This is the third and final piece in a series of stories on image-based abuse supported by the Judith Neilson Institute’s Asian Stories project, in collaboration with The Korea Times, Indonesia’s Tempo magazine, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and Manila-based ABS-CBN. Elyssa Lopez, Neil Servallos and Sonia Sarkar contributed reporting. The piece contains descriptions of a sexual nature. This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.

Daniel Perry, 17, thought he was talking to a pretty American girl from Illinois. They soon began swapping pictures online – nothing unusual for two teenagers.

The problem was that the girl didn’t exist.

Perry, in Scotland, had fallen prey to a gang operating out of the Philippines. After secretly recording a webcam chat with him, the criminals told Perry that unless he paid them off, his friends and family would see the video. At a loss for what to do next, he took his own life by jumping off a bridge in July 2013.

Less than a year later, Interpol-backed operations in the Philippines saw dozens of suspects arrested. There was praise, the raids were dubbed a success – and there seemed to be hope that the family of Perry, an apprentice mechanic in Dunfermline, would find some closure.

But almost eight years on, his relatives have yet to see justice, much like the thousands of survivors of online sextortion who never made headlines.