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The threat from teenage boys drawn into “sadistic” online networks has surged with reports up six-fold in two years, the National Crime Agency has warned.
Teenagers are being drawn into online gangs which compete to commit harrowing crimes including child abuse, fraud and sharing extreme violent and misogynistic material.
The NCA, which investigates serious and organised crime threats to the country, has called for parents, police and educators to help in the fight against teenage threats after reports relating to the so-called “com networks” increased six-fold in the UK between 2022 and 2024.
Analysts estimate that thousands of users – including offenders and victims – based in the UK and other western countries have exchanged millions of messages online relating to sexual and physical abuse.
The online groups are causing young people to “develop a dangerous propensity for extreme violence”, they warned.
It comes after last week Nicholas Prosper was jailed for 49 years for murdering his family and plotting to become the deadliest school shooter in history after being drawn into an “internet wormhole”.
The NCA’s annual National Strategic Assessment, published on Tuesday, described the groups as networks on social media or messaging platforms that “routinely share harmful content and extremist or misogynistic rhetoric”.
It said: “Extreme and illicit imagery depicting violence, gore and child sexual abuse material is frequently shared amongst users, normalising and desensitising participants to increasingly extreme content and behaviours.
“‘Com’ networks use extreme coercion to manipulate their victims, who are often children, into harming or abusing themselves, their siblings or pets, and re-victimising them by doxing or appropriation by other offenders.
“Members of ‘Com’ networks are usually young men who are motivated by status, power, control, misogyny, sexual gratification or an obsession with extreme or violent material.
“The emergence of these types of online platforms are almost certainly causing some individuals, especially younger people, to develop a dangerous propensity for extreme violence.”
The NCA’s director general Graeme Biggar said: “This is a hugely complex and deeply concerning phenomenon.
“Young people are being drawn into these sadistic and violent online gangs where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm.
“These groups are not lurking on the dark web, they exist in the same online world and platforms young people use on a daily basis.
“It is especially concerning to see the impact this is having on young girls who are often groomed into hurting themselves and in some cases, even encouraged to attempt suicide.”
Members of the online networks often want to gain notoriety by inflicting the most harm on their victims or sharing the most disturbing content, while others are paedophiles who sell material to other sex offenders.
Mr Biggar urged parents and carers to speak to children about what they are doing online and warned some victims may not realise a crime has been committed against them because they have been groomed.
Assistant chief constable Alastair Simpson, national policing lead for child sexual exploitation and abuse, added: “The growth of Com networks that incite and encourage children and vulnerable adults towards acts of self-harm, suicide and violence is hugely concerning.
“The role of undercover online officers is vital in this space, and my message to anyone who is exploiting children online: remember that there is no space where criminals operate that we cannot go and investigations into these networks have already begun.
“Policing will always play its part, but social media providers have a clear role to play in monitoring and regulating their platforms to root out this abhorrent criminal behaviour and make all online spaces safe for children and adults.”
Elsewhere, the assessment found that the UK is falling prey to international criminals from China, Russia and Iran.
“Chinese national offenders are linked to cyber, drugs, fraud, illicit finance, modern slavery and human trafficking and organised immigration crime offending that impacts on the UK,” the report found.
It added: “It is likely that the already high threat from Chinese-speaking money laundering networks in the UK continues to grow.
“As well as moving cash for UK criminals, they help UK-based Chinese nationals to evade Chinese currency controls, which enables them to invest in the UK.”
Iran and Russia also allow certain crimes carried out from within their jurisdictions against the UK, including ransomware groups, which are out of the reach of Western law enforcement.
Some countries use offences including cybercrime, drug trafficking and money laundering to support their own objectives or evade sanctions, the assessment said, including North Korea.
Ketamine use has risen sharply in the UK, the report warned. Wastewater analysis by the Home Office showed ketamine consumption soared by 85 per cent in January to April 2023 compared with the previous year. Cocaine use also rose 7 per cent, but heroin use dropped 11 per cent.
The number of adults who needed medical treatment after taking ketamine rose by five times from 426 in 2014/15 to 2,211 in 2022/23.
It is cheaper than cocaine but can cause severe health problems including damage referred to as “ketamine bladder”, as well as causing a dissociative state when taken, which could leave the user at risk of physical harm, the NCA said.
