FOX NEWS
A South Carolina mother is suing Snapchat after her 13-year-old son died by suicide last year.
The family says young Timothy Barnett took his own life April 6, 2023, at his Sumter home after he fell victim to a sextortion scheme on the social media app.
“On April 6 … it was a typical morning,” Betsy Hauptman, Timothy’s mother, told Fox News Digital. “My husband and I were waking up. The alarm went off at about 6:15. My husband got up first. He walked out the door. I was in the bathroom, and I got a phone call, and my husband’s like, ‘Hey, do me a favor, lock the door. Make sure the doors are all locked, and check on the kids.'”
Initially, Hauptman’s husband — Timothy’s stepfather — thought “someone was sleeping in the yard” but later realized it was Timothy.
“I woke up in a nightmare,” Hauptman, a mother of three boys and four stepchildren, said.
It wasn’t until about six months later that Hauptman realized her son had been the victim of a sextortion scheme on Snapchat. The FBI describes sextortion as a criminal act in which an offender contacts a victim online and coerces the victim to send explicit images or videos in exchange for either more explicit material or money.
“What happened to Timothy is devastating, and our hearts go out to his family during this unimaginable time,” a Snapchat spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “We have zero tolerance for predators abusing young people on Snapchat and are working constantly to fight this horrific activity. We use proactive detection tools to find and remove these types of criminals and work around the clock to support law enforcement investigations.
“We offer extra safeguards for teens to protect against unwanted contact and don’t offer public friend lists, which helps prevent predators from targeting a teen’s friends. We also want to help young people learn the signs of extortion and have launched in-app education to raise awareness of how to spot and report it.”
