Grooming - younger members be alert

Subject: Grooming - younger members be alert Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:35 am

I would like to address this post to the younger members of Teen Lounge. Most of the time when we befriend someone we have never met on the Internet, it's because we usually share the same interests. However sometimes people we befriend may have ulterior motives for wanting to be your friend.

It may start out as friendly conversation, then eventually once they have your trust, lead up to more sensitive and personal conversation.

We all this grooming, and I want to share what grooming is with you, so all recognize the signs and how it happens. If any of you feel that you are being groomed by anyone, on the Internet or in person, tell you parents. If you feel it is happening here, please let Caden or an Administration know.

Online Grooming

Online grooming often involves adults or older teens creating fake profiles and posing as children or younger teens in order to befriend someone and gain their trust.

Perpetrators of child sexual abuse are not those scary men who lurk around playgrounds looking for opportunities. In fact, according to the Crimes Against Children Research Center, 90% of children who are sexually abused know their perpetrator.

Perpetrators of sexual abuse are anywhere and everywhere. They are charismatic everyday people who earn the trust of others. They could be a staff member at your child’s school; they could be your child’s coach or music instructor; they could be at your church; they could be the nanny; they could be your very own family member.

The truth is that sexual perpetrators look and act like any other “normal” person. It can be difficult to pick them out.

However, there are things that almost all perpetrators have in common: they often use certain behaviors to groom a child for abuse. These behaviors are methodical, subtle, gradual, and escalating (meaning they intensify as time goes by). We typically refer to these as grooming behaviors.

While this might be frightening to think about, knowing these grooming patterns will help you to know how to identify grooming behavior, strengthen your parenting intuition, and help significantly lower the risk of your child being sexually abused and recognize signs of grooming behavior.

Six common grooming behaviors:

01
Forming Relationships

Perpetrators seek to form relationships with children. They usually spend their spare time with children and tend to be more interested in forming relationships with children than adults.

They will single out one child as “special” and give him or her extra attention and gifts as a way to form a bond between them. They will take a special interest in a child’s look and dress and may take excessive pictures of the child.

02
Testing Boundaries

Perpetrators will try to test the boundaries of your child’s comfort levels. Sometimes they will tell off-colored or sexual jokes to see how the child will respond. They may try to play sexual games such as truth-or-dare, or strip games.

They will see how the child reacts when they enter a child’s room or normal places where children are expected to have privacy, such as the restroom.

Perpetrators thrive in secrecy, and testing boundaries helps them know if they can continue without being caught.

03
Touching

Perpetrators will test the boundaries of touch with your child. They usually begin with non-sexual touches such as high-fives and hugging. They may slowly progress to inappropriate touching such as accidentally grazing a private part of the body, just to see how the child will react. They may kiss or have the child sit on their lap.

The thing to note is they will move from very innocent touching and progress to more sexual touching in order to test the reaction of the child.

04
Intimidating

Perpetrators use intimidation in order to keep the child from telling another person about the abuse. They will begin by testing the child’s reaction to being blamed for something simple. They will see if the child pushes back or tells an adult. Then they will progress to threatening the child or causing a child to feel a sense of guilt.

They often use fear or embarrassment to keep a child from telling another person about the abuse. They may use statements such as, “No one will believe you,” or threaten them with danger (or danger to someone they love) to keep them from telling.

05
Sharing Sexually Explicit Material

Perpetrators often share sexual material in order to normalize sex. They will use sexual terms freely in the presence of your child. They will show sexual pictures or videos. They will often begin a sexual relationship through messaging or texting first.

06
Communicating Secretly

Perpetrators will look for any communication channel to communicate with a child secretly. Often these interactions begin online. They often encourage texting, emailing and all calls to be secret. Remember perpetrators thrive in secrecy, so they will always encourage the child to keep everything silent.

» Grooming/abuse?
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» ‘Faith’s Law’ looks to protect Illinois students from grooming, sexual abuse

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Grooming - younger members be alert