Julie Jargon’s Family & Tech column on the Personal Journal page of the June 9 Wall Street Journal focused on “sextortion” scams involving Apple Messages that ended in tragedy.

She wrote that in 2024, more than 5,000 sextortion cases were reported by the public to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to Thorn, a child-safety nonprofit.

But it was the individual tragedies that she recounted and the photos of the victims that accompanied the article that proved the horrific nature of what occurred. The article and photos also provided the realization that those responsible for the sextortion should, if or when apprehended, be dealt no mercy.

And, a way must be found for platforms to deal with problems like sextortion, which will get much worse if nothing is done. Meanwhile, parents and guardians need to become more vigilant and involved in guarding against outcomes like Jargon’s article details.

Which brings us to the topic of a weapon every family has the capacity to employ: trust.

Parents and their children need to cultivate a strong degree of trust with one another.

For parents, the objective needs to be that if a problem like sextortion or bullying occurs, their children need to feel assured that, by being told what has happened or is going on, their reaction will not be to punish the son or daughter, but to find a way to correct the problem by proper, lawful means.

Consider this example:

When a son or daughter is going out with friends, he or she needs to know that, if troublesome or dangerous conduct begins to happen, the son or daughter can call his or her parents and have confidence that one of them will be available and willing to come to wherever he or she is for transportation home.

That must occur without a fear of punishment.

It is better to “rescue” the son or daughter in that way than having to respond to a call from police or receiving a call from a coroner.

For the young person who is inexperienced regarding problem-solving, there needs to be confidence that his or her parents are mature, have the right answer or are willing to pursue it, and are not merely old people “in the dark” about things happening in today’s world.

Young people need to embrace an understanding that their parents experienced problems, anxieties and temptations similar to what they now are experiencing, and that today’s issues involving sexuality are not a topic about which their parents are uninformed.

Today’s parents embrace an attitude of openness about sexual matters much more than their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents ever did.

Sex is not a taboo subject. Today’s young people need to be reassured that their parents can — and are willing to — help them when troubling issues, or threats such as sextortion, threaten their well-being.

The young people whose stories were told in Jargon’s article did not possess that confidence, and all the blame should neither be cast on the victims or their parents.

Here’s something to think about, which Jargon commendably reported:

“In the first three months of this year, 38% of the more than 2,000 public-reported sextortion cases involved texting.”

In those 5,000 sextortion cases in 2024 mentioned earlier, 34% involved texting in the phones’ built-in messages apps.

Yes, that weapon mentioned earlier ­– trust — is silently crying out for attention.