Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Child grooming
Summary
Child grooming refers to actions or behaviors used to establish an emotional connection with a child under the age of consent, and sometimes the child's family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Child grooming can occur in various settings, including online, in person, and through other means of communication. Children who are groomed may experience mental health issues, including "anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts."
In 2011 in the UK, a number of high-profile child exploitation cases were described as "on-street grooming" or "localized grooming".
Child grooming is also used as a starting place to recruit minor children into various illicit businesses such as child trafficking, child prostitution, cybersex trafficking, or the production of child pornography.
Before the term "grooming" was associated with grooming a child for sexual abuse, it had come to have a meaning of mentorship, coaching, or preparing someone for leadership.
From 1975 to 1985, law enforcement in the United States became increasingly aware of child sexual abuse that happened to children from outside their family, committed by those who were not strangers. Previously, the focus of law enforcement had been on "stranger danger" and those who used threats of violence to ensure compliance from their victims. In these newly recognized sexual abuse cases, children were manipulated with a "combination of attention, affection, kindness, gifts, alcohol, drugs, money, and privileges." While there are examples before this time where the pattern was recognized, it was during this decade that the FBI became aware the pattern and criminal investigations began to be taken seriously in the United States. There was also growing awareness that offenders joined youth-serving organizations to gain access to potential victims.
As an example, a 1977 study used the terminology "pressured sexual contacts" and "forced sex contacts" to distinguish two types of offenders.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.