BBCA Scottish couple whose teenage son took his own life after being blackmailed on Instagram are suing the platform’s owner Meta, in what’s thought to be the first UK case of its kind.
Murray Dowey, from Dunblane, was 16 when he became a victim of sextortion in December 2023.
His parents have now launched legal action against Meta in a US court seeking punitive damages claiming that Instagram was not safe.
Meta, which also owns Facebook, said it supports law enforcement to prosecute the criminals behind sextortion, adding “we continue to fight them on our apps on multiple fronts”.
It is thought Murray had been tricked by criminals in West Africa.
Murray died in his home in Dunblane in December 2023 after he was targeted by scammers posing as a young girl.
He was tricked into sending intimate images of himself and told they would be exposed to his family if he did not pay.
Lawyers for his parents are now claiming Meta “knew of safety features that would prevent sextortion” prior to his death and instead “prioritised profit”.
Previously the company has said it had made real changes to Instagram, such as introducing teen accounts with built-in protections and giving parents the power to control their children’s online experiences.
Ros Dowey said they are launching legal action to get justice or Murray and “all the other boys” who have taken their own lives after being sextorted on Instagram”.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast she said: “We just feel that it is time that Meta were held accountable for what they’ve done to a lot of young people.
“There’s evidence now that Meta knew at least five years before Murray died that their products weren’t safe, there were design decisions that they made that were causing predators to easily find young people and then to be able to extort them.”
A spokesperson for Meta said that since 2021, it had placed teenagers under 16 into private accounts when they sign up for Instagram, meaning they have to approve new followers.
They said: “We work to prevent accounts showing suspicious behaviour from following teens and avoid recommending teens to them.
“We also take other precautionary steps, like blurring potentially sensitive images sent in DMs and reminding teens of the risks of sharing them, and letting people know when they’re chatting to someone who may be in a different country.”
But Ms Dowey said Meta’s protections for teens do not go far enough as only new users’ accounts are made private if they are under 16, meaning Murray’s account was not affected by the change.
She said algorithms built in Meta sites were “letting adults connect to children, and they were pushing those children to them” and that safety advisors working within the company were “pleading” for change.
She added: “You always suspected that the likes of Meta were profits over everything, but to see it written down and to see that they probably could’ve saved your son it like a punch in the gut. It makes me so upset and angry.”
She wants Meta to acknowledge her son, and many others were “collateral damage to greed” and for better safety features to be installed immediately.
‘Yahoo boys’
The lawsuit, filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) on behalf of Mark and Ros Dowey, is believed to be the first UK case of its kind.
Murray’s parents are named alongside a woman, Tricia Maciejewski, from Pennsylvania. Her son, Levi Maciejewski, took his own life at 13 years old.
The SMVLC is also representing four families in the UK who are suing TikTok, as they believe their children died from taking part in viral trends on the video-sharing platform.
Sextortion has become big business in Nigeria involving thousands of young men nicknamed “yahoo boys”.
Guides on how to get involved in the crime are openly for sale online, as a BBC News investigation revealed last year.
A report from the Network Contagion Research Institute, an American advocacy organisation, on the toll of yahoo boys is cited in court documents filed by lawyers representing the two families.
The report calls the problem a “digital pandemic”.
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