On a chilly December night in 2023, the Dowey family’s world changed forever. Murray Dowey, a 16-year-old from Dunblane, Scotland, was, by all accounts, a "lovely, funny, kind boy who had everything to live for," as his mother Ros described to Sky News. Yet, within a matter of hours, Murray became the victim of a sextortion scam that would end his life and propel his grieving parents into a fight for justice that now spans continents and could reshape the way social media giants handle child safety.
On December 18, 2025, Mark and Ros Dowey filed a landmark lawsuit in a US court against Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Instagram and Facebook, alleging that the company’s failure to implement adequate safety measures directly contributed to the death of their son. They are joined in this legal action by Tricia Maciejewski, a mother from Pennsylvania whose 13-year-old son, Levi, also died by suicide after being targeted in a similar sextortion scheme. The cases, filed in California and Delaware, are believed to be the first of their kind in the UK and among the most significant globally, according to BBC News and Sky News.
The details of Murray’s final hours are harrowing. According to his parents, Murray was contacted by criminals—believed to be part of a West African group known as the "Yahoo Boys"—who posed as a young girl on Instagram. The scammers convinced him to send intimate images, then threatened to expose the photos to his family unless he paid them. "It literally happened in the space of a few hours in his bedroom where he should have been the safest," Ros Dowey told Sky News. She added, "There was no opportunity for us to intervene or notice something was wrong because he didn't come through for whatever reason. He went from absolutely fine to dead the next morning."
The Doweys’ lawsuit, filed with the help of the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), alleges that Meta "knew of safety features that would prevent sextortion" but instead "prioritised profit." The complaint cites internal Meta analyses dating back to 2019, which allegedly warned executives that Instagram’s recommendation algorithms were facilitating dangerous connections between children and adult predators. According to newly unsealed filings reported by major outlets, a 2019 Meta analysis estimated that about 3.5 million profiles were seeking inappropriate interactions with children. By 2023, Meta’s own estimates showed that nearly 2 million children’s accounts were recommended to adult predators in just three months, with 22% of those recommendations leading to follow requests.
Ros Dowey, speaking on BBC Breakfast, did not mince words: "We just feel that it is time that Meta were held accountable for what they've done to a lot of young people. There's evidence now that Meta knew at least five years before Murray died that their products weren't safe, there were design decisions that they made that were causing predators to easily find young people and then to be able to extort them." She continued, "You always suspected that the likes of Meta were profits over everything, but to see it written down and to see that they probably could've saved your son, it’s like a punch in the gut. It makes me so upset and angry."
The legal complaint further alleges that Meta made "false and misleading statements designed to convince children and parents that Instagram was safe for teens at the same time that internal testing showed that Instagram was matchmaking children to adult predators." The Doweys, along with other families, are seeking punitive damages and sweeping changes to how Meta designs and operates its platforms.
Meta, for its part, has publicly condemned sextortion as a "horrific crime" and maintains that it supports law enforcement in prosecuting offenders. A spokesperson for Meta told the Daily Mail and other outlets, "Since 2021, we've placed teens under 16 into private accounts when they sign up for Instagram, which means they have to approve any new followers. We work to prevent accounts showing suspicious behaviour from following teens and avoid recommending teens to them. We also take other precautionary steps, like blurring potentially sensitive images sent in DMs and reminding teens of the risks of sharing them, and letting people know when they're chatting to someone who may be in a different country."
However, Ros Dowey and advocacy groups argue that these protections do not go far enough. For instance, only new users under 16 are automatically placed into private accounts, meaning Murray—whose account predated the safety upgrade—was not protected by this measure. The lawsuit claims that Meta’s algorithms were "letting adults connect to children, and they were pushing those children to them," and that internal safety advisors within the company were "pleading" for change.
The issue of sextortion is not confined to the Dowey family. The BBC and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have reported a dramatic rise in online extortion and sextortion cases. In 2023-24, an estimated 2,080 crimes of threats and extortion were committed online in the UK—a 14% increase from the previous year, and a six-fold rise since 2019-20. Police Scotland has indicated that most of these crimes relate to sextortion, yet convictions remain exceedingly rare. In 2023/24, only 10 charges were reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland involving threats to disclose intimate images, and just one person was convicted.
The NCA believes the true extent of the problem is much larger, with many cases going unreported due to the shame and fear felt by victims. Alex Murray, NCA Director of Threat Leadership, recently stated, "A lot of victims feel responsible for the situation they find themselves in. But we need them to know this is absolutely not the case; you are not to blame and help and support is available." The NCA has launched campaigns to encourage young people to seek help and report incidents to trusted adults, police, or the CEOP Safety Centre.
The Dowey family’s lawsuit is not just about their own unimaginable loss. "We will see this through to the end because the worst thing that could happen to us has already happened," Ros Dowey told Sky News. "Everything we do, we're aware there's a seat empty that should be Murray. And that's going to be for the rest of our lives as his brothers graduate, as they get married, as they have children. It's been horrific to have gone from a completely normal family to having to live with this for the rest of our lives."
As the case moves through the courts, campaigners and politicians are calling for more resources and stricter regulations to crack down on sextortion and better protect children online. The outcome could have far-reaching implications for tech companies, families, and young people everywhere. For parents like the Doweys, the fight is about more than just accountability—it’s about ensuring no other family has to endure what they have.
