How do online sex offenders target and groom children

This dissertation explores victimisation of children by online sexual offenders, strategies they use to groom and measures put in place to protect children from them. To provide answers to the way offenders target and groom children over the internet, the dissertation had to employ a critical review of literature that already exists, along with a Thematic Analysis of themes that have been identified by the research carried out. The Chances of children to be groomed online are resulted by their vulnerability, and how they use the web, especially through Social Networking Sites. Online self-representation via profiles and privacy issues increase the chances for a child to be targeted by online groomers. Moreover, the dissertation also found that educating adolescents on online sexual solicitation should be paramount.

A wide range of terminologies are used to describe online offenders and online sex offences. A commonly utilised term is the (OCSE) “Online Child Sexual Exploitation. ” (OCSE). Many ways were suggested by Durkin (1997) on the manner in which these offences take place: “the distribution and exchange of Child Pornography (CP) or Indecent Images Of Children (IIOC); locating potential victims for sexual abuse; communicating in a sexually inappropriate way, and corresponding with likeminded adults regarding sexual interest in children” (Durkin 1997). Another type of OCSE was additionally described by Ospina et al. Other potential benefits of the thesis include enhancing knowledge on the manner internet offender’s work through studying their patterns. Not only will the legislation and policy get informed by the information, (Marcum, 2007) but, it may be of meaning to criminal justice enforcers on detecting and interpreting their tactics.

(Kloess et al. For instance, an offender’s inner motive can only be understood through learning the process of grooming. In addition, a sparse pool of studies that uses an approach of direct analysis will highly benefit from the dynamic process proposed in the thesis. But the proposal has not yet been updated to date by the Commonwealth government, as highlighted on June 28th, 2007 that specific considerations need to be addressed in the first place. That same year, on 27th July an editorial was pressed in support of Myspace proposal stating: “We must be more proactive in keeping predators off the websites that attract the young. In this regard, proposals from the MySpace website are moderate and worth exploring. MySpace does not want a public list of offenders or even access to such a list.

It wants to be able to supply email addresses of its members to the Federal Government agency CrimTrac to see if they match any on the Australian National Child Offence Register. However, this happens to be a considerable chance for offenders to find various platforms of engaging in deviant behaviours. Similarly, Gillespie (2002) adds that anonymity, accessibility, and affordability as created by the internet has made it easier to carry on these inhuman behaviours against children. In 2016 for instance 11. 252 counseling sessions were provided by Childline in relation to threat to the safety and online abuse (NSPCC, 2016). It is in the likelihood that the Triple-A factors, (anonymity, accessibility, and affordability) help the offender to cross several obstacles that may prevent offline sexual offenses.

1) with characteristics such as “Differences in behaviours, offense motivation, and demographics. ” For instance, a lesser paedophilic interest is reported by online sexual groomers, but their preoccupation level and CP is rated to be high as opposed to sexual offend who encounter with their victims off the web (Seto, Wood, Babchishin & Flynn, 2012). The demographic difference, however, suggests that legal history for a few of online groomers is likely to be absent than sex offenders who do it offline (Wolak & Finkelhor, 2013). Shelton et al. (2016) identified some unusual behaviours between CP offenders, offline child offenders, and online groomers. “Grooming the child” involves finding a potential victim willing to comply with the action and is susceptible to the strategies used in the grooming process. Vulnerabilities such as mental health issues, low self-esteem, introvert, and victimisation in the past are some of the characteristics that groomers might be looking for when identifying a potential victim (Kloess et al.

Through these behaviours, the offender will maintain secrecy, and “avoid disclosure, all of which may act to increase the offender’s justification and minimisation regarding the impact of the behaviour” (Craven et al. People may assume that manipulation is used to groom or to coerce a child to repeated Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) (Whittle et al. , 2013a). Other studies such as (Wolak et al. , 2008) duplicated Kloess’s findings and even led to questionable ideas on whether motives drive the offenders with pseudo accounts to those with real accounts (Williams, Elliott & Beech, 2013). The Internet Online platforms have a lot of potential victims that can be persuaded by sex groomers. This dissertation intends to vividly explore and explain the process that online sex offenders use to target children and groom them for sexual abuse.

Accessibility is what the internet uses to largely alter ways that online sex offenders carry out their grooming activities. Hartley’s research was done in 2009, and when compared to that done by Livingstone and Bober in 2005, the deference shows how much it has an impact to prevalence of the web and how assets are ever made online without stopping for even a minute. One can also conclude that these two studies exhibit the number of risk children might encounter when they access the internet. Livingstone and Bober’s 2005 study explored on what these youngsters utilise the web for, they found that members who get to it for school work add up to 90% and the individuals who utilise it for general or obscure data are 94%.

Emails, online communication, and instant messaging are among the reason many participants access the internet. A graph (figure 1) extracted from Livingstone and Bober’s study (2005: p10) shows online popularity access of people aged 9-19. Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, are some of the SNSs that motivates adolescents to use the internet. A number of teenagers aged 12-17 years who utilise SNSs stand at about 55% (Lenhart and Madden, 2007). Girls mostly use SNSs to keep hold of an existing relationship whereas boys used this platform to find new friends and flirt with girls (Lenhart and Madden, 2007). Facebook owns more than 500 million active subscribers. It was initially developed in 2004 as a “social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and co-workers” (Facebook, 2011).

Many people interact through chatrooms even though they are not social networking sites as such. CEOP (2009) defines chatrooms as “an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). Sometimes these venues are moderated either by limiting who is allowed to speak (not common), or by having moderation volunteers patrol the venue watching for disruptive or otherwise undesirable behaviour” (Child Exploitation and Online Centre, 2009). All around the world the young adults and adolescents are known to exploit the most out of these chat rooms. They provide new ways of exhibiting one’s character; managing the circle of friendship and fixing issues to do with privacy (Livingstone and Brake, 2010). One teenager among the participants said that a profile picture displays confident mood and feeling of a person that cannot be shown or felt through verbal descriptions.

A female teenage also added that she chooses to upload her profile picture so that she could get more likes and views, that way she feels that she is liked and cared for (Livingstone, 2008). The research demonstrates that people have different ways of presenting themselves via SNSs, some make use of the image in a profile so serious while some do not care at all. Privacy problems Jukes and Yar, (2010:332) quote that “Given that the main motivation for using social networking sites is to communicate and meet people, young people felt that disclosing personal information was essential. ” Online identity amongst teenagers was studied in relation to weblogs and SNSs content, whereby the world sees the history of personal details (Huffaker and Calvert, 2005).

Private information such as full names, age, location or personal views. However, Social Networking Sites might also have a wrong hand in this since most of them require a person to key in such information when signing up. Privacy, as referred by Stein and Sinha (2002:414), is “the rights of individuals to enjoy autonomy, to be left alone, and to determine whether and how information about one's self is revealed to others. ” The notion of Social Networking Sites directly relates to this term. Privacy has been identified by this research in a qualitative way, but that does not mean all adolescents share views since 16 teenagers in a study are not enough to determine the reasoning capacity of whole teenagers. Noll et al.

(2009) concluded that vulnerability of the child to be victimised over the internet might increase over time. Online sexual grooming Oost, (2004) suggests that the act of grooming directly leads to sexual abuse of a child and thus all sexual offenders utilize it to get to their victims. Sexual; grooming does not have a definite definition, even the Sexual Offenses Act 2003 lacks an operationalized term (Home Office, 2003). An in-depth understanding of the phenomenon might be the main reason behind the lack of its definition, and most importantly gaining a clear understanding of people who groom children for sexual abuse over the internet (Seto et al. But as Kloess et al. (2014) say grooming happens when a child is prepared for sexual abuse through the use of an offender’s behaviours and strategies.

Therefore, in a grooming process, the vital concept is trust development, and rapport (Olson, Daggs, Ellevold & Rogers 2007). Grooming the environment of a targeted child develops a perceived exclusive connection, this happens by disconnecting her from her friends, positive mentors and family. Chance of such a strategy leans on the side of the groomer for he will have earned the trust to control. A grounded theory of literature that existed before motivated the development of this theory. It explains a step by step process of grooming on how victims “physical and emotional access is granted to the offenders and further explores the maintenance or disruption of sexual abuse” (Olson et al. Among the critical aspects explored by the theory is the entrapment cycle; it happens by reducing the ability to know what is right or wrong, the offender does this by tampering with the psychological emotion of the victim.

Grooming of the environment, and developing trust with the child is what leads to the achievement of the cycle. For successful grooming of a child, a number of strategies and styles are employed by the offenders. Hence the offender makes sure that detection and compliance of the victim with secrecy are priorities. Exposing the victim to pornographic materials is a way of desensitising while involving rewards, gifts, and incentives may be ways that reduce their inhibition (Beech et al. More creative strategies other than the ones mentioned may be employed during grooming. Moreover, feelings of shame and guilt by the victim, are also capitalised to the maximum by the offenders (Craven et al. Victims can also be manipulated when the offender threatens to clear away exclusivity and affection, so no one will believe the victim if so the offender will not be blamed but the victim.

After an interview with twelve offenders as the participants, three central themes occurred; secret space of privacy created by the internet, accessible interaction with teenagers, and chances for the acquisition of rapid skills. Offenders can screen for potential victims since the web offers them several contacts, through this, they also learn ways of selecting potential victims. Moreover, the study also indicated that it was easier to manipulate their identity over the internet so avoid detection. Regarding sexual preoccupation, low-risk offenders and child pornography offers cannot be closely compared to the ability that online sexual groomers can do, this includes the level of education, and stability of relationship (Seto et al. In addition, Elliott & Beech, (2009) suggested that the goals of every sexual groomer are different from another’s, they cannot be classified as a homogenous group.

Governing bodies and charities help the page promote children safety online. Not all computers hold the safety protection card, so it is right for adolescents to understand the risks that may be brought about. A child may, for example, go to a friend’s house, log on, but forget to log off. Online communication for internet sexual predators will still be accessible; they may find always find a loophole because most of them are technologically intelligent (Dombrowski et al. Summary This chapter fully discloses that adolescents depend on the internet as part of their lives. Interview questions were posed on every participant to tell on how sexual offenders target and groom the children and later abuse them sexually. The only weakness I encountered during the interview is that most of the interviewees didn’t want to disclose some of the vital information.

On observation method, I went on certain hotel in town where most of the people who have met in the internet come to meet and know each other. A big percentage of the people who came were the children who had been contacted by online offenders. I also met a girl aged 15 years who had been sexually tortured by online offenders. Mathews and Ross (2010) define it as a process of data engagement where description, interpretation, and its evaluation takes place in regards to the assumptions, objective and questions posed by the research. Literature critique and review is explored through data analysis. Forming arguments in research is also a way that will help during data analysis. Several components may be used when creating a discussion; “claim, evidence, warrant, and support.

” Fisher (1993) utilizes critical reading as his method of data analysis. Nonetheless, literature reviewed on sociological and behavioral science is borrowed from Sociological Abstracts. Its database has information gathered in forms such as journals, articles, dissertations, and books (ProQuest, 2009). This dissertation had to use data from Sociological abstracts because it had sources from different perspectives which offered a more comprehensive view of data. Table 2 Keywords used Keywords utilized Sources used Number of hits Number of clicks used “Social Networking Sites and Vulnerability” • PsychINFO, • Scopus, • Sociological Abstracts 168 10 “Social Networking Sites and Cyber-grooming” 8 3 “Vulnerability and The Internet” 9792 12 “Sex Crimes and The Internet” 1705 10 “Grooming and The Internet” 950 15 “Sexual and Grooming” 4187 9 “Sex Offenders and Sensitive Area” 340 2 “Sex Offenders and Treatment Programs” 1700 3 “Sex Offenders Register” 550 1 Thematic Analysis Findings Three subordinate themes were concluded after a thematic analysis: (1) rapport-building (2) Sexual content (3) Assessment Rapport-building is the first main theme that was identified by the analysis.

This theme describes the process by which the offender seeks to create a friendship and/or relationship with the child. Sexual Content It is clear that a key aim within the sexual grooming of children online is to engage the child in some sexual-related discussion. Within this theme there are two key concepts for which the offender must develop a strategy: (1) The introduction of sexual content into the conversation (2) The maintenance and escalation of sexually-related conversation. The strategy for the introduction of sexual content into the conversation apparent within the transcripts and these strategies differ in technique for example, one offender approaches the topic by asking about the child’s personal life. Another offender introduces sexual content by using the illusion of participating within a game.

Two of the offenders adopt a strategy of providing sexual ‘advice’ to the child. They follow the child internet user they are interested in, in the social media platforms and convince them to be friends. The data collected shows that the child internet user falls into this trap easily because most of the children aged 8-18 years spend almost 8 hours online daily. Their main interest in the social media to get friends, interact with them and learn from them. This makes the online sexual offenders to take advantage of them and sexually abuse (Wolak et al. Measures put in place to protect children from online sexual offenders. Both the child and caregiver will learn a lot on SNSs, as the child understands concerns of an adult on online access, the caregiver will gain knowledge on social networking sites.

This strategy, however, should not be utilized to manage how the adolescent accesses the internet (Dombrowski et al. Measures put in place should barely apply to the parents since the primary target is the child (Wolak et al. There might be less effect when a parent or a supervisor manages a child who has been sexually assaulted. Alternatively, parents may think that educating them will lead to a closer interaction between there vulnerable children who were not close or who have experienced sexual abuse. Predators can be stopped through psychoeducational techniques. However, criminal justice perceives that measure should be considered when dealing with offenders. In spite of the prevention methods mentioned, criminal prosecution may not be capable of protecting victims instead it is there duty to be safe, gain individual and community protection.

Criminal justice may have a difficult time policing internet sex offenders. Unlike before when there was a stereotypical sex offender, anyone today can be an internet sex offender; male or female, adult or young. This dissertation was successful in researching and providing vivid answers to the questions posed. Moreover, the thesis has verified that to date online sexual grooming is a problem that is still at large. Online sexual grooming and abuse remain to be targeting teenagers despite remarks from other studies that media is creating a moral panic. An attempt by the criminal justice to eradicate has not been successful as demanded by some. Most recent studies have proved that it is tough to track an offender at grooming stage thus, educating potential victims on the danger at hand is the only solution left that should be implemented.

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