Slamming The Door On Sextortion With Federal Prosecutor Mona Sedky
By, Monika Samtani and Emily Montague
TW: This interview contains adult themes, including conversations about sex crimes, blackmail, and victimization. Listener discretion is advised. Mona Sedky’s comments are her own and do not represent the department of justice. She is speaking on her own behalf.
Mona Sedky’s work has been featured in VICE’s Broadly, Wired, Bloomberg and on the Lawfare Podcast. She was listed in Forbes’ America’s Top 50 Women in Tech 2018 and Wired U.K.’s Ten Female Innovators You Should Know About (2018).
PHOTO CREDIT: Sharon Pieczenik
When you hear the term sex crime, you probably picture scenarios from Law & Order SVU or think of some of the high-profile harassment and assault cases which fueled the #MeToo movement. There’s a whole other side to this crime, however, and most of the time the victims go unnoticed and unheard.
They would, anyway, if not for the determination and drive of women like federal prosecutor and feminist powerhouse Mona Sedky. We were honored to have the chance to sit down with Mona and learn about a unique kind of crime known as sextortion––a crime she’s spent the last decade prosecuting on behalf of its many victims.
Mona’s journey into the world of trial and justice began when she was very young. “I come from a family full of lawyers,” she told us. “My father is an attorney, my grandfather is an attorney, my aunts and uncles are all attorneys… So I grew up around a dinner table that was very talkative and argumentative and loud.”
You have to be loud in her line of work. If not in actual volume, then in courage, in resilience, and in belief. Trial law is a test of many things––endurance plays a big part, as does empathy. You have to be able to read a jury, keep track of countless details, and all the while remain on top of the details of a case that, to a victim, can be a matter of life and death.
It also requires something we often forget about when we imagine the staid surroundings of the American courtroom: trial law requires a certain degree of showmanship. There’s an art to presenting a case in the best, most emotionally and intellectually balanced way possible, and you have to be comfortable with being the center of attention in very high-pressure situations.
When she was a young girl, Mona “was mesmerized by [her] maternal grandfather,” who brought to life many of these elements through his own shared experiences.
“He was a trial attorney in a small town in Northwest Iowa,” she told us. “And he would regale us with his trial stories––I just found that riveting. The thought of actually representing someone in court, in trial, speaking out loud and [engaging in] the whole trial dynamic and the strategy that goes on…”
All these years later, she still sounds dreamy when she talks about it. It’s no wonder she followed the path her grandfather made so alluring through his stories. And as she told us, “[she] did, at a very young age, have a keen interest in being a lawyer. And being a trial lawyer in particular.”
From precocious girl to empowered woman, Mona took cues from a number of strong, female family role models. On her father’s side of the family, “if you don’t have a PhD, you’re kind of a failure,” she said. One gets the sense she’s only half-joking. Her aunts and cousins all pursued the highest levels of education possible, and they did so despite the stereotypes surrounding their native Egyptian culture.
Later on, she took her then-single mother’s influence to heart, learning the value of “[having] a lot of self-motivation and independence.” She was a latchkey kid for a long time, and coming home to an empty house where she was responsible for taking up the labor her hardworking mother couldn’t, gave her the levels of self-assurance necessary for the work she does.
With strong feminist values and a keen moral compass, Mona naturally gravitated toward the world of prosecution. Facing down the perpetrators of truly heinous crimes is never easy, but it is vital in a way blessedly few of us can fully understand firsthand.
Over time, Mona’s career track led her to where she is now: at the forefront of the crime category known as sextortion. It’s a complicated area of law, and as of this writing there is limited representation of its victims.
“There’s no formal definition of sextortion,” Mona explained. “There’s no federal crime labeled sextortion. I usually charge it under the federal cyberstalking statute, and depending on the fact pattern [of the case] I might throw in some other charges if they’re appropriate.”
She went on to describe the three key components that define a sextortion scenario as opposed to any other sex crime. For sextortion to have occurred, there must be:
A threats component, where the perpetrator is intimidating the victim through promises to do harm;
A demands component, in which the victim is being told they must comply with the conditions set by the perpetrator in order to avoid these threats being carried out;
And an intimate images or video component, which describes the essential nature of the sex crime and refers to the fact that the perpetrator has acquired explicit pictures or video of the victim and is holding these against their will.
“Those three factors can meet and intersect in different ways––there are different sextortion fact patterns,” she told us. “[There are] three or four very common fact patterns. One is a form of intimate partner abuse, where the victim and the defendant know one another and the defendant has either stolen the photos from the victim or the victim has willingly shared photos or videos of herself.”
Mona noted that gendered language is common in her field, as women make up the vast majority of victims in this arena, and perpetrators are almost exclusively men. She took care to point out that there are cases in which men are victims, especially in the third, financially-based category of sextortion, which we’ll go over later in this piece.
In the intimate violence category, the “defendant obtains intimate images of the victim and then uses that to extort her to do something,” Mona explained. “it’s usually to extort more images. There’s usually a very large control component of the demands. They want specific images at specific time deadlines, at specific locations in specific poses - things like that. And so it’s a very angry, violent control [based] crime.”
After this, there’s the “scattershot” type of sextortion, as Mona calls it, in which a defendant “will target 100 or 200 victims online, and they’ll either try to hack into their computers and online accounts to steal compromising photos of them, or they’ll pose as different people online to try to approach the women or men [and] create an online relationship with them under false pretenses.”
Mona Sedky, Federal prosecutor
“I have to be very very mindful,” she told us. “It does impact me - I am in no way in the shoes of my victims, they’re in real trauma. [But] I do experience some secondary trauma sometimes. And on the days I set aside where I have to read through all of these horrific communications…it does take a toll, and it does keep me up at night, I won’t lie. And I do think that mental health counseling for people in our position, when we’re dealing with very traumatized victims, can be really helpful.” PHOTO CREDIT: Bill Hennessy
Once a basic level of intimacy is established, the perpetrator will begin begging for and eventually demanding explicit photos or videos from the victim. These are then used to extort the desired result. If these methods don’t work, however, the perpetrator still has a plan.
“They’re hoping that, even if the demands don’t work, they’ve been engaging with the victim for so long that they know enough […] to guess the security questions to their online accounts,” Mona explained.
Finally, we have the ubiquitous financial or “for money” type of sextortion. “[These] often take place within groups of people working overseas––and they’re usually men––who pose as women and approach young men online,” Mona told us. These victims are often members of the military, college students, or others who might be feeling particularly vulnerable or alone.
“[The perpetrators] will approach them on social media and they will pretend to be a woman and engage in a fake, online romantic relationship [with them]. And they will eventually get the other person to masturbate on camera.”
This video will then be used to threaten the victim. Perpetrators often promise to send the video to friends, family, employers, or release it to the public if the victim does not pay them a certain amount of money by a certain time.
“So there’s a whole commercial type of sextortion where they’re not actually demanding more images, they’re demanding money,” Mona said. “But they’re using [these] images to demand the money. So that’s still sextortion.”
This kind of threatening, traumatizing experience severely impacts the life and wellbeing of victims. The idea of being forced to go bankrupt or comply with extremely painful demands is difficult to even contemplate for many of us, but it’s a reality thousands of people endure every year.
Mona put it succinctly. “Yeah…it’s a very disturbing crime,” she said. And yet it’s the kind of crime she deals with almost every day, and she’s been facing the people who commit sextortion for ten years now. Most importantly, she’s been working with their victims––and this is no easy feat, considering how reluctant many are to come forward when something like this happens to them.
There’s no simple answer to how we can avoid becoming a victim, however. Mona is careful not to reduce words of caution or serious legal advice down to platitudes.
“I’m very reluctant to have my advice be reduced to ‘just don’t put those images out there,’” she told us. “It’s just not realistic. And one of my jobs as a prosecutor is, when someone has put their images out there and [they do] get exploited, to reassure them that they are the victim of a crime––they have not done anything wrong.”
“They should come forward to me, and part of my job is to educate the judge and the jury that they are not to penalize the victim for showing her photographs willingly with someone. Because what he or she didn’t do is give permission for someone to share them all across the internet or to use them as a cybercrime tool to try and extort more images. And that’s really the lynchpin.”
Women have traditionally been ostracized or judged harshly for their sexual behaviors, and men are frequently too ashamed and isolated to speak out when they are victimized in this way. Mona is acutely aware of how much pressure a victim could be facing throughout a sextortion incident, and she’s equally conscious of the fact that time is of the essence in many cases.
She put the problem into stark context: “My job in law enforcement is to make it safe for the victims to come forward. In cases where […] the images are [already] out there––the damage is [done] in the distribution. Whereas in sextortion cases, the images are often not out there yet. So [victims] don’t want to ‘poke the bear,’ [and] they’re often extremely reluctant to come forward. And I desperately need them to come forward, and [I have] to make it safe for them to do so. It’s challenging.”
Again, she reiterated the fact that victims have done nothing wrong. And when you are being attacked in this way, it’s vital that you remember this and seek help. Keeping a clear head when you are being so blatantly threatened can feel impossible––but all you have to do, in most cases, is take the first step and tell someone trustworthy about what’s happening to you.
Mona is one of those trustworthy people. She also encourages victims to go straight to law enforcement, “and go already having a stack of communications, with your timeline, and say, ‘he did this, this, this, and this.’”
This is because the first pieces of a prosecutor’s case in sextortion scenarios are the online communications, whether they’re texts, DMs, audio messages, posts, or any other form of messaging, and the timeline of a victim’s relationship or interactions with the defendant.
The victimization doesn’t stop at extortion threats, however, and this is where cases can get especially disturbing. “Part of sextortion is often that there are implicit or explicit threats to rape the victim along with the other demands and threats,” Mona told us. As awful as this experience is for the victim, it also forms an important part of Mona’s case. “I look for those [threats], I look for how threatening the conduct was, how demanding [the defendant] has been.”
Dealing with the dark, often highly disturbing details of these cases day in and day out can take a toll on prosecutors’ own mental health, and Mona is cognizant of how important self-care is for those in her field.
“I have to be very very mindful,” she told us. “It does impact me - I am in no way in the shoes of my victims, they’re in real trauma. [But] I do experience some secondary trauma sometimes. And on the days I set aside where I have to read through all of these horrific communications, [or] if I get to the point where I have to look at the images, those are days that are very, very difficult. Because I just ache for my victims. And it does take a toll, and it does keep me up at night, I won’t lie. And I do think that mental health counseling for people in our position, when we’re dealing with very traumatized victims, can be really helpful.”
She also admitted that it can be difficult, at times, to “know her audience.”
“I have to be careful about––you know, I’ve gotten used to this to some degree–and even when I’m talking on this podcast and I’m throwing around terms like ‘masturbating on camera’ and things like that, that’s so standard to me now. It’s not upsetting for me to talk about. But I have to be mindful of the fact that, you know, my kids have told me, ‘MOM, [alarm bell noises]. I don’t wanna hear it!’ They’re very supportive and so is my husband, but I have to be mindful of my audience.”
Luckily she has a community of “prosecutors and investigators that are very passionate about this space and these kinds of cases.”
“So we’ll often talk to one another, because that’s a pretty safe environment,” she said. “We’ve seen a lot, heard a lot, read a lot, and that’s a good, safe space to not only talk about [things] and get advice about cases, but also to unload a little bit.”
When you spend so much time in the world of sex crime and victimization, it becomes especially vital that you step back when you need to and remember the bigger picture. Life, after all, goes on––even for the victims, who may not feel as though ‘normal’ exists for them anymore.
‘When the Internet Turns Violent and Abusive’ - SXSW, 2019
Mona sees reason for hope, however. “I hope that any woman or any person being targeted in this manner feels safe and powerful enough to come forward. And I hope that movements like [MeToo] have helped [with that],” she says. “I also hope [change is] a function of time. Perhaps victims won’t feel ashamed [anymore], because perhaps our society won’t shame them.”
Leaders have an especially important role to play in this change. We talked briefly about the ways that employers and companies can help victims.
Mona was especially enthusiastic while answering this particular question. “A lot of the time [perpetrators] send explicit content to the victim’s employer, because they want to get her fired. And to be an employer receiving that kind of content and saying ‘we support our employee, she’s the victim of a crime,’ and to not have that be a career-ender, that’s so important.”
Many employers feel panicked when they encounter situations like this, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that an employee has been victimized when you are facing threats or secondary trauma due to their situation. But ultimately it is a leader’s responsibility to support the victim, and to put that kind of empathy above all else. Mona was clear that this, more than anything, is how we can change things for the better.
“To the extent that there are members of leadership present, [they] can assist potential victims or actual victims with getting this under control, with healing, with contacting law enforcement and just protecting themselves.”
And being part of the solution is an amazing feeling, and it’s the reason Mona does this work day in and day out. One of her first sextortion cases is an especially poignant example of just how incredibly impactful Mona’s work can be for victims.
“[During] my very first sextortion case, […] we were very lucky in that it only took about four days to identify the perpetrator and get him arrested,” she recounted. “Even though this sextortion case was a single victim case, it was devastating to this woman. She had a young toddler at the time, and she was sleeping with a knife under her pillow––like I said, this is sexual violence online. […] Being able to put that [perpetrator] in custody and allowing that victim to just exhale for the first time in ages, […] it just felt so good to empower someone who’d just felt so under siege and so un-empowered. It felt so good to make her feel safe again.”
She credits some of this to her “mama bear” nature, which is innate to her and has only been enhanced as she’s raised her own daughters into adulthood.
“You feel so protective of them (the victims), especially as a mother. I feel so mama bear about these women. I really want to make their pain go away, and I want to make their fear and their trauma stop. I have so much respect for my victims, and [helping them] is such meaningful and motivating work. [...] We use the word ‘victim’ in law enforcement because of our statutes, but really, these are survivors.”
The word was punctuated by Mona’s fierce, focused tone, which is at once measured and passionate––precisely what you’d expect from one of the foremost federal prosecutors in the nation.
At the end of our interview, we asked Mona the same thing TFW always asks of its incredible guests: tell us about a time when you felt truly powerful. Her answer was demonstrated by one of the most profound stories we’ve had on the platform.
Mona Sedky, US Department of Justice
“One of the most impactful ‘power by proxy’ feelings I’ve had lately was [during] a particular case, where a cyberstalker was sending bomb threats to schools––25 a day––in a particular town where the main victim lived. He was mostly cyberstalking this one woman (he’s in custody now). [...] One of the things that he was doing was sending a lot of [these] bomb threats to the schools, elementary schools, middle schools, high school, even the colleges in her area.
“It was really crippling the entire town in which she lived. And law enforcement was very hamstrung, and as you can imagine, the school system was very hamstrung...parents were terrified. The students were terrified. He was very hard to catch. This guy was a computer science major [and] he had very good technical expertise [he used] in hiding himself.
“We had, I want to say fifteen to twenty FBI agents working almost full-time on this case to try and identify this guy. And [then] we finally had enough to arrest this guy, and we finally arrested him.”
Her tone shifted, and the emotional impact of this case became palpable.
“All of the bomb threats stopped. And everybody exhaled––the parents felt safe again, the students felt safe again. It felt like I was able to give somebody else power, and that made me feel powerful.”
We often forget that women’s stories are not merely their own. When women like Mona share their experiences with us, we become players in the stories told by entire communities, whole sectors of our society. She told us about teachers who personally, voluntarily joined law enforcement to sweep the classrooms of their schools for possible explosives.
We heard about victims who, even in the depths of their own trauma, were still fiercely determined to protect themselves and their loved ones no matter the cost to themselves. These are so much more than anecdotes. This is the core of what it means to fight for justice on a broad scale, and to hear from women like Mona Sedky, who occupy the very center of the storm these crimes create, is to engage in something profound.
Through these stories, we are given the gift of insight on a level that would be impossible to gain, otherwise.
As Mona put it, “if that doesn’t make you feel powerful, I don’t know what will.”
We want to take this moment to offer our readers some resources and information below on sextortion, healing, and the legal options available to victims of these crimes courtesy of our guest today. Check out our resources page for some helpful links as well.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the interviewee, and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Fem Word organization. Any content provided by our interviewees are based on their opinions and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.