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• New Zealand police and the Department of Internal Affairs say a new breed of sadistic online predator has been targeting New Zealand children on popular social media platforms. 
• Extremists extort violent or cruel material from young people to earn online “clout” in a competition with rival groups. 
• Parents are urged to monitor their children’s online interactions and check privacy settings on devices. 

Violent extremists with links to neo-Nazi and nihilistic ideologies are targeting New Zealand children online. 

It’s a frightening new campaign where online communities compete with one another to coerce young people into carrying out sadistic and depraved acts. 

The extremist communities are part of a larger network known as “The Com”. 

Investigators from police and the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) have told the Herald child victims of such online groups have been identified in New Zealand already. 

"We are seeing ... New Zealand victims and also New Zealand offenders."
Detective senior sergeant Kepal Richards 

Multiple investigations are underway here. 

The rise of so-called online cult communities dedicated to targeting minors and glorifying acts of violence, self-harm or cruelty prompted a warning from the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement (Europol) last month. 

The crime type is known in some jurisdictions as sadistic online exploitation or sadistic sextortion - not to be confused with regular sextortion where perpetrators are financially motivated. 

Rather, members of these new ultra-violent, esoteric groups seek to gain influence within like-minded online communities by extracting increasingly dehumanising content from their victims. 

It’s understood two people in New Zealand have been charged in connection with their links to several sub-groups of “The Com”. 

The Herald has decided not to publish the names of the niche online communities the individuals are alleged to be linked to. 

Police and the Department of Internal Affairs say sadistic online groups pressure vulnerable young people into sharing violent, degrading and cruel content. 

Europol says such groups have encouraged vulnerable victims – often minors suffering from mental health issues – into carrying out horrific acts, including carving the names of members into their skin, beheading pet animals and, in some cases, killing themselves on livestreamed video feeds. 

Sextortion, where victims are blackmailed for money after being tricked into sharing explicit content, has long been an issue for local law enforcement, who first started warning about the rise in offenders targeting young New Zealanders in 2022. 

Detective Senior Sergeant Kepal Richards is the manager of the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (Oceanz) team. 

However, Detective Senior Sergeant Kepal Richards, who’s the manager of the Online Child Exploitation Across New Zealand (Oceanz) team, told the Herald sadistic exploitation is a new phenomenon in New Zealand. 

He said while it’s been a known issue overseas, recently both predators linked to extremist groups and victims have been identified in New Zealand. 

"This is an ongoing fight – these groups evolve their tactics to try and evade our detection."
Meta spokesperson 

“We are seeing instances of New Zealand victims and also New Zealand offenders,” he told the Herald. 

The DIA confirmed it had received referrals from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US about New Zealand children being targeted. 

The manager of the DIA’s digital child exploitation team, Tim Houston, said some of the New Zealand-based offenders had been engaging with children overseas, as well as locally. 

“It’s certainly a concerning evolution of offending on the internet, but something that we’re watching very closely,” he said. 

Sadistic predators seeking online ‘clout’ 

Police say individuals linked to sadistic exploitation groups are motivated to obtain vile content to gain clout among their followers. 

Predators linked to sadistic online groups extract vile content from minors to gain influence and recognition among their online peers, according to Richards. 

“It’s a crime type we’re still learning about currently, but what we understand is these people - and they’re generally young people - are doing it [duping young people into sharing sadistic content] for an online community to try and gain notoriety and clout.” 

Richards said victims are manipulated into carrying out twisted acts, which could include producing sexually explicit material, videoing acts of self-harm or carving logos or “sign imagery” into their bodies. 

“They can then skite about this with their online community,” he said. 

Tim Houston is the manager of the Department of Internal Affairs Digital Child Exploitation Team. 

Houston said there was often a “swirling mass of motivations” when it came to why the groups sought such vile content, including notoriety or to promote social disorder. 

He said children are normally duped into providing a compromising photo or video, which is then used to blackmail them. 

“The child gets caught in a cycle of producing self-generated content and the offender asks for more and more nasty or sadistic things. It’s incredibly harmful,” Houston said. 

In January, Homeland Security investigators arrested two men alleged to have abused 16 minors around the world. 

The pair – US citizens aged 23 and 41 years old – were linked to a group that promoted neo-Nazism, nihilism and paedophilia as its core beliefs. 

Their arrest involved assistance from officials at New Zealand’s DIA as well as French and UK police. 

Be aware of ‘secretive online activity’ 

Parents are warned to be aware of behavioural changes in their children, including isolating themselves while using devices. 

Richards said while the rise of sadistic exploitation was a troubling development, it was necessary to highlight it, so parents could be cognisant of the dark realities online. 

Such groups regularly target children on popular social media and gaming sites. 

“We don’t want to alarm parents out there. We just want them to be aware of some of the risks online and make sure they put the right privacy settings [in place] and have those conversations to keep the young people safe.” 

Houston said children isolating themselves while online could be a red flag, “starting to shut themselves away or being secretive about their online activity”. 

He urged parents worried about their child’s online behaviour to familiarise themselves with support networks online, including advice on the Government’s “keep it real online” site. 

Sadistic predators prowling popular social media and gaming platforms 

Instagram, the encrypted messaging app Telegram, Discord and the children’s gaming platform Roblox have all been identified overseas as hosting users linked to sadistic online communities. 

All the companies told the Herald they disabled suspect accounts, but acknowledged they did this in a reactive manner. 

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, confirmed it had banned multiple subgroups of The Com which engaged in the sadistic exploitation of young people. 

“This is an ongoing fight – these groups evolve their tactics to try and evade our detection, which is why our expert teams track new trends to help us stay one step ahead,” Meta said. 

It said its team, which includes former law enforcement officers and prosecutors, regularly engaged with the FBI, and Meta was a founding member of the Lantern programme, which allows technology companies to share pertinent details about suspect users such as email addresses and user names. 

The company said in the first six months of last year, it provided data about users of its platforms “in nearly 88%” of requests from the US Government. 

Telegram confirmed its platform was also used by such groups, but it removed all channels and groups linked to The Com after learning of their illegal activity early last year. 

It said in a statement that Telegram uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to target such groups. 

“Telegram has continually monitored over the past year to ensure that such communities cannot re-emerge, resulting in the removal of hundreds of groups.” 

Discord described the emergence of ultra-violent online exploiters as “horrific” and said it had a “specialised team” focused on combating such networks. 

“We proactively detect, remove, and ban related servers, accounts, and users, and we collaborate closely with the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and where appropriate and permitted by law, the FBI and other U.S. and international law enforcement in their investigations and prosecutions,” Discord said in a statement. 

Roblox, an online game creation platform, is also trying to weed out extremists and said it co-operates with law enforcement agencies around the world. 

“At Roblox, we have dedicated teams focused on proactively identifying and removing extremist content,” it said in a statement. 

Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won the best coverage of a major news event at the 2024 Voyager NZ Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.