SOE, or Sadistic Online Exploitation, is a severe and malicious form of online abuse where offenders use the internet to manipulate, harm, or control others. The primary motivations are typically personal gratification, gaining status or “clout” within online groups, and a desire for power, rather than financial gain or typical sexual gratification.
Key Aspects of SOE
- Motivation: Offenders, often teenage boys in “com groups” (online communities), seek peer recognition and excitement by sharing extreme, violent, and abusive content.
- Methodology: Perpetrators initiate contact with victims—often vulnerable young girls and others—on popular platforms like Discord, Telegram, social media, and gaming apps. They build trust or a false romantic connection before using coercion, threats, and blackmail to escalate the abuse.
- Harmful Acts Coerced: Victims are pressured into producing, sharing, or live-streaming acts of harm, which can include:
- Extreme self-harm (e.g., cutting specific symbols or words into their skin).
- Animal cruelty or harm to siblings/friends.
- Sexually explicit acts or sharing intimate images.
- In the most serious cases, suicide, which can be live-streamed for others’ entertainment.
Support and Reporting
If you or someone you know has been affected by sadistic online exploitation, help is available.
- In an immediate emergency, call emergency services.
- In the UK, concerns can be reported to the National Crime Agency’s CEOP Safety Centre. The free, confidential helpline Childline is also available for young people under 19.