Parents or caregivers should also know red flags of what could be grooming behavior. Targeting specific kids for special attention, gifts or activities. Slowly isolating a kid from family members and friends – physically and emotionally.
Signs a child is being groomed include: sudden changes in behaviour, such as spending more or less time online. spending more time away or going missing from home or school.
Their personality and behaviours might change markedly from what they were prior to the sexual abuse. The manipulative nature of grooming that many sexual offenders use to get close to their victims can cause ongoing thought distortions, self-identity issues, relational harm and isolation of the child.
Desensitization to touch and discussion of sexual topics: Abusers will often start to touch a victim in ways that appear harmless, such as hugging, wrestling and tickling, and later escalate to increasingly more sexual contact, such as massages or showering together.
Children are perhaps most likely to develop a trauma bond when exposed to sexual exploitation and targeted grooming. Sometimes, they may never have experienced physical intimacy, and grooming tactics can lead them to believe that their abuser has genuine feelings for them, and that their behaviour is normal.
Make a report
This National Crime Agency is tasked with keeping children safe from sexual abuse and sexual grooming online. Reports can be made by the young person, or by concerned friends, parents, adults or professionals.
What is grooming? Grooming is when someone takes deliberate action to select and build an emotional connection with a child/teen, and often their family, to engage the child/teen in sexual abuse and/or exploitation, as well as maintain the abusive relationship in secrecy.
“[Grooming] can occur at any age, and it has a great deal to do with gullibility, insecurity, religion, and culture. [...] It starts by targeting a vulnerable person, then building trust.”
Sexual grooming of children also occurs on the Internet. Some abusers (sometimes posing as children themselves) chat with children online and make arrangements to meet with them in person. Online grooming of minors is most prevalent in relation to the 13–17 age group (99% of cases), and particularly 13–14 (48%).
The implementation of grooming tactics can take days, months and even years. One of the many tactics is 'Gaslighting'. Its goal is to slowly confuse the sense of reality of the victim and their support network through phycological manipulation.
Grooming begins with nonsexual touching, such as accidental or playful touching to desensitize the child so the child does not resist a more sexualized touch. The offender then exploits the child's curiosity to advance the sexuality of the interaction.
A groomer will often start out with frequent compliments, kind acts of service, love bombing behaviors, they might act like they want to spend every minute with you, sharing secrets intimately between each other, ultimately making you feel like you are the best person they have ever met.
Physical grooming involves desensitization to touch. Starting with innocent pats on the back or arm, an acceptable form of touching a younger person, the offender progresses the touch to hugging, tickling, and wrestling. Over time, this conditions the child/youth to increase levels of physical contact.
Building a relationship.
Grooming is about making a child think that abuse and exploitation is normal, or that they have no choice. Offenders do this by building a relationship and emotional connection with the child. What might be happening?
Groomers do not always self-identify as groomers, and are often deluding themselves as well as their targets. Sexual abuse is defined as any behaviour (physical, psychological, verbal, virtual/online), perceived to be of a sexual nature, which is controlling, coercive, exploitative, harmful or unwanted.
Children who have been victimised and experienced grooming are likely to suffer from serious long-term mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts.
People who engage in grooming behaviour are in the process of preparing a child or young person for sexual abuse. Grooming is the lead up to conducting acts of sexual abuse. Grooming behaviour involves the perpetrator manipulating a child to gain their trust, build rapport, and exert their power over them.
These become pathological grooming disorders when they are repetitive and intentional acts of habitual behaviours that result in apparent physical harm and shame due to the inability to control the behaviour [1].