Children and Young People’s Vulnerabilities to Grooming

Abstract

Child abuse is evolving, pervasive and complex and children are vulnerable to its widespread reach in many aspects of their lives, from face-to-face interactions to those they have online. This chapter aims to review contemporary literature which outlines the vulnerabilities of children to face-to-face and online grooming as part of a process leading to child abuse and exploitation. The chapter will undertake a review of literature on two aspects of grooming: child sexual exploitation (CSE) and radicalisation. It will draw on contemporary case examples to illustrate grooming drawn from UK Serious Case Reviews (SCR) on CSE and, on radicalisation, the case of the three girls from Bethnal Green who were groomed for travel to Syria. It will then reflect on the push and pull factors of grooming to highlight the similarities between CSE and radicalisation. Moving on, the chapter will then consider how and if interactive social media simulations, linked to an innovative, preventative educational approach and designed with reference to Vygotsky's social construction theory, have the potential to educate young people to help protect them from being groomed. The chapter will then make reference to the findings of a small pilot study which evaluated the use of this approach with young people.Keywords: child abuse, grooming, preventative learning, simulations, radicalisation, child sexual exploitation The context of grooming in the UKWhile many children across the globe experience happy, secure childhoods, amassing the skills to help them thrive into adulthood, many are abused in the most horrific and sustained ways possible. UNICEF in a report from 2014 [1] estimate that around 120 million girls worldwide (about 1 in 10) will have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. time in their lives; a shocking almost incomprehensible amount. Child abuse is an evolving, pervasive contemporary social problem for humanity, but for some it is a multi-million pound business with transactions carried out on the 'dark web' via the internet as well as face-to-face in contact abuse. Some young people are born into this type of abuse in families or community circumstances or latterly in the form of trafficking and modern day slavery, others are groomed into being abused. 'Stop the traffik' [2] estimate that 600,000-800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year with an approximation of 80% women and girls. Up to 50% are estimated to be minors. A recent report by The Children's Society [3] estimates that 'The scale of child trafficking, as officially monitored, has increased by 55% between 2012 and 2014 and the numbers of boys and young men trafficked has more than doubled in th...

It Is Not Your Fault, Tell Someone: Case Studies of Young Women’s Experiences of Online Grooming in England

“…School education was considered inadequate to identify grooming behaviours in the case studies, with previous research suggesting that school education needs to draw on interactive simulations of case studies, 34 such as the ones provided in this research. This finding was confirmed by Pashang and colleagues, 35 whose research identified schools as the key space/place where cybersexploitation occurs.…”

Safeguarding children

“…Grooming can be difficult to recognise, especially if the perpetrator is known to the child such as a family member or an authority figure. Children who have been groomed may initially demonstrate subtle changes in their behaviour, appearing secretive or withdrawn; however, grooming can have severe consequences (Reeves et al, 2017). Grooming can be associated with child sexual exploitation (CSE), where a child is manipulated into performing sexual acts; they may receive gifts such as alcohol or money in exchange for engaging in sexual activities (Department of Education, 2017).…”