Many of their interactions with children can go undetected by existing protection software

Grooming is developed in three phases: access, entrapment and approach. Access and approach are relatively simple: they respectively involve contacting a child, saying “hi ur cute” for example, and making the necessary arrangements to meet the child offline. Entrapment, however, is a much more complex phase where information is requested and provided to fulfil four grooming objectives: building trust with the child; isolating them and finding out how isolated they already are; testing the child’s willingness to comply with the groomer’s intentions; and obtaining sexual gratification.

Once we identified these phases, their objectives, and how groomers use specific language techniques to achieve them, we found that there are several “myths” society believes about grooming that are not entirely true.

For example, groomers rely on persuasion, not coercion. Our figures showed that gaining the trust of the youngster is of paramount importance for groomers, and they devote the highest amount of words and therefore time – around 45% – to it.

All groomers in our study were skilled and sophisticated communicators, interacting with their targeted child as if they cared about him/her, making them feel special. They complimented the children regularly on a range of topics, rather than only on sexually-oriented ones. Because of this, many of their interactions with children can go undetected by existing protection software.