“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 groomer’s first step is to establish friendship and trust.
Adult grooming corresponds 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 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:
If someone has pretended to be you, they may have used your photos or identity to deceive others. For example, they might have used your information on a website to attract clients, putting you at risk. This is illegal, and the person responsible can be prosecuted and jailed for impersonation. If this happens, contact the website immediately and explain the situation. They should take action to stop the impersonation. If you believe you have been tricked by someone posing as a different person, you have been “catfished.” This means you thought you were communicating with one person, but it was someone else. For example, someone may have created a fake profile on a dating site to manipulate or harm 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 online via a dating game site who was more than 12 years older than her. He lived in another country, and she played an online game with him that simulated the perfect romantic relationship. She eventually fell in love with him – assuming he was the same in real life as his “online persona”. She invited him to come and see her. She tended to him hand and foot while he visited. The relationship became sexual. He returned to his country and 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 spent 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.
After meeting a man on an online dating site, a mature woman was defrauded of thousands of rand. He claimed to work on an oil rig in the Atlantic Ocean and pursued her relentlessly. Eventually, he asked her to send money for his flights because his funds were tied up. His manipulation took her in, so she took out a bank loan and transferred the money to him. He claimed to have bought tickets and gave her an arrival date, but he never showed up. Instead, he called her from an undisclosed location in Africa, claiming to have been abducted and demanding a ransom for release. It was only then that she realized she had been conned. He callously admitted to having previously orchestrated similar scams when she confronted him. The woman has been left severely traumatized and will endure the emotional and financial repercussions for years to come.
The bottom line is: Don’t talk to people you don’t know online!
More information on the prevalence of online grooming:
How does an offender go about grooming another person?
There are three primary goals that a groomer focuses on to control the environment of a victim:
AFFILIATION: Offenders gain access to potential adult victims by positioning themselves in the proximity of the victim. They join social groups, participate in group activities, or meet potential victims online through platforms such as dating websites.
ACCEPTANCE: The next step is to manipulate the perceptions of others to gain social acceptance within the group. The predator must be seen as a good match and a valuable partner to the victim. For example, the group will not question someone they have accepted. In ongoing abuse situations, the offender will manipulate the environment so that the victim withdraws from the group. The power and charm of a predator over a victim can be frightening. Groomers are skilled at gaining trust.
ASSURANCE: Additionally, an offender ensures ongoing access to the victim by portraying themselves as harmless to the group or environment. This diminishes the victim’s ability to escape or be believed. Offenders often possess power, whether it be political, financial, or absolute power within a familial relationship. Some may also have celebrity status, such as 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 often manipulate their victims by claiming to feel a “special connection” with them, even in the early stages of their interaction. They may also enlist co-conspirators (forced teaming) to assist them and exert control. Moreover, predators entice their targets by sharing intimate details and then insisting on secrecy. They also employ divide-and-conquer strategies to manipulate those around them effectively.”
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 receive that they will often overlook or ignore red flags that might alert them that the person 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 activities ( for example, sharing nude photos or videos of themselves), 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.
The panic that comes with the threat of being exposed for engaging in these activities is equally powerful. Often, the person on the “other side” is a con artist with a false profile who makes a living out of extorting 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, 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 on 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 resisting 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 GROOMING 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 an 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 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
- needs 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.
“Thought control tactics” are often employed as a part of the grooming process to manipulate and shape the beliefs of an individual in a manner that aligns with the perpetrator’s agenda. These tactics are specifically crafted to bolster the perpetrator’s sense of superiority, entitlement, and control over the individual’s emotional well-being. The beliefs that the perpetrator aims to instil typically include:”
Examples:
- Sex is proof of or equates to love.*
- It is, therefore, expected 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 shows his love, care, and protection (thus, she should feel grateful and indebted).
- It’s her “job” to make him “feel” that he is superior to others and 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.” This is especially true for men who consider themselves to have “traditional family” values.
*The idea that sex is proof of love is flawed and doesn’t hold in all cases. Love is a complex and multifaceted emotion that involves much more than physical intimacy. While sex can be an expression of love for some individuals, it’s essential to understand that love encompasses various aspects such as trust, respect, communication, and emotional connection. It’s important not to equate sex with love, as love goes beyond physical expressions and involves deep emotional bonds and genuine care for another person.
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 FaceTime 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 will immediately 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 when 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; CENTRE FOR JUSTICE AND CRIME PREVENTION; CJCP Issue Paper; No. 10; August 2011.
Get help
Services that hide your IP address:
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 also increased, 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, 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 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 to 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