What is online grooming?
Grooming involves an adult preparing a child for abuse with the goal of gaining access to the child, gaining their compliance and maintaining their secrecy. It is a highly manipulative process and adults with a sexual interest in children may use the internet to access young people in ways that they were unable to in the past.
Offenders can use different techniques to engage with young people online; this may involve attempts to flatter a young person, making them feel special and loved.
Alternatively, an offender could use bribes or threats to gain a child’s compliance. Through the grooming process, an offender is usually aiming to get sexual photos or videos of young people or to arrange to meet them to abuse them in the real world.
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