Lived Experiences of Grooming Among Australian Male Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Abstract

Because child sexual abuse (CSA) is a pervasive social issue affecting up to one in five girls, and one in 10 boys, there have been significant developments in legal responses to the problem of CSA. One such response is to acknowledge the significance of grooming behaviors in the commission of child sex offenses by criminalizing behaviors that are engaged in with the intention of facilitating the sexual abuse of a child. However, grooming behaviors remain underresearched, and current knowledge is based largely upon the perspectives of offenders, with few studies analyzing how grooming is experienced by victims. The purpose of this article is to address key gaps in the grooming literature by analyzing the lived experiences of grooming from the perspectives of 11 adult male CSA survivors. Qualitative analysis revealed novel insights into the characteristics, stages, and impact of grooming for male survivors. The implications of the findings suggest that New South Wales’s (NSW) grooming legislation could better reflect the types of grooming behaviors engaged in by child sex offenders. Tentative evidence for enduring impacts of grooming also indicates the need for further qualitative research into men’s experiences of sexual grooming during childhood with larger and more representative samples.

Grooming: A Case Study

“…Grooming: A Case Study Despite the increased awareness of the phenomenon of grooming as a strategy used by perpetrators of child sexual abuse (CSA) to recruit and ensure the silence of their victims, little has been written about the mechanisms involved in grooming behavior, in particular from the perspective of those being groomed. Much of our current knowledge about grooming emanates from studies on offenders (Plummer, 2018). This knowledge has primarily focused on providing descriptions of what constitutes grooming behaviors.…”

“…The common elements involved in grooming behavior include befriending the child in order to gain access to the child, gaining the child's compliance with the abusive behavior and ensuring the child's silence to avoid discovery (Gillespie, 2002). The role of the environment in the grooming process has also been identified, whereby significant adults in the child's environment are 'groomed' to facilitate easy access to the child and deter disclosure (Craven, Brown & Gilchrist, 2006;Plummer, 2018). Three studies have been explored grooming from the victim's perspective.…”

“…Both of these studies consisted of predominantly female child/adolescent samples. Plummer (2018) interviewed 8 male survivors of childhood sexual abuse about their experiences of grooming and distinguished between behaviors intended to facilitate the abuse and post-abuse grooming behaviors that ensured the child's compliance and secrecy. Three factors have been identified as facilitating the abuser's success in grooming: (a) participants' vulnerabilities and the abuser's exploitation of those vulnerabilities; (b) the abuser's social position of trust and authority that minimized suspicion from families or communities; and…”

“…(c) the broader social avoidant context in which the abuse occurred, which served to limit survivors' access to support (Plummer, 2018). One construct put forward to help understand how parents and other adults may avoid the reality of abuse is 'cognitive dissonance' (Craven et al, 2006).…”

“…Knowledge about grooming is also important in the legal arena as differences in definitions of grooming can lead to discrepancies in sentencing in different jurisdictions. In New South Wales in Australia, the grooming offence is limited to either exposing a child to indecent material or giving the child intoxicating substances, while in Victoria the offence is inclusive of the establishment of the grooming relationship, the use of inducements and behaviors targeted at the environment (Plummer, 2018). Plummer found limited evidence in her sample of 11 individuals of the use of intoxicating substances and no evidence of exposure to indecent material.…”