Grooming Children into Child Sexual Abuse and Its Effects on Adult Trauma Symptoms

Background/Aim: Grooming, in the context of child sexual abuse (CSA), refers to the systematic physical and psychological desensitization of a child through engagement in a set of behaviors used to develop trust, gain access to, build rapport, create opportunity, establish compliance, and ensure secrecy of a target victim (Bennett & O’Donohue, 2014). To achieve these goals, it is imperative that the sexual offender groom the child victim, their environment, and institutions both come in contact with (Craven, Brown, & Gilchrist, 2006; McAlinden, 2006; McAlinden, 2012). This study examined the ways that perpetrators groom their victims, and then examined the effects of grooming methods on trauma symptoms in adult survivors of CSA.

Methods: After IRB approval was obtained, a retrospective online study was conducted by placing links to the survey on adult survivor of CSA websites. 88 websites were contacted and 35 websites agreed to post the link to our study (40% response rate). Potential participants clicked a link on one of those websites to participate in this study. A final sample of 297 adult survivors were anonymously surveyed. The CSA Subscale of the Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory (CAMI) was used to assess for grooming and child sexual abuse experiences with the first three perpetrators (DiLillo et al., 2010). The Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) was used to assess trauma symptoms (Elliott & Briere, 1992).  Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to determine grooming types. Linear Regressions and Multiple Linear Regressions were used to assess predictive effect on trauma symptoms.

Results: The EFA revealed three types of grooming (Verbal Coercion, Drug/Alcohol Grooming, Threatening/Violent Grooming), and the most common type of grooming used on the survivors in this study was Verbal Coercion. Linear regressions were used to measure the predictive effect of each type of grooming with each subscale of the TSC-40 (Anxiety, Depression, Sexual Abuse Trauma, Sleep Problems, Sex Problems, and Dissociation). Each of these relationships was significant (all p’s < .05). Multiple Linear Regressions revealed that for most trauma symptoms, Threatening/Violent Grooming was a significant predictor of trauma symptom severity, even when other more well-known variables were controlled for (including age at onset of abuse, relationship to perpetrator, and severity of abuse), with a notable exception of Verbal Coercion as a significant predictor of sexual problems in adulthood.

Conclusions and Implications: This study’s results have clinical, research, and policy level implications. Clinically, these results suggest that the grooming aspect of the abuse needs to be considered as part of the abuse experience, instead of as acts that lead to the abuse experience. As such, clinicians can incorporate these findings into their work with survivors and adult sexual offenders. Future research needs to examine the prevalence, type, and impact of grooming on victim and offender outcomes. Future research also needs to investigate the impact of therapeutic interventions that include grooming as part of the abuse experience. On a policy level, prudent policy makers would be in concert with other countries that criminalize grooming in an effort towards prevention as well as recidivism.