Introduction
Childhood sexual abuse doesn’t just happen, someone makes an active choice to abuse. In fact, some people invest a lot of time and energy in grooming, manipulating and trapping a child within an environment in which to perpetrate the offence and avoid detection.
The primary focus here is on ‘contact’ offending, where the child is touched and physically in the presence of the person offending.
Key themes
- Identifying and exposing elements of the grooming process and tactics used by those who sexually abuse boys.
- Examining how those who offend work to gain access, isolate and manipulate a child and those around them to perpetrate and conceal abuse.
- Highlighting tactics used to achieve compliance and maintain secrecy, in particular the ways in which a child is made to feel responsible, when the blame is not theirs to carry.
- In focussing on exposing grooming tactics, we also draw attention to the many under acknowledged acts of resistance and defiance of victims/survivors.
Prioritise your wellbeing. In reading through this material and noting the subtle manipulation and tactics used to evade responsibility by the person offending, we encourage you to continue to prioritise your wellbeing.
The Grooming Process
The grooming process has been described as:
The use of a variety of manipulative and controlling techniques; with a vulnerable subject; in a range of inter-personal and social settings; in order to establish trust or normalise sexually harmful behaviour; with the overall aim of facilitating exploitation and/or prohibiting exposure. (McAlinden, 2012, p.11)
To help us pick apart and better understand this process, it can be useful to think of grooming as involving three overlapping stages or phases:
- Gaining access to a child
- Initiating and maintaining abuse
- Concealing abuse.
Gaining access
Gaining access to a child or children involves:
- actively seeking out and taking on roles and opportunities that provide access to children (parent, babysitter, carer, teacher, sports coach, priest, police officer).
- cultivating relationships with a child, with partners, parents, caregivers, neighbour, community members, colleagues that increases contact with children.
- deliberately taking advantage of opportunities where children are alone or vulnerable (e.g. toilet, changing room). In some instances, offending is opportunistic, involving minimal prior contact with a child and may occur for only a few seconds or minutes.
- Investing time and energy in presenting self as someone who is responsible and trustworthy.
- manipulating and leveraging the good intentions and beliefs of children and caregivers (telling a single mother a child needs a ‘male’ role model, being the fun relative or friend, offering extra tuition or awarding a special role: e.g. altar boy).
They don’t look evil or someone not to be trusted. They are like the friendly neighbour who will go out of their way to help you and that’s the really scary part. Peter – Musician.
Grooming of family, friends and caregivers: Those who offend work to identify and physically and emotionally separate a child from those who might protect them. They invest considerable time and energy in grooming family members, friends and caregivers, to appear helpful and trustworthy, someone who will look after a child and has the child’s best interests at heart. This is the deception and ultimate betrayal of those who offend.
Identifying and isolating: Those who offend often focus their attention on children who are vulnerable or unsupported in some way:
Children who:
- are socially isolated
- are struggling with mental health and behavioural difficulties or low self-esteem
- identify as non-heterosexual or transgender
- have experience of maltreatment, bullying, physical, emotional, sexual abuse and domestic violence
- live with a disability (O’Leary, P, Koh, E, & Dare. 2017)
While some children may be at increased risk of sexual abuse, the reality is that those who offend will manipulate situations, isolate and take advantage of opportunities to gain access to a child.
Initiating and maintaining abuse
A person may use of a range of tactics to initiate and maintain the abuse. These grooming tactics are adapted according to the contexts, characteristics and interests of those involved and can evolve over-time.
Compliance is achieved through:
Taking advantage of power imbalances: Those offending manipulate and take advantage of power imbalances by way of age, intellect, knowledge, experience, status, authority, size etc.
Intimidation: Through physical force, an assault or attack, through fear and duress, threat of harm to the child or someone they care about.
Manipulating a child’s love and affection: By highlighting the consequences for family members, siblings and friends if they do not agree to submit to abuse (“I’ll do it to your sister”).
Deception: Through exploitation of a child’s innocence, lack of understanding or comprehension of what is being done or asked of them. Plus, suggesting they have the child’s best interests at heart.
Befriending and cultivating a ‘special relationship’: An approach may involve befriending, expressing interest, providing positive emotional support and appearing as a trusted confidant to a child who is struggling or feeling isolated and unsupported.
Making a child feel special: Through providing treats, special time, giving of gifts, sharing of secrets and engaging in activities that can initially appear and be experienced as innocent, caring and fun.
Incremental desensitization: Physical contact may start with gentle touch, hugging, tickling, combing hair or rubbing feet, before escalating to increasingly more intimate and sexualised contact, such as massages or showering together.
Making aspects of the experience pleasurable: Cultivating emotional and physical intimacy – deliberately making aspects of the experience enjoyable and physically pleasurable (including to the point of orgasm).
Manipulating and mis-shaping a child’s perceptions: Amplifying a child’s confusion and uncertainty to the extent that if they do feel bad and uncomfortable about what is occurring that they perceive and feel it is a sign that they are bad and it is them who will be in trouble if people find out.
Introduction to illicit activities: People who offend manipulate children and young people by introducing them to alcohol, drugs, pornography, etc. as a means to increase their compliance and compromise their decision making.
Taking advantage of teenagers natural interest in sex: People who offend take advantage of and distort young people’s natural exploration and interest in sex and their developing bodies.
Plus, more: Above, are only some of the tactics used to isolate and make a child, fearful, emotionally dependent and personally compromised in order to manipulate and maintain abuse. These very same tactics can also work to conceal abuse.
Concealing abuse
Offenders recognise that it is when the victim/survivor is no longer in their physical presence and direct control that risk of exposure is highest. This is why offenders actively work to manipulate the victim/survivor and conceal the abuse.
Even the opportunistic offender who may have engaged in limited grooming activities prior to assaulting a child, will through threat or other means work to cover their tracks, to ensure the abuse remains a secret.
This an important point -The person offending does not see victim/survivors as powerless. They recognise that a victim/survivor has the power to expose what is occurring or has occurred and therefore they put considerable effort into silencing them and making them feel responsible for keeping the abuse a secret.
It works to the benefit of the person offending, if a child wants to forget, feels guilt, shame or blames themselves in any way for what has happened.
Remember, how in our culture, it is drilled into boys from an early age that they need to take responsibility for themselves and their choices, even if the outcome was something they did not foresee or intend.
Strategies used to conceal the abuse:
Many of the above: Tactics utilised to initiate and maintain the abuse, simultaneously work to conceal the abuse.
Direct threats of harm: To the child or those they care about. Person/s offending will assault the child, remind the child of the capacity for violence and revenge and an ability to seek out an find the child where-ever they go. They will threaten children and their loved ones, show them weapons and tell them stories emphasising their power and control.
White-anting: Actively undermining the child, highlighting that the child is a ‘bad kid’, ‘tells lies’ and is ‘not to be trusted’, thereby cutting them off from potential supports and increasing the likelihood that they will not be believed if they do speak up.
Gaslighting: Actively sowing doubt, confusing and messing with the child’s mind so that they begin to question themselves, their experience and reality (‘That’s not what happened’).
Actively cultivating affection: Many offenders actively cultivate the victim/survivor’s affection, in some instance they work to falsely configure the sexual abuse as ‘our special love’, ‘our romantic relationship’. Whereby, the child is encouraged to conceal the abuse out of concern over the possible negative impact on the person offending and their ‘special relationship’.
Leveraging homophobia: Making the child feel that they will be ostracised and people will question their sexuality and treat them differently because the person offending was also male. The adult may configure and encourage the child to see this as a ‘gay relationship’, as their ‘first love’, ignoring the age difference, deception and abusive, coercive elements of the abuse.
Making the child/young person feel compromised and fearful: By telling or reminding a child that they will be in trouble if people found out about ‘x,y,z’, illicit or criminal activities that they engaged in. In some instances, those who offend work to conceal abuse by encouraging victim/survivors to engage in sexual activities with other children, to send them explicit images or film the abuse and say images will be released if they tell anyone.
Additional barriers to disclosure: There are many more individual and community barriers to disclosure of abuse that benefit those who commit sexual offences. We encourage you to check out our pages on Disclosure
Watch out for hindsight: In looking back and reviewing grooming tactics, watch out for the hindsight and thoughts that ‘I could’ve’ or ‘should’ve’ have seen the lies and manipulation or done more.
Recognise that back then was a different time and that you were a child, be you 6yrs old or 16yrs old, and you did not have the resources and knowledge you have now. The person who deserves criticism and judgement is the person who groomed and sexually abused a child.
‘Abuser are like cruel magicians, they smile and focus your attention in one place, so that you don’t see what is going on right under your nose.’ Vivian – Mother of male survivor.
Entrapment and Resistance
Grooming is about entrapment: It is about trapping a child in a web of abuse, deceit and betrayalfrom which the child feels they cannot escape without significant consequences for them and those they care about.
Grooming tactics are used to trap and overcome a child’s resistance: It is about the use of violence, lies and manipulation to overcome the resistance and defiance of the child and children they offend against.
Your wellbeing is a priority: We encourage you to always prioritise your wellbeing and do not suggest that for survivors to live a rich and full life, they need to think about the offender or pick apart grooming activities.
We are though aware that some survivors find it useful to identify the circumstances and grooming tactics utilised and to highlight and acknowledge acts of resistance by the child.
Resistance is about exposing grooming tactics used by those who offend. When you are in a safe, supported space, it can be useful to identify:
- What grooming tactics did the person offending use to initiate and continue the abuse?
- How did the grooming tactics and offending behaviour work to conceal the abuse?
By documenting grooming tactics and ways the person/s worked to present themselves as trustworthy and gain access, we can see that the abuse did not just happen and that those who offend put considerable effort into overcoming a child’s resistance, enacting and concealing the abuse.
Acknowledging acts of resistance: There is a danger in identifying and focussing in on the grooming process and what the offender did, that we lose sight of the child and do not acknowledge and honour the acts of resistance, defiance and rebellion of victims/survivors.
In the face of violence and abuse, children and young people often take steps to reduce the severity and impacts of abuse, to resist and indicate that what is being done is not ok. Below are some small acts of courage and resistance that deserve to be acknowledged and honoured, including:
- Shutting their eyes, holding their breath, tensing their muscles and urinating
- Crying
- Seeking comfort or confiding in a pet or friend
- Freezing, playing dead, imagining they are elsewhere
- Appearing agreeable, but telling themselves ‘this is bullshit’ in their head
- Going into their own world, becoming obsessed or the best they can at some activity, even if is frowned upon
- Appearing compliant and pretending they enjoy what is happening, so that it is over with as quickly as possible, or taking some pleasure where they can
- Doing whatever it takes to stay alive and give themselves chance of a different future
- Misbehaving, being disruptive, destroying things, and telling lies
- Making themselves scarce or running away, escaping
- Stepping forward and accepting consequences in order to protect a friend
- Telling someone what is happening, even though they aren’t believed and it results in further harm and punishment
- Keeping quiet, stuffing it down, not telling anyone or talking about it, in an effort to reduce its impacts on their life and the lives of others.
These and other efforts to resist and reduce the impacts of abuse are about children exercising choice and taking control where they can, even in the most overwhelming and distressing of circumstances.
You know what I did. When I was 10 years old, I used to take my dog for a walk early each morning and I would deliberately walk past his house and have her shit on his treasured lawn. Fuck you, that’s what I would say. Josh – Army.
Remembering acts of resistance: Because we don’t want to think, talk about or remember traumatic experiences, these acts of defiance can often remain unacknowledged or even lost overtime. As part our efforts to regain control and reduce the hold abuse can have on our lives, it can be useful to name and reclaim acts of resistance and rebellion.
You might ask yourself:
- ‘In what ways did I indicate that what was occurring was not ok or seek to resist and reduce the impacts of abuse?’
- ‘How have I resisted the cruelty of abuse and worked to develop caring, respectful relationships?
Be generous, compassionate and kind to yourself. In reading through this page, in identifying grooming tactics used to gain access, initiate and maintain abuse, continue to be generous and kind to yourself and to prioritise your wellbeing.
Prioritise safety and wellbeing
Please note, the information contained on this page is general in content and is not a substitute for professional advice. We encourage you to prioritise your safety and wellbeing at all times and to consider speaking with a qualified health care professional.
References: McAlinden, AM 2012, ‘Grooming’ and the sexual abuse of children: institutional, internet and familial dimensions, Clarendon Studies in Criminology, Oxford.
O’Leary, P, Koh, E, & Dare, (2017) Grooming and child sexual abuse in institutional contexts. Publication of The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.