“Grooming works by mixing positive behaviours with elements of abuse. In the beginning, all behaviours are positive. Slowly, harsh elements are added in amounts that surprise the survivor but do not push the alarm to a high level. Over time the inappropriate come to feel normal.” Michael Samsel
What is Grooming?
Grooming is the predatory act of manoeuvring another individual into a position that makes them more isolated, dependent, likely to trust, and more vulnerable to abusive behaviour. The goal is to prepare the other person for abuse (for example, sexual or financial) later. Therefore, the first step the groomer takes is to establish friendship and trust.
Adult grooming is correspondent to child grooming and applies to any situation where an adult is primed to allow him or herself to be exploited or abused. It happens online and in real life.
What kind of person practices grooming?
Narcissists, Antisocial predators, con-artists and sexual aggressors practice grooming to target and manipulate vulnerable people for exploitation. Grooming has escalated worldwide thanks to the internet because it is so easy for predators to create false profiles. Currently, there are more than 500,000 predators are online every day, worldwide.
Cat-fishing
The definition of catfishing is: Luring someone into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona.
There are two kinds of catfishing:
· A person is pretending to be me – the person stole your photos and or identity and used this to trick other people. Example: You discover someone entered your details on an adult website to entice prospective clients when the clients start calling you. The person illegally published your information and sensitive information like your home address on the site, putting you in danger from predators. The person can be prosecuted for impersonation and jailed. If this happens to you, contact the site immediately to state you were catfished. They will close the catfish down.
· You have been catfished – you believe you were speaking to a person, when in fact, you were speaking to someone else entirely. Example: A lonely lady enters her details into a dating website. She is catfished by a person who created a false profile and who pretends to match her likes and wants 100%. She discovers the fraud once the person starts blackmailing, bullying or extortion tactics in one or the other way to hurt you.
Who are the victims of grooming?
The scary thing is anyone can become a victim of grooming – especially people with soft boundaries or whose defences are down. Because there is no prototypical victim, anyone can be vulnerable to grooming.
A young student met a guy more than 12 years her senior from another country via a dating game site. She played an online game with him that simulated the perfect romantic relationship. She eventually fell in madly love with him – assuming he was the same as her “online boyfriend”. She invited him to come and visit her. She tended to him hand-and-foot while he called. The relationship became sexual. He went back to his country, and he coerced her to get engaged. He paid for her ticket to visit him. The visit was a disaster – he hurt her emotionally with insults, they spend little time together, and she described it as a nightmare. Back home, she started getting nightmares about the relationship and broke off the engagement. When she got so far as to start asking for help, being already so well-groomed, she defended his actions. However, she was asking for advice about a relationship that turned into a nightmare.
A mature lady was defrauded of thousands of rand when she met a guy via an online dating site. He told her he worked on an oil rig in the Atlantic Ocean. He wooed her mercilessly and then told her he wanted to visit her. She had to forward him the money for the flights because his money was tied up somewhere. She was so groomed that she went to the bank and acquired a bank loan for the amount. She transferred the money to him. He bought tickets and gave her his arrival date at the airport. She went to the airport and waited for him. He never arrived. While she was still waiting, he called her. He told her he was abducted in Africa and needed the considerable ransom for his release. Only then it dawned on her she has been conned. She confronted him, and he laughed while telling her he has done this numerous times before. She has been severely traumatized and will have to deal with the trauma and financial loss for years to come.
The bottom line is: Don’t talk to people online that you don’t know!
How does an offender go about grooming another person?
There are firstly three primary goals a groomer focuses on to control the environment of a victim:
AFFILIATION: An offender has to gain access to potential adult victims. Predators are masters in positioning themselves in the proximity of a possible victim. They join social groups, participate in group activities or meet potential victims online via, for example, dating games.
ACCEPTANCE: The next step is to manipulate the perceptions of other people in such a way that the offender is socially accepted by “the group”. The predator needs the group to see him as a good match and valuable partner to the victim. For example, the group won’t ask difficult questions to a person that they accepted. Secondarily, in ongoing abuse situations, the offender will manipulate the environment so that the victim will acceptably withdraw from the group. The power and charm of a predator over a victim are scary. Groomers are great con men.
ASSURANCE: An offender thirdly has to ensure ongoing access to the victim. He ensures that the group or environment perceives him as harmless. By doing this, the offender diminishes the ability of the victim to escape it or be believed.
No one can bring themselves to believe “such a nice guy” could do such a thing. Most offenders also possess power – be it political, monetary, or absolute power in a husband or parent. Some also have celebrity status, for example, in media or sports.
The grooming process
A predator will identify and engage a victim and work to gain the target’s trust, break down defences, and manipulate the victim until they get whatever they are after. Overt attention, verbal seduction (flattery/ego stroking), recruitment, physical isolation, charm, gift-giving, normalizing, gas-lighting, secrecy, and threats are hallmarks of grooming.
Predators work in the shadows and have something to hide.
· Predators claim to feel a “special connection” with their targets, even if they’ve only just met.
· Predators recruit co-conspirators (forced teaming) to fight their battles and do their bidding.
· Predators draw their victims in by sharing private information and then swearing them to secrecy.
· Predators practice divide-and-conquer techniques to manipulate others.
What does grooming feel like?
Grooming can feel exhilarating – at first. The predator employs attentiveness, sensitivity, (false) empathy, and plenty of positive reinforcement to seduce their victim. For their part, victims can be so enthralled with or overwhelmed by the attention they are receiving; they will often overlook or ignore red flags that might alert them that the person who is showering them with that attention is somehow “off”. Little by little, the abuser breaks through a victim’s natural defences, gains trust, and manipulates or coerces the victim into doing their bidding.
The victim finds themselves willingly handing over money or assets, engaging in inappropriate, illegal or morally ambiguous actives ( for example, sharing nude photos or videos of themselves), or acting as a proxy for the abuser, fighting the abuser’s battles, and carrying out their will. The victim often feels confusion, shame, guilt, remorse, and disgust at their participation. Equally powerful is the panic that comes with the threat of being exposed for engaging in these activities. Often the person on the “other side” is a con artist with a false profile who makes a living out of extortion of money from their “victims”. There may also be an overwhelming fear of losing the emotional bond that has been established with an abuser. As a result, the victim becomes trapped, depressed, discouraged or anxious and fearful of being exposed.
Note: Skills the offender uses to entrap his victim:
A “groomer” skillfully plays with words, learns to identify what the perceived victim wants to hear, and uses this knowledge for personal gain, to direct and to keep the focus of her attention exclusively to meeting his emotional and physical needs — at the expense of her own.
A groomer takes pleasure in skillfully causing pain to increase his sense of control – he keeps her squarely focused on not upsetting or angering him.
There are six main stages to grooming:
· Targeting the victim
· Gaining the victim’s trust
· Filling a need
· Isolating the victim
· Sexualizing the relationship
· Maintaining control
The groomer /offender goes beyond typical pick-up lines and uses language in such a way as to
· Gain the victim’s complete and unquestioning trust.
· Isolate her from others, so he possesses exclusive rights to her attention.
· Threaten and intimidate her into giving in to his demands without questioning him.
· Blame her for any abuse he commits against her, himself, or others.
· Treat her as an object that does not have feelings, wants, or thoughts. etc., of her own.
· Make her feel like he’s doing her a favour by keeping her around.
· Reinforce his position as “the boss.”
The bad news is that this can even happen in a marriage.
An “emotional groomer uses some or all of the following tactics to maintain control:
Jealousy and possessiveness – He lets her know she is his “territory” and that it is natural for him to ensure no one else is “messing” with her mind or body. The predator reflects insatiable neediness to be in control and to have her attention entirely focused on him, his needs, and so on.
Use of insecurity – He vacillates between
(1) acting insecure, seeking pity, or asking for constant reassurance of her love and loyalty; and
(2) filling her with a sense of insecurity, making her think that no one else wants her, that she is stupid, or incapable of caring for herself.
Anger powered by blame – He uses outbursts of anger to get what he wants and makes her think she’s to blame for his anger outbursts and that, unless she gives in to his demands, her life will be miserable. (This can be potentially dangerous if the anger becomes an addictive pattern associated with a “high” or a rush of power, even more so in cases where a pattern forms of first hurting her, then getting sex as a reward.)
Intimidation – Similar to anger, he uses an array of “don’t mess with me or else” tactics, which can be
· scary words,
· facial expressions, or
· physical gestures, or even
· sexually suggestive behaviours
All of which serve his intention to keep her at a perceived lower status than him, where she fears harm or disapproval.
Accusations – He turns minor or innocent events into occasions to accuse her of betrayal, disloyalty, etc. — and may even make up lies to falsely accuse her to play with her mind. The accusations stem from neediness to have her anxiously focused on him –
· on his pain,
· hurts, or
· need for her to assure him that he is the “only one” that matters to her.
(This can put children at risk of neglect, abuse, etc., in cases where the groomer demands that his needs take excessive priority over the children’s.)
Flattery – He knows how to use language to impress, give compliments, appear trustworthy, and so on, providing it serves his purpose. Thus, he knows how to make her think she is the greatest (but only to him). However, his flattery differs from praise in that it is shallow, insincere, and often sexually graphic, inappropriate, and unwanted. It may also occur only when the goal is to get sex or position himself to keep her dependent on him in a perceived competition with another source of care and protection, i.e., her family.
Status – He uses his status, i.e., popularity, career, or athletic success, to lure her into giving sex and makes it known that he is doing her a favour by giving her his time and attention. A groomer also seeks to maintain his status with other males by being sexual, i.e., boasting about how sexed-up he is, how much sex he gets, how many women are after him, etc.
Bribery – He buys material things with the expectation that he is entitled to get sex as a “payback” for spending “his” money on her.
These thought control tactics are part of the grooming process, designed to shape her beliefs so that they conform to promoting his aims for her to make him ‘feel’ that he is superior, entitled, and in possession of her emotional needs for his own. The beliefs he seeks to instill:
· Sex is proof of or equates to love.
· It is normal to have a sustained, intense sexual desire.
· She is defective or inferior to the extent that she wants less sex than he does.
· Sexual behaviour is a woman’s “duty” or “responsibility” to men.
· Sex is the ultimate proof of her love or “loyalty and devotion.”
· It’s normal for him to be in charge of her wants, body, and activities as he knows better.
· His possessiveness is evidence of his love, care, and protection (thus, she should feel grateful, beholden).
· It’s her “job” to make him “feel” that he is superior to others, more entitled, and that she makes this, and him, her focus.
Looking over these tactics and the beliefs that drive them, it is evident that among men, in particular, these are seen as as “normal” ways that men (or the ones with “status” or “power”) are expected to relate to women to get sex and to keep women “in their place.” It is especially true for men who consider themselves as having “traditional family” values.
What if the grooming happened online?
How to spot a catfish:
The following may be signs that a person is a creep or online predator:
· A person who refuses to Skype, do face-time chats, or voice chats.
· A person whose story changes as time goes along
· A person’s story sounds too good to be true – it usually is!
· A person who tells you they want to meet, sets up the meeting, and then cancels at the last moment.
Can a person be criminally charged for online grooming and extortion?
Depending on the nature of the acts of cyberbullying, the perpetrator may be criminally charged with the following criminal offences:
Crimen injuria
Crimen injuria consists of the unlawful, intentional and severe violation of the dignity or privacy of another person. Crimen Injuria can also be committed by communicating to somebody else a message containing, expressly or implicitly, an invitation to or a suggestion of sexual immorality or impropriety or by sending indecent photos.
Assault
Assault is defined as any unlawful and intentional act or omission:
· which results in another person’s bodily integrity being directly or indirectly impaired, or
· which inspires belief or fear in a person that such impairment of their physical integrity is immediately to occur.
Cyberbullying, whereby the perpetrator threatens the victim with personal violence, and his conduct inspires fear or a belief in the victim that such personal violence is to take place, may therefore fall within the ambit of the definition of assault.
Criminal defamation
Criminal defamation is the unlawful and intentional publication of a matter concerning another, which tends to injure their reputation seriously. Criminal defamation includes both verbal and written defamation. However, it is a requirement the defamatory words must have come to the notice of someone other than the victim. If not, the perpetrator can only be charged with crimen injuria. Slanderous remarks in chat rooms, on social networking sites, e-mails, text messages or instant messages to third parties are some methods of committing cyberbullying that will fall within the ambit of this criminal offence.
Extortion
Extortion is committed when a person unlawfully and intentionally obtains some advantage, which may be of either a patrimonial or non-patrimonial nature, from another by subjecting the latter to pressure, which induces them to hand over the advantage. For example, regarding cyberbullying, extortion may be committed where a person intentionally and unlawfully threatens to electronically distribute images about another person unless the victim hands the perpetrator the advantage.
Source: CYBERBULLYING IssuePaper10-Legalreponses-cyberbullying-SA
Get help
Services that hide your IP addresss:
Young girls and single moms are usually the unsuspecting victims of common scams as people with bad intentions quickly gain trust. Every year there are approximately 100 murders, 16 000 abductions and thousands of rapes conducted by online predators. The number of romance scams and cyberstalking incidents has increased as well, which is why services that hide your IP address making your browsing anonymous have multiplied as well.
What NOT to Do:
· Don’t trust too soon or share too much with someone you’ve only just met. Remember there are approximately 500 000 predators online per day, searching for victims.
· Don’t fall for false flattery or verbal seduction. Even though you feel you have met your perfect match, the truth is no one matches you 100%. It is a red flag.
· Don’t compromise your boundaries.
· Never take nude photos of yourself. You never know where it will end up. Your image might be saved in a cloud; at the same time, it was saved on your cell phone. Anyone can hack that. Another dumb act is to send them to another person online.
· Don’t allow yourself to be isolated from others against your own better judgment.
· Don’t blame yourself for how the other person is behaving.
· Don’t stay in the room with another person if the situation becomes physically, verbally or emotionally unhealthy.
· Never keep who you are talking to online a secret. Secrets are red flags. Always share with someone you trust.
What to do:
· Use caution around someone you may have only just met, who pays you too many compliments, gives you too much attention, demands too much of your time, shares too much information, or tries to swear you to secrecy.
· Don’t engage in online dating games. Predators frequent these sites because they know vulnerable, lonely people surf there.
· Question motives. If it is too good t be true, it usually is. Block the person immediately.
· Be vigilant. Learn to pay attention to your gut, and trust those feelings to guide you.
· Remind yourself you are not to blame for what a predator is attempting to do to you.
· Learn to say no, and mean it.
· Block the person/s on your cell phone if you feel threatened.
· If the situation is serious, talk to the police. Online bullying is illegal. You can lay a criminal charge against such a person.
· Remember – any crime committed via the internet or cell phone is traceable.
Quiz
Good reads:
Selfies, Sexting and Smartphones. A teenager’s online survival guide. Emma Sadleir. October 2017