What is Adult Grooming?

Grooming: when an individual (groomer), or group of people ("Grooming gangs"), builds an emotional connection with someone they've targeted to earn trust with the purpose of exploitation for their own motives: sexual abuse, financial, power kicks, even trafficking.

Grooming may be online or face-to-face, by a stranger or by someone known to their target (family members, friends or professionals).

Whilst grooming children (up to age 16) is illegal in the UK - although it should be called what it is: rape) it's not ostensibly illegal to sexually groom an adult (although vulnerable adults do have pockets of protection, as does grooming people into certain acts like drug running, modern day slavery etc).

Adult grooming is the adult equivalent to child grooming and applies to any behaviour where an adult is deliberately prepared in order for abusive behaviour, manipulation or exploitation to occur later. The same or similar psychological processes used on children are used to exploit adults. The abuser typically befriends or builds a relationship with the victim in order to build a false trust.

There are essentially two elements to grooming

1. Intent - the groomer enters a relationship, be that caring, sexual, friendship or in a position of trust or authority, with an intention other than that stated. For example, they enter into a relationship claiming that they are looking for love and a long term relationship, where their actual intent is sexual conquest, marriage for money, or access to something that they couldn't other wise have. Or offer a job, knowing that the job is just a cover for something else.

2. Consent - Had their target known what the truth was, if they wouldn't have consented to whatever it was they did for or with the groomer, they are very likely to have been groomed. So a (wo)man cheating on their spouse with someone they honestly wish to start a new life with, whilst on morally shaky ground, is not likely to be a groomer; but a (wo)man who enters into a sexual relationship in order to gain access to someone’s children for abuse, clear out their bank account, or coerce them into prostitution is a groomer.

Groomers do not always self-identify as groomers, and are often deluding themselves as well as their targets.

Sexual abuse is defined as any behaviour (physical, psychological, verbal, virtual/online), perceived to be of a sexual nature, which is controlling, coercive, exploitative, harmful or unwanted. It can be inflicted on anyone irrespective of age, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or any form of disability.(source: Safeline) Some adult sexual grooming consequently DOES have legal recourse, but sexual grooming itself does not unless the target has some special status (vulnerable adults, for example).

The classic stages of grooming can roughly be summarised as:

• Groomers target/profile the victim(s)

• Groomers deliberately use words, promises and actions to gain the victim’s trust

• They identify a need in their victims and fill it - or pretend/seem to do so

• They desensitise the victim, often slowly, so that their normal guards/filters fail

• Groomers often then isolate victims (if they're not already isolated) and/or make them complicit in wrongdoing or in their own demise.

• They then often, but not always, sexualise the relationship. This is sometimes the end game for adult sexual groomers, who later disappear/'ghost' their targets

• Groomers establish/maintain control over the situation and/or the victim's behaviours, often using 'gaslighting' techniques to make them doubt their own instincts.

Grooming is predatory, not loving.  Groomers manoeuvre others into positions that isolate them. They like their victims dependent/hooked. They build a false trust. And their targets often start to behave out of character.

Grooming behaviours:

• Positive Reinforcement: Groomers work hard to break down defences through a mix of behaviours, rewards and reassuring words, including praise; superficial charm; superficial sympathy (crocodile tears); excessive apologising; money, gifts; overt attention; public recognition; overt approval. Abusers often use shared secrets to bind their victims to them.

• Negative Reinforcement: Nagging, yelling, the silent treatment, intimidation, threats, swearing, emotional blackmail, the guilt trap, sulking, crying, and playing the victim. Many groomers covertly instil fear by making the victim believe that they have access to information or resources of violence.

• Intermittent or Partial Reinforcement: Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt, which can encourage the victim to persist because the good times are good.

• Punishment: This doesn’t have to be physical - it can be ignoring, ghosting and other such tactics.

• Traumatic One-Trial Learning: The groomer uses verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behaviour to establish dominance or superiority; even just one incident of such behaviour can condition or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator.

• Normalisation of wrong behaviour.

(Thanks to Survivors Manchester  for the basis of this list of grooming behaviours)

Groomers manipulate their target/ victim until they are rewarded with whatever it is they are after, be that sex, money, information…..  Their tactics, as noted above, often include charm, overt attention, flattery, charm, gifts, the promise of a better future, or the creation of a secret, private World.

Often echoing back part their target's own background or story - a technique known as mirroring - roomers often claim special connections with their targets. These predators typically employ attentiveness, sensitivity, and empathy and plenty of positive reinforcement to seduce their victims - a technique known as love bombing.

Grooming can also exist in a less overt way - where there’s an imbalance of power. Spiritual leaders and priests are held up as paragons of virtue and sometimes regarded by their congregations as having a hotline to a higher power. Employers have a power over their employees. Politicians have power over interns and members of their constituencies. Doctors and health professionals, teachers and lecturers, emergency services and charity workers all not only have a ‘cover’ of altruism based on the work they do, but like others here, have a mix of trust and of power, which can be abused.

Victims are SO sucked in that they overlook or ignore the warning signs. Abusers work patiently to break through their target's defences, build trust, and then manipulate or coerce the target  into doing what they plan. Often the harder the target is to persuade, the greater their thrill. Their targets then willingly handing part with money or assets, do things they wouldn't normally do, fight battles for their abuser....

Consequently, victims/survivors of groomers often feel shame, remorse and disgust at having participated often leaving them unwilling to expose the groomer. One of our main messages to people who have been groomed is that THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT.

Here’s why: ‘successful’ groomers will usually have failed numerous times before they get to a target that works for them. Maybe they’ve worked out that a certain type of person doesn’t fall for their ‘charms’. So they get cleverer at who they target (in police movie speak, they change their M.O - modus operandi). Maybe they’re foreign and get discarded for bad spelling or oddly phrased messages - so they invent a cover story or improve their English.

We’d love for the rest of the World to understand this as well - every single one of us can be groomed. AS long as we still have things to live for, have things we want, there’s a chink in our armour that groomers can exploit.

Once you’ve been groomed, we see no shame in the word victim, whilst others prefer the term survivor. Many people don’t feel like survivors in the immediate aftermath of grooming - it’s not uncommon to feel confused, upset, afraid, feelings that don’t feel as brave as the word ‘survivor’ suggests.

Until that changes, we prefer the word ‘target’ — because that’s the truth of the matter. Consciously or unconsciously, groomers select their targets for exploitation.