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Murray Dowey died after he was preyed upon by Nigerian scammers posing as a young girl.
The parents of a Scots boy who took his own life after being targeted in a sextortion scam have taken out a lawsuit against tech firm Meta.
Murray Dowey, 16, died in December, 2023, after falling prey to Nigerian criminals on Instagram who duped him into into sending private and intimate photos of himself.
On the night of his death the Dunblane teen connected with a predator posing as a young girl on the social media platform and after sending the images he was told they would be sent to his family if he did not send over money.
The Social Media Victims Law Center, a legal advocacy organisation, is supporting Murray’s famiily to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc. and Instagram.
The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, alleges that newly unsealed filings from litigation against Meta in California prove the company knew as early as 2019 that Instagram was exposing children to predators but chose to prioritise engagement and profit over safety.
It was also revealed that in the same year, 3.5 million profiles engaged in “inappropriate interactions with children” via Instagram DMs. Internal surveys found 13 percent of 13–15‑year‑olds received unwanted sexual advances on a weekly basis.
Meta also repeatedly rejected researcher recommendations to default teen accounts to private, which would have prevented 5.4 million unwanted direct messages daily. In 2022, Instagram recommended 1.4 million teens to potential predators in a single day.
The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of the State of Delaware, alleges that internal documents also show that Meta understood that Instagram’s “Accounts You May Follow” feature was actively connecting adult strangers to children, potentially exposing millions of children to adult groomers worldwide.
Meta’s own researchers repeatedly warned its leadership that adults with no prior connection to children were exploiting Instagram’s design to groom minors, harvest personal data, and carry out sextortion crimes. Internal discussions dating back more than five years confirm that Meta rejected simple fixes – such as defaulting teen accounts to private or blocking adult direct messages from strangers – because executives feared reduced engagement.
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Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, said: ““Meta’s secret is out. For years, Meta knew Instagram was a hunting ground for predators, yet chose to protect engagement metrics over children’s lives.
“That conscious decision to connect random strangers to children has cost families their sons and daughters, turning Instagram into the epicenter of sextortion‑related youth suicides. Had they chosen to follow their own internal recommendations they could have saved countless lives.”
The Dunblane teen’s mother, Ros, and father, Mark, have condemned the criminals as well as the social media companies for not doing enough to protect young people, saying they have “blood on their hands”.
In a video message about the “cruel” crime, the parents told the perpetrators: “You’re abusing children. You’ve ended Murray’s life.
“How would they feel if it was their child or their little brother or their friend? I mean, it’s so cruel, and this is children, and it’s abuse. You’re terrorising people, children, for some money, and I don’t think in any society that is in any way acceptable.”
Mark spoke about how his son was “a really lovely kid” and how they had no idea something was wrong. Mark told the BBC: “He went up to his room, and he was absolutely fine. And you know, we found him dead the next morning”. His mother Ros added: “We had no chance to intervene, to notice there was something wrong and try and help and fix it”.
Meta have not so far commented on reports of the lawsuit.
In a statement last year on the issue of sextortion, Instagram said: “Sextortion is a horrific crime. We work aggressively to fight this abuse and support law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting the criminals behind it.”
The company also said then that it was working to help protect people from sextortion.
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