Grooming is when people who want to become sexual connected to children and young people. The people want to be closer to the child/young person, and sometimes their family. They want to gain all the families trust.
This can happen in their homes, child’s school, clubs (the child/younger person attends), church, over the internet chat rooms. Grooming occurs online by people looking to form relationships with the child/young person, they will pretend that they want to be friends, they will find all the information of their victims lives, such as they family status (if they are a single parent family), once they thing they have the right “type” of victim (such as a person who is unlikely to tell anyone what they are doing online have no many friends, Ect).
They will try to win over the victims and may buy them things or give them gifts such has phone credit so they are able to text the abuser. They may even threaten the child/young person to have immediate control over the child/young person.
The abuser, will normal use the chat rooms which focus around lives of young people’s interests. They often pretend to around the same age of the person they are talking to. They are known to change their gender. They will give a false description of themselves and use false photographs and videos of a child/younger person pretending that the images are them.
Adults are in a way groomed, as abusers will often seek and groom the adult in order to get to the child/young person. They will bond with the adult so they can gain access to the child’s life, and to be trusted with the child.