Sexual grooming explained: How predators manipulate their targets before abuse
A schoolgirl. Sexual abuse stories are forcing uncomfortable questions about our schools.
What you need to know:
- Sexual grooming thrives in familiar spaces, taking advantage of vulnerabilities.
- It involves coercion, and abuse of trust and authority.
- The process is gradual and exploits trust to prepare victims for sexual abuse.
The recent exposé of sexual exploitation and abuse of past and current students by a teacher in one of Kenya’s most famous girls’ schools brought to the fore the expression “sexual grooming”. To groom ordinarily means to cultivate, nurture or socialise one into a prescribed set of behaviours deemed desirable. To be well-groomed is also used to refer to neat appearance.
Sexual grooming is a process in which a perpetrator systematically and over a period of time manipulatively prepares the target for sexual exploitation and abuse by gaining their trust. It is done in a subtle way that can easily be mistaken for benevolence to disguise the intention. The target and people around him or her does not, therefore, feel threatened or alarmed.
The target is often young, naïve, trusting and dependent on the perpetrator. This explains why the list of perpetrators features close relatives (such as uncles), teachers, clergy, family friends, patrons, matrons, classmates, co-workers, caretakers, transporters and supervisors – people who enjoy close proximity and frequent contact with the would-be victim, as well as their and other people’s trust and confidence.
Read: Teacher fails to stop investigative story on sexual abuse of students at national girls’ school
An excellent example in contemporary Kenya is that of girls entrusted to specific public service motorbike operators to take to and from school daily. Many a parent have been shocked to learn of their daughters’ pregnancies, infections and even elopements from the transporters who have systematically groomed the girls by using simple gifts, treatment to meals and acts of generosity, relying on the ample time on the way to and from school.
The scheme is usually to get the target into total control through show of love and attention that when the perpetrator strikes, the target is easily subdued and does not see anything wrong with the attack. In fact, the victim could even take the abuse as a just reward for the perpetrator’s past and continuing generosity.
Literature on the subject shows that grooming follows certain steps. First is the earmarking of and access to a targeted victim. The groomer often observes the target and identifies the vulnerabilities to take advantage of. These could be related to easy physical access, psychological malleability, deference to authority and lack. Second is isolation of the victim.
Preferential treatment
The perpetrator gives more attention to the earmarked individual often through preferential treatment to develop a tight relationship of dependency. This may be analogised to the way a pride of lions identifies one animal from a pack and drives it out of the crowd so it cannot be protected by its kind. Then they close in and subdue it. In this manner, grooming is almost always guaranteed to succeed.
Third is de-sensitising the victim. The target is psychologically sedated, does not recognise the ignoble intentions and entertains the attention given as normal because of regular exposure to it. For instance, the perpetrator introduces the target to sexual content and behaviour in small doses to get the latter’s addiction and belief that he/she is being graduated into a select club. The target thus fails to see the trap.
From this point onwards, the perpetrator solidifies the abuse while avoiding detection. The abuse is sustained through frequent encounters reinforced with even more alluring attention and rewards. The abused is now virtually a prisoner who will do whatever the perpetrator wants. Control is maintained through continued manipulation, emotional and other forms of blackmail, coercion and even physical violence.
As it were, grooming can be physical or virtual and can occur in any space where there is frequent interaction between the groomer and the target. It could be at home, school, church, workplace, boarding camp and the internet. The consequences of grooming are divergent and can be mild to severe. They include pregnancy, exposure to infections, trafficking, emotional trauma, dependency, sexual deviance and addiction. Obviously, public knowledge about sexual grooming is extremely important in detecting signs and preventing and responding to it.
Kenyan laws cover this menace as a criminal offence. Section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act criminalises acts that facilitate sexual offences involving children, such as persuasion, enticement and coercion.Section 15 focuses on introduction of children to prostitution, while Section 16 prohibits the use of minors in pornographic endeavours. Section 23 broadly coversgrooming under sexual harassment, while Section 24 deals with abuse of positions of trust, power and authority. The Children’s Act also criminalises grooming, including its modern-day forms such as online abuse.
Whileexistence of these laws means that sexual grooming is justiciable, the difficulty lies in producing adequate and incontrovertible evidence to secure a conviction, given the subtle nature of the behaviour. The public must thus be waiting to see what eventually happens to the publicised case.
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected]).
