often young males who have been socially isolated or bullied, who find their own identity online and seek out vulnerable young females on suicidal ideation or eating disorder sites before encouraging them into more private spaces. She called the threat a "global problem", with the UK working with law enforcement in the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as Interpol and Europol.

In May, the NCA said it was investigating around 200 cases involving these networks. In August, 20-year-old Justin Swaddle was jailed for two years for blackmailing and coercing more than 100 victims into acts of self-harm, including carving his online username on their bodies.

The Molly Rose Foundation, a suicide prevention charity helping young people and families victimised by the network, has warned about Com networks. Its chief executive, Andy Burrows, said the networks “represent the gravest risk to children online”. He accused Ofcom of being slow to respond to warnings about the threat, a “failure” that he said highlighted weaknesses in the Online Safety Act, and called on Andy Burnham to move beyond a blanket social media ban and incentivise all online platforms to become safe for young people as a price of doing business in the UK.

An Ofcom spokesperson said the threats posed by Com groups were a particular concern and that it was working closely with law enforcement and child protection agencies to tackle them. "Where services fail to comply with their duties, we've shown that we won't hesitate to act," the spokesperson said.