Abusers use 'grooming' to gain a victim’s trust

April is both Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Awareness month. The following article is the fourth article of a five-week series focusing on raising awareness about sexual assault and child abuse. Locally, HCWC served 660 community members that experienced sexual assault or abuse and 639 children at Roxanne’s House, our Children’s Advocacy Center.

“Grooming” is a term we hear often in many ways–dog grooming, cats grooming themselves, or monkeys grooming each other. But grooming is also used to explain something more concerning. Grooming is when someone prepares another for a particular purpose or activity. When it comes to abuse and assault, grooming usually looks like building a relationship, trust, and emotional bond with not only a minor, but their family as well, so that they can manipulate, abuse, exploit, and assault the minor.

Signs of grooming can often be hard to detect as some of these can be indicators of other things or typical teenage behaviors. The signs can look like: Being secretive of who their friends are, who they talk to, and how they spend their time .

An increase or decrease in phone/device usage and being online.

Spending more time away from home and being unreachable for long periods of time.

Having things not previously owned before such as money that they can’t or won’t explain.

Having older intimate dating partners or being friends with someone much older than them.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that people, and mostly children, are not aware of the fact they are being groomed. They can be clouded with a variety of feelings such as confusion, love, affection, adoration, fear, guilt, shame, loyalty, and distress. Groomers can make young people isolated and dependent on them, often using blackmail to keep children from telling others. This is why, educating your children on a variety of topics at a young age such as healthy relationships, safe and unsafe secrets, body safety, consent, and boundaries, paired with creating a safe, nonjudgmental environment for children to communicate to their caregivers, is so important.

HCWC has advocates available 24-7/365 to help those in our community that have experienced abuse. If you, or someone you know has questions about predatory behavior or would like more information on HCWC’s free, confidential services, please call our 24-hour hotline at 512-396-4357.