Warning: This article contains graphic material and references to suicide
‘My daughter is covered in scars’
For more than a year, Jo* didn’t know her daughter, Mary*, was a victim of the Com (short for Community) – a sadistic network of online gangs that target young girls.
Mary was manipulated into sending self-harm and child sexual abuse content. According to Jo, it took a terrible toll on her daughter who stopped sleeping, became isolated from her friends and lost weight. Her body was also covered in scars.
Jo wants other parents to understand the risks of the Com, which the National Crime Agency describes as, an “unprecedented” threat. Her advice is to “delay access to the internet and use as many parental controls as possible.”
“‘[The Com] prey on vulnerable kids who are easier to manipulate… then start threatening them and demanding more extreme content”, she adds.
Mary would tell her mother she was watching YouTube in the middle of the night when she was communicating with members of the Com. If Jo took her devices away, she would become distressed and “threaten suicide”.
“I was so frightened of her dying that most of the time I chose to believe her,” says Jo.
“She had to be in contact around the clock or suffer the consequences.”
The abuse, which included threats being made to Mary’s family, has now stopped and police are investigating, but Jo is still scared.
“I’m still frightened when her door is closed or when she goes to the bathroom, wondering if she’s going to come back out.”
No single leader
Counter-terrorism, cybercrime and child sexual exploitation units are all involved in tackling the threat posed by the Com.
James Babbage, director general of threats at the NCA, describes the Com as a “series of different overlapping networks” without a single leader or ideological figure at the helm.
Com members are “predominantly teenage boys that share sadistic, nihilistic or misogynistic material,” says Babbage. They also engage in cybercrimes such as malware and ransomware attacks and fraud.
The NCA say they are increasingly convicting offenders from these online gangs and have a dedicated response to the threat. It has seen a six-fold increase in reports of Com-related crimes in the last two years.
“The significant thing is how much it’s grown,” says James Babbage. “We’ve seen thousands of users exchanging millions of messages around physical and sexual abuse online.”
Now, the NCA is calling on parents, teachers and medical professionals to help reduce the risk.
“It’s a fast-changing world,” says James Babbage. “But we can have conversations with the children in our lives about how they are experiencing the online world.”
He also has a message for those behind the Com.
“These offenders imagine that they can hide under the radar… [But] the longer they go on operating in this way, the more likely it is we will catch them.
“The internet has a long memory and so do we.”
“Over time, the messages got worse”
Sally’s* daughter was another suspected victim of the Com network.
“There wasn’t any self-harm in the beginning”, she says, describing the messages she discovered on her 12-year-old’s phone.
For more than a year, her daughter secretly exchanged messages with a boy. “It was like they were living a fantasy life through the conversation.”
But gradually, the texts got darker. First, they discussed mental health, and then Sally’s daughter was encouraged to share pictures of self-harm.
“The final thing was asking for nude pictures”.
When Sally finally discovered the messages, she was horrified. Her daughter still struggles to talk about what happened, and Sally believes she is still “suffering some level of trauma and a lot of shame.”
Infiltrating support groups online
The Com is international but has members based in the UK.
In January, teenager Cameron Finnigan from West Sussex was jailed for six years for offences relating to the Com. He was found guilty of possessing a terror manual, indecent images of a child, and encouraging suicide
Sky News has been given exclusive access to the NCA’s investigations into the network, including visual evidence from online conversations monitored by the agency.
Keeley*, is a cybercrime investigator, who was involved in the case of a 14-year-old convicted of offences related to the Com.
The horrific images she saw during that investigation still haunt her dreams.
“For me, it was worse reading chats because you can imagine what’s going on rather than seeing.”
Other tactics the Com use to intimidate their victims include doxxing, where personal info is gathered about a victim, and swatting – used to target mainly US victims – where fake threats are called in to police, provoking armed response units to be sent to their homes.
Keeley* shows us a screen recording of “swatting” taking place against a young girl in the US who refused to take her clothes off on camera.
Roy* is another investigator targeting offenders in the network. He describes members of the Com as mainly teenage males who “lack an offline social life and may even be socially isolated.”
“You see some sharing extreme materials around the incel ideology, animal abuse and torture, child sexual abuse material, but also racist and occultist material,” he says.
Inside The Com
To better understand how The Com operates, Sky News examined a single Telegram account, run by the administrator of a group in which graphic material was shared.
In their bio, they advertise “swatting services” for hire, letting customers pay to have police tricked into raiding homes, schools and religious buildings.
In another exchange, a user discusses self-harm. Sky News found this user was a member of 14 public Com groups on Telegram.
Ten of these groups have been deleted or deactivated by Telegram’s moderators. Four were still accessible. The topics discussed in these groups included self-harm, animal abuse and violence.
Sky News also examined more affiliated chats and channels on Telegram.
These Telegram groups contained discussion of grooming and sexual exploitation, and the sharing of graphic images of people who appeared to be victims.
Members also appeared interested in animal cruelty, with one posting an image of a crucified rat positioned next to the name of a Com subgroup written in blood.
It’s clear from the number of deleted Com groups that Sky News came across that members are adapting to counter the efforts of social media moderators.
A Com chat group on Discord, which at one time had more than a thousand members, has a header image showing people playing the online children’s game Roblox.
Sky News was able to view messages sent by members in another Com group on Discord that had 2,114 members.
It had specific channels for male and female members to post photographs of themselves.
In the main chatroom, users encouraged others to send intimate images. Rape and self-harm were frequently joked about.
Users also frequently discussed Roblox, claiming they were grooming, extorting and engaging in sexual activity with users of the site.
What the social media companies say
When approached for comment, Telegram, Discord and Roblox all told Sky News they took proactive steps to moderate harmful content on their platforms.
Telegram addressed the threat posed by The Com specifically, telling Sky News that it “removed all groups and channels linked to Com when they were discovered in February 2024.”
The company added that it “has continually monitored over the past year to ensure that Com-linked communities cannot reemerge, resulting in the removal of hundreds of groups.”
The only way to tackle this growing threat is to understand it.
“What we are seeing now is that level of hero worship applied to people who are encouraging others to do depraved things and abusing people in really reprehensible ways,” says Dr Joe Ondrak, an expert in online radicalisation.
“When that behaviour is what is garnering hero worship and emulation, that’s where the real risk is.”
“You can quite easily lose your child,” says Sally. What is needed, she says, is a “collaborative effort” involving gaming companies, schools and parents “to make sure our children are safe.”
“Try to have meaningful conversations with your children,” says James Babbage.
“The risk is we think of time spent online as safe time; it’s within the house – how can there be dangers out there? But it isn’t safe at all.”
*Names have been changed
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
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