What Groomers Want
We asked victims of adult grooming what they thought the groomer had selected them for (because be under no illusion, victims of grooming are deliberately targetted). We have collated the data from our research into adult grooming.
Groomers will choose their target according to their own preferences and objectives, not because of the individual. Some want someone sweet and compliant or easy to abuse because of naivety. Others want to take down/hurt someone because they are strong or successful. Some want their victim’s money, others want to sell their victims to make money.
We asked our respondents, people who have been groomed, what they thought their groomer’s motivation was. Whilst some have been left with no idea what the groomer(s) genuine aim was, several themes emerged:
The Trafficker
Seeing any respondent say that they’d been trafficked is tough.
When the trafficker is your own brother…. This made particularly hard reading, although obviously not as hard for us as for the victim.
The Vulture (seeking ‘Easy Pickings’)
These ‘bottom feeders’ pick on a victim’s situation.
The groomer knew the victim was isolated, either by self employment and/or working from home (and therefore not around people in an office who might spot something ‘off’), by being a single parent, by being a recent immigrant, or due to a long term illness or disability.
Vulnerable adults, often statemented, are targetted. (Around 1-2% of the population is autistic, yet around 9.5% of our respondents, self defined as autistic.)
Many of our respondents - people who have been groomed - answered feeling that that they are overly naive or innocent, too nice or empathetic, and that was why they were targetted. (More than a quarter mentioned feeling vulnerable for some reason.)
Access Seekers
These groomers, the Access Seekers, know exactly what they want, and their targets are collateral damage. One type of groomer selects the victim for their wealth or affluence, especially those who have recently inherited. Others, sickeningly, are actually using them to get to the target’s partner, or horrendously, to their children.
Some groomers will also use their targets to gain access to work information or even to try and land a job.
And, of course, there are groomers who will go as far as to marry and stay married long enough to gain their indefinite leave to remain in the UK - marriage fraud.
Challenge Seekers
Some of our reported groomers, clearly narcissistic, appear to relish a challenge: breaking up a happy marriage; selecting someone very attractive as a showpiece; to take credit for their victim’s ideas or status in the workplace; to beat them somehow.
This fits well with anecdotal reports from call handlers, who often report groomers accessing victims through gaming platforms.
Power Imbalance Abusers
As we anticipated, but until now had no data to prove, power imbalances are a strong driver behind grooming. Our sample size of women groomers was relatively small, but most fell into this category - women grooming men in the workplace (tutors, counsellors and managers).
Amongst our respondents were reports of:
clergy abusing congregants
tutors abusing students
counsellors abusing their clients
managers abusing staff
Frog Boilers
The concept of the slowly boiled frog is that a frog in a pan of water will heat up so gradually that they don’t notice it’s boiling until it’s too late. Many reports of groomers befriending and playing the long game to get what they want from their targets suggest that this tactics is very common.
This certainly fits with reports we’ve been aware of for some time of groups online where sexual groomers (of adults) meet - they have an ‘M.O.’ of befriending for three months, being fully engaged with targets for six months, the latter three of which are spent heading toward an inevitable ‘discard´whilst warning up a replacement target.
Our research, however, revealed a different kind of slow boil: people making friends with children, especially young adults, waiting for them to reach the age of consent before abusing their familiarity, friendship and family connections to reach their target for abuse. This would help make sense of the data we have: 18-20 year olds are, pro rata, the age group most likely to be targetted by groomers (all of our respondents were over 18). This possibly merits CAAGe taking a closer look at “Ephebephilia”, sexual interest in later adolescence (15–19 years old), something specifically mentioned by one of our respondents.
