**The holder of this certificate attended and successfully completed Zero Abuse Project's The Sextortion Crisis: What Child Protection Professionals Need to Know course** This course equips investigators and child protection professionals with a the critical skills to distinguish financial, sexual, and coercive sextortion, while understanding why the financial wave unexpectedly targets adolescent males. Participants will learn to trace the compressed timeline from initial contact to crisis—pinpointing key intervention windows—and analyze how weaponized shame keeps victims silent. By mastering early behavioral warning signs, applying trauma-informed initial disclosure protocols to disarm offenders, and modernizing prevention messaging for the age of AI-generated media, investigators and child protection professionals will be fully prepared to protect vulnerable youth and hold perpetrators accountable. **Course length:** 1.5 hours **Method:** Virtual **Technical level:** Beginner **Training provider:** Zero Abuse Project **Learning Objectives: 1. Distinguish financial, sexual, and coercive sextortion, and explain why the financial wave targets a different victim profile than many professionals expect. 2. Trace the compressed timeline of a sextortion incident, from first contact to crisis, and pinpoint where intervention is still possible. 3. Explain how shame, fear, and perceived consequences function as the offender's primary leverage, and why disclosure can feel impossible to a child. 4. Recognize warning signs of active targeting, including the behavioral shifts that show up before a child says a word. 5. Apply a trauma-informed response in the critical first minutes of a disclosure, focused on disarming shame and stripping the offender of leverage. 6. Adapt prevention messaging for a landscape where AI-generated images mean the old "never send anything" advice no longer fully protects kids.**