Sextortion: Distraught Victims and Helpless Police

Katrin Mueller-Johnson is Associate Professor of Criminology and a Research Fellow at Green Templeton College.
She holds a PhD  in Human Development from Cornell University, a MSt in Legal Research from the Centre of Social Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and a Dipl. Psych. Degree in Psychology from the Free University of Berlin.

Her research interests are centred around victimisation, particularly cyber-victimisation. In particular she is currently researching the impact of victimisation by sextortion and the barriers to disclosing or reporting such a victimisation. She is also doing work on the online threats and abuse that people, who work in public facing roles -such as police officers- experience and the impact it has on them and their families.  

As a further aspect of (potential) victimisation of individuals because of their professional role, she is interested in vicarious victimisation of police officers and police staff in the context of child abuse investigations and how to avoid this.

She also continues to have interests in research on investigative interviewing, police as well as legal decision-making, particular with regard to cyber-facilitated crimes. 

Her work has been funded by the AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC, British Academy, Newton Trust, Optimus Foundation and Department of Justice for Northern Ireland. She has collaborated with UK and international police forces.