we should talk about online child sexual grooming

The term child sexual grooming, or commonly known as ‘grooming’ usually refers to the situation whereby a potential offender will set up opportunities to sexually abuse by gaining the trust of the child in order to prepare them for abuse either directly or, as is the case more recently, through Internet chat rooms (Mcalinden, 2006). The abuser attempts to build a trusting and emotional relationship with the child and tries to convince them, which enables the abuser to manipulate exploit and abuse the victim.

Nowadays, abusers use internet as their tools to abuse and groom children because it gave them sense of security. The internet provides anonymity, which create a hiding place for the abusers to pretend that they are the same age as their potential victim. In general grooming happened in four stages as follows:

Form a Special Bond With the Victim

Bonds can be created through keeping secret behavior or giving victim special treatments. Keeping secrets with the victim gives them a sense of trust — that the abuser is trusted — and that they are special, because the have access to something others don’t. The goal of this stage is to become the child’s sole source of support.

Create Reliance

Abuser need their victim to be dependent on them to increase their value and reduce the value of other adults. This can be done by maintaining the special bond to draws the victim even closer to the relationship, and gain their trust even more. Another thing that can be done is to push away other adults in their victim’s life, which isolates them and make them less likely to report the abuser because it makes the abuser their only important adult in their life, not comfortable to talk to other adults, and creating distance from other adults so it reduces the chance that the victim would be believed if they ever tell anyone.

Dilute Resistance

The goal of this process is to reduce victim’s natural resistance to assault and abuse. To achieve that, abuser usually move progressively from ‘appropriate’ acts to inappropriate acts such as asking victim to send them a selfie, and progressing to directing a certain pose for them to send. This stage is taken even further by offering explanations that the behavior is not inappropriate. This allows the abuser to keep the relationship by normalizing their behavior

Preventing Escape

This stage simply meant to trap the victim and retain them in the abusive relationship — as it took the abuser some time to lure them into the trap. Abuser usually kept the child in victimizing condition by further grooming them, on going grooming will weaken the victim’s sensitivity of assault and abuse. Another method that is used to prevent the victim from getting away is to threaten to hurt them if they ever told anyone about the relationship, or threaten that if they ever speak up about it, people will not trust them and they will only shame them for the things they have been through.

The grooming process occurs gradually over a long period of time, not to mention the fact that the internet helps obscure the identity of the perpetrator. The question then remains, how do we keep our loved ones safe from online grooming? Knowing several alarming indicators that our loved ones might be a victim of internet grooming could help us to help them get out of the abusive relationship. Several indicators that can be seen if a child is being sexually groomed are; they become very secretive even in daily activities, they often feel pressured and they pushed people away — especially adults. Of course, these behavior are not limited to indicate potential grooming, but we should always be aware of these indicators and find the root cause of it in order to prevent or save a child from being a victim of online sexual grooming.

It is important for adults to be aware of grooming because it leaves a deep wound of trauma to the children. The impact of grooming can last a lifetime, no matter whether it happened in person, online or both. The victim might have difficulty sleeping, be anxious or struggle to concentrate or cope with school work. They may become withdrawn, uncommunicative and angry or upset.

In conclusion, because online grooming happen in a very secretive and subtle stages, adults must be aware of the slightest change in a child’s behavior. This can be done by having routine conversation with the child and let them know that they have boundaries, especially regarding their bodies.