Tie up a teenage girl to rape her, publish the intimate images of her victims to “expose” them, denounce them to the police: the cyber predator Alexandre Bossé used sordid threats to extract photos and videos of a sexual nature from teenage girls from 13 to 16 years old.
” [Bossé] would like to have sex with her. He asks her to come to Montreal and explains to her that he wants to tie her to a bed, make her unconscious and rape her. He sends her several photos [d’elle-même] and tells him that if she blocks him, and does not respond to his requests, which come to see him, he will expose it, ”indicates the summary presented in court when the 21-year-old cyberpredator pleaded guilty to twenty charges for crimes of a sexual nature.
Faced with such a serious threat, Vanessa *, 13, complies and sends the cyberpredator about fifteen nude photos of herself. But for Alexandre Bossé, these photos are not enough. He then demands that Vanessa films herself in very precise positions. To extract the videos from her, he creates a fictitious profile of a teenage girl containing photos of her prey. If she blocks the account, “it will go badly,” said the author of the account.
It has been six months since the teenager is trapped, at the mercy of her virtual executioner. As with the other victims, Vanessa’s nightmare begins when Alexandre Bossé makes contact with her on Facebook, while they have friends in common.
Very quickly, he sends Vanessa some explicit content of himself, then asks for pictures of her naked. If she doesn’t comply with his demands, he threatens to tarnish her reputation.
This modus operandi is more and more frequent among cyber predators. They do not hesitate to use threats and extortion to extract intimate images from children. In some cases, cyber predators carry out their threat by relaying the victim’s intimate images to those around them. A phenomenon exacerbated by the pandemic, while there is an explosion in cases of online sexual exploitation.
Trapped
Another 13-year-old teenager fell into the clutches of Alexandre Bossé in 2019. At the beginning of their conversation, the victim agrees to have sex with her interlocutor, but the teenager aborts the meeting at the last minute. The 19-year-old man was then in front of the victim’s residence.
For more than a month, Alexandre Bossé demands photos from his victim. To bait her, he assures her that she can trust him. She finally gives in when the cyberpredator promises to buy her a vape. But after sending him twenty photos and videos, the teenager refuses to continue. Alexandre Bossé then threatens to “expose him to his Facebook friends and his parents”.
The cyberpredator also employs another recurring threat: because the teenager sent him videos of herself, she risks having “problems with the police” for distributing child pornography, he claims.
Same modus operandi to trap Clara *, 16 years old. Alexandre Bossé sends him photos of his penis and then asks him for photos of her naked. Faced with her reluctance, the cyberpredator reassures her by telling her that he will erase the images immediately.
The cycle of threats begins. If Clara does not comply and calls the police, the predator warns her that “it will end badly for her”.
When Clara complies, Bossé immediately asks for more. And when the teenager tries to get out of his grip, he threatens to expose his intimate images. The cyberprédateur goes further: he will come “himself” to attack her. To obtain his home address, he claims that hackers are on the spot.
Alexandre Bossé will also threaten an undercover police officer, who presented himself online as a 14-year-old girl, to “find her address” if he refuses to respond to his requests.
17 counts
The resident of Saint-Stanislas, in Mauricie, pleaded guilty to 17 counts before Judge Yves Paradis, last September, at the Montreal courthouse. There are counts of computer luring, invitation to sexual touching of a minor, extortion, production of child pornography and making sexually explicit material available to a child.
If Alexandre Bossé has been free for much of the judicial process since his arrest in October 2019, he has remained in detention since last summer. The young man broke his conditions by owning a cell phone. The cyberprédateur was caught while he was at the hotel with a young adult woman, whose parents, worried, had contacted the police.
Alexandre Bossé returns to court in December for observations on the sentence.
* Fictitious names