Child Sexual Abuse in the Commonwealth > Nigerian sentenced for sextortion of Surrey teen who suicided; Porn sites will start using age verification in Britain

 

Man in Nigeria sentenced in sextortion of

late Surrey teen

Olukeye Adedayo Olalekan was sentenced on June 19 in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria to 76 years, to be served concurrently

Anna Burns
about 9 hours agoabout 9 hours ago

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1 / 2 RCMP say a man from Nigeria has been sentenced with sextortion in connection to the death of a 14-year-old hockey player pictured here at a police news conference in Surrey on Tuesday, Feb. 6. (Photo: Anna Burns)

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WARNING: This story contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised. If you or someone you know has been the victim of sextortion and are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1. Other resources include Kids Help Phone - Phone: 1-800-668-6868, VictimLinkBC - Phone: 1-800-563-0808 or visit NeedHelpNow.ca

A 27-year-old man in Nigeria has been sentenced to 76 years imprisonment in connection with the sextortion of a Surrey teen. 

During a news conference in 2024 where Surrey RCMP announced that charges had been laid, police did not name the victim, but there was a photo of a teen at the news conference matching the appearance and vital statistics of hockey player Robin Janjua, a South Surrey resident whose death made headlines in February and March 2023.

Olukeye Adedayo Olalekan was sentenced on June 19 in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria to 76 years, to be served concurrently. He was charged with 18 criminal offences, including transmission of child pornography, fraudulent impersonation and sextortion.

"He was sentenced to two years imprisonment on counts one to four of procuring, distributing of child pornography and cyberstalking; four years imprisonment on counts five to 14 of retention and disguising the origin of proceeds of fraud, without an option of fine; seven years imprisonment on counts 15 to 18 of obtaining property under false pretences, without an option of fine. The sentences are to run concurrently," noted a BC RCMP press release Wednesday (June 15). 

So, does that mean he was actually sentenced to 7 years not 76? None of these charges seem to relate to his suicide.

On Feb. 13, 2023, police in Surrey were called to the sudden death of a youth in a home. Investigators determined that the youth "had been a victim of financial sextortion, and an investigation was immediately launched."   Janjua died by suicide.

Surrey’s serious crime unit took charge of the investigation, called Project Epa. According to investigators, credible evidence was found that the youth had been tricked into sending explicit photos to a suspect online who posed as a teenage girl.

Sgt. Derek Bonner, with the Surrey RCMP serious crime unit, said during the 2024 press conference the interactions took place on Snapchat and Instagram.

The suspect then blackmailed the youth with threats to share the photos with his family and friends unless he complied with demands of purchasing gift cards and sending them to the suspect.

Canada does not have an extradition tready with Nigeria. “In consultation with EFCC, it was decided that based on the evidence, we would continue to support the prosecution in Nigeria,” Bonner said.

Olalekan and another suspect were arrested by the EFCC in Nigeria on August 4, 2023. The second suspect was later released without charges. 

In September 2023, Olukeye pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to an EFCC news release. 

“Olukeye Adedayo Olalekan (a.k.a hrm877, charlotte 708 and harlilott_716) on or about the 13th February, 2023 in Lagos within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court intentionally used the Instagram virtual network to create a group…to distribute child pornography and you thereby committed an offence,” reads the release 

Supt. Darren Schneider, Investigative Services Officer for the RCMP Surrey Provincial Operations Support Unit said,  “The conviction and sentencing of Olukeye Adeayo Olalekan is the result of an intense year-long international investigation.”

“This outcome came from collaborative efforts from the Surrey RCMP, the FBI, the Australian Federal Police and the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC – Nigerian Federal Law Enforcement Agency). We are grateful to the many partners and agencies who assisted with this investigation. We believe this case delivers a strong message that sextortions and fraud will not be tolerated in our community.”

Police provided a number of resources for people who think they or someone they love is being financially extorted.

Major pornography sites to implement age verification

in Britain

By Andrew Sookdeo

Pornhub and other major adult websites will be implementing a “highly effective” age verification from the 25th of July in the U.K. File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI | License Photo

June 26 (UPI) -- Pornhub and other major pornographic websites plan to implement age verification practices in Britain by the end of July in order to comply with a newly implemented Online Safety Act.

Aylo the parent company of Pornhub and various other pornography sharing websites and filming studios said it plans to implement "government approved age assurance methods" by July 25.

The Online Safety Act deadline requires pornographic websites to implement "robust" age verification methods by that date or face fines.

The company did not specify what methods it would implement but British regulator Ofcom has listed several acceptable methods, including facial age estimation, open banking, digital identity services, credit card age checks, email-based age estimation, mobile network operator age checks, and photo ID-matching.

It will be interesting to see if it actually works, and, if it does, how much of a drop in viewers PornHub sees.

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"Society has long protected youngsters from products that aren't suitable for them, from alcohol to smoking or gambling," said Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's group director of online safety, in a statement.

"Now, change is happening. These age checks will bring pornography into line with how we treat adult services in the real world, without compromising access and privacy for over-18s."

New Ofcom research found that 8% of children between the ages of 8 and 14 accessed a porngraphy site or app over a 28-day period, including 19% boys and 11% of girls from 13 to 14 years old.

It also found that 3% of 8 to 9-year-olds -- the youngest demographic in the study -- had accessed pornography during the survey period.

"We know that highly effective age assurance can play a vital role in protecting young users from accessing harmful and inappropriate material on social media and other platforms," said Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the NSPCC.

"It is time tech companies take responsibility for ensuring children have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we welcome the progress that Ofcom are making in this space," continued Govender.

According to data from Similiarweb, Pornhub is the most visited porn site around the world.

Aylo's vice president of brand and community Alex Kekesi said Ofcom age verification steps were less intrusive compared to ones that have been pushed for before.

"Ofcom recognizes the scale of the challenge ahead and is approaching it with thorough consideration," she said.

The regulations require that the verification methods don't impede adults from accessing legal pornographic content or put their private information at risk.

Marcus Johnstone from PCD Solicitors said that age checks may not address the problem but instead would bring more attention to the dark web.

"I have cases where clients as young as 14 access the dark web," he added.

"In one case, my client, aged 15, accessed the dark web to buy drugs but also then found access to extreme illegal pornography."

"Any teenager with a phone can now watch and read content that is both illegal and heinous, and is unregulated by any company or agency."

"It is the dark web that is the greatest menace to our society and is a gateway to a world of abuse, exploitation and radicalisation. This is where better policing is required."

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The Rape of Britain > A brief summary of an astonishingly unEnglish era

 

What you need to know about the Pakistani rape gangs Musk is tweeting about

For decades, vulnerable young white girls were abused by older men of mostly Pakistani origin, while UK authorities looked the other way

FILE PHOTO. ©  Getty Images/SolStock

US billionaire Elon Musk has single-handedly brought back into the spotlight one of the darkest unresolved scandals of child exploitation in the UK. 

The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X posted a series of tweets about grooming gangs, and shamed British Prime Minister Keir Starmer into explaining what was he doing while serving as chief prosecutor at the time the scandal broke.

Musk described the case as “the worst mass crime against the people of Britain ever.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. ©  Benjamin Cremel/Getty Images

What is the grooming gangs scandal?

Men, predominantly of Pakistani origin, were found to have raped and tortured a large number of vulnerable young girls over a 25-year period in numerous English towns and cities. The victims, mainly white girls aged between 11 and 18 from troubled homes, were tortured, drugged and pimped out.

At the epicenter were post-industrial towns in northern England and the Midlands, where immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh established communities in the 1960s.

Years of inquiries and investigations found systemic failures, and concluded that local politicians and police covered the crimes for fear of being seen as racist.

However, no officer or government employee has been convicted for their misconduct.

A warning to readers: the following contains explicit descriptions. 

Why is it back into the spotlight? What did Musk tweet?

It started with a tweet on January 1, in which the billionaire called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a controversial British right-wing activist jailed in October for libelous claims about a Syrian refugee. The Tesla CEO erroneously claimed he was jailed for “telling the truth” about the rape scandal.

Soon afterwards, GB News revealed that Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips had rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in the town.

It drew Musk’s attention, and he called the decision “disgraceful” and suggested she “deserves to be in prison.”

He continues to share content about the scandal almost daily, including tweets and retweets, with consistent attacks on Starmer. One court transcript that he posted provides horrific details of a case involving Oxford grooming gang member Mohammed Karrar raping a girl under the age of 13. 

How and when the atrocities were uncovered?

The initial reports of child sexual exploitation in the northern town of Rotherham emerged in the early 1990s, when care home managers observed young girls being picked up late at night by taxi drivers. In 2001, the names of taxi drivers involved in picking up girls from care homes in Rotherham to exploit and abuse them were reported to the police and council.

Read more

 As a cop, here’s the unsayable truth on why we can’t stop child sex grooming

Despite this, the authorities did not respond. It was not until 2010 that the first convictions occurred, with five British-Pakistani men found guilty of sexually abusing girls aged 12 to 16. 

Then in 2012, The Times’ journalist Andrew Norfolk published a horrific exposé revealing that groups of mostly Pakistani older men were using young girls for sex in Rotherham “on an unprecedented scale,” a matter that was well known to the authorities.

He started receiving tip-offs in 2011 and went to investigate. He noticed recurring court cases involving groups of predominantly Pakistani men grooming young, vulnerable white girls for sexual abuse in northern towns. A “culture of silence” facilitated the abuse, he found. A similar pattern of crimes was found in other towns and cities.

Norfolk’s investigation led the Rotherham local council to commission a report.

Rotherham investigation findings

Three years later, Professor Alexis Jay’s investigation uncovered a shocking “conservative” estimate of 1,400 children exploited between 1997 and 2013. Rotherham has a population of 260,000. The majority of the perpetrators were described as being of Asian descent, targeting victims that were primarily young white girls.

Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England, UK. ©  Getty Images/Peter Shaw

“There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators.” 

The report revealed that concerns about racism were a significant factor in the lack of action. Some staff members claimed they were directed by their superiors to avoid mentioning race altogether.

From 1997 to 2013 only five men were sent to jail in one prosecution case, involving three teenage girls.

“Child sex capital of Britain”  

The same thing happened in Telford, later labeled the “child sex capital of Britain”. First a media report found the scale of the abuse was downplayed. In 2018 a Sunday Mirror investigation found that grooming gangs had abused over 1,000 girls since the 1980s.

Four years later a local inquiry confirmed the Sun report. Following the same pattern, the evidence had been ignored for decades, and agencies blamed victims instead of perpetrators and hesitated to act due to “nervousness about race.” 

The review also found many perpetrators were described as “Asian” or “Pakistani,” and the authorities feared the allegations could incite a “race riot.” This reluctance to act allowed abuse to persist unchecked for decades.

Only seven men were jailed, for a total of 49 years. The abuse was linked to five deaths, including three murders.

Similar patterns were found in a 2015 inquiry for Oxfordshire, 2019 for Huddersfield, 2020 for Manchester, 2022 for Oldham, a lengthy nationwide 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and a 2024 report for Rochdale. 

How the victims were groomed?

The offenders often operated within the nighttime economy, with many working as taxi drivers or in takeout restaurants. The grooming typically began with younger men targeting children in public places such as shopping malls, bus stations, or arcades, where they were lured with attention, free rides, and small gifts. Once trust was established, older men were introduced. The “boyfriend” figure manipulated the girls into sexual exploitation, involving other men. Drugs, alcohol, and psychological control were used to trap victims in cycles of abuse, with threats and violence ensuring their silence.

Authorities, including police and social services, often dismissed the victims as “troubled” or “rebellious teenagers” who had willingly engaged in risky behavior.

Disproportionate prevalence of Pakistani men as offenders

“There is no getting away from the fact that there are Pakistani gangs grooming vulnerable girls,” Nazir Afzal, a prominent prosecutor of Pakistani heritage, acknowledged in 2015.

Read more

 Britain is not taking the problem of child sex abuse seriously enough

Many perpetrators have been identified as coming from Mirpur, a city in the Kashmir region of Pakistan, with some noting cultural attitudes toward women and outsiders as contributing factors.

Judge Gerald Clifton, who sentenced eight men of Pakistani origin in Rochdale, said the offenders viewed victims as “worthless and beyond respect”. He added that one of the motivating factors was that the victims “were not part of… community or religion”.

The prevalence of certain group was acknowledged in 2018 by then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid. He comes from a Pakistani background and was born in one of the worst-affected towns, Rochdale.

After 20 men in Huddersfield were convicted for the rape and sexual abuse of girls, he tweeted, “These sick Asian paedophiles are finally facing justice. For too long, they were ignored. Not on my watch.”  

He then promised an inquiry into the cultural drivers that led to a high number of Pakistani men being involved.

His comments led to anticipation of a report that would provide a thorough analysis of cultural factors. Despite that, released in 2020, the report said that offenders came from various backgrounds and did not single out any particular group. It acknowledged limitations due to poor-quality data.  

Javid was moved from Home Secretary in 2019 before the release of the whitewashed report. He would never have accepted that report, which, I  suspect, is why Boris Johnson moved him.

Later, the 2022 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse would find widespread failures by police to record the ethnicity of offenders.

Norfolk, a journalist instrumental in exposing grooming gangs, argued recently to The Times that the issue cannot be eradicated without thorough research into the intersection of religion, culture, and social cohesion that allows criminals to exploit vulnerabilities. 

The problem never went away

There are two reports of child sexual abuse by grooming gangs made to police every day, The Sun revealed on January 10. Earlier this month, GB News identified at least 50 affected cities across the UK.  

Abuse still rampant in Rotherham despite report on 1,000s of victims – Express UK probe

Back in 2019 the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children identified 19,000 victims of gang abuse in the UK and admitted that the true number is probably far higher. 

Given the scale of the abuse, the number of convictions has been minimal, and most perpetrators remain at large. Last year, the Telegraph reported that even though he has been stripped of British citizenship, the leader of a Rochdale grooming gang still lives among his victims, although he was supposed to be deported after his release from prison.

By Alisa Alizaeva, RT editor

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