Grooming is a form of abuse that involves manipulating someone until they're isolated, dependent, and more vulnerable to exploitation.
What is grooming? Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them. Children and young people who are groomed can be sexually abused, exploited or trafficked.
"Usually, the groomer will eventually take physical or sexual advantage of the victim," says Harrison. "This could include anything from making inappropriate comments about their body, to making sexual advance, to actually sexually assaulting the person."
Malignant narcissists begin their relationships with excessive amounts of contact, praise, flattery, and attention – this is known as love bombing. They use love bombing to groom their victims in order to get them invested in a fabricated future together – one that they never plan to deliver on.
Following a grooming experience, the child may suffer numerous negative effects such as embarrassment, irritability, anxiety, stress, depression, and substance abuse. Even in the absence of physical sexual abuse, the child may be traumatized and suffer long-lasting emotional damage caused by non-contact sexual abuse.
Abusers Often Come on Strong
Intense romance can be a form of grooming, a predatory tactic that is meant to build a deep emotional connection. Abusers know exactly what they are doing.
Grooming, which could include “sexting”, is behaviour that might be viewed as just flirting between colleagues, but may actually mask predatory sexual activity that constitutes a serious risk to employers and young employees.
He will jump right into your personal physical, spiritual, and emotional spaces. He has an agenda which includes finding your strengths to exploit and your weaknesses to prey upon. The predator does not care about your past relationships, your standards or your values.
Overt attention, verbal seduction (flattery / ego stroking), recruitment, physical isolation, charm, gift-giving, normalizing, gaslighting, secrecy, and threats are all hallmarks of grooming.
This is why many statutory rape laws have a three year age stipulation. Anything with a minor when there is more than a three year age difference is unhealthy for the minor.
What Is the Meaning of Child Grooming? Adults who build stable and trusting relationships with a child under 18 for the purpose of sexually assaulting the minor are considered groomers. As such, you could face state and federal charges for child grooming if the alleged victim is under 15.
Grooming disorders are relatively common. A recent survey of 1618 people from the United States found that one out of three people met the clinical diagnosis of at least one grooming disorder [2]. This is greater than the prevalence of depression, anxiety or alcohol abuse [3, 4].
Grooming is when a person builds a relationship with a child, young person or an adult who's at risk so they can abuse them and manipulate them into doing things. The abuse is usually sexual or financial, but it can also include other illegal acts.
Grooming can leave adult survivors ridden with self-doubt and blame, overwhelming guilt and confusion, and intense trust issues. Adult survivors of this type of abuse often need to address their grooming experience in order to heal from the sexual abuse.
They will often deploy a variety of narcissistic relationship patterns such as manipulation, charismatic, and exploitational tactics in order to ensure that their own needs and wants are met. As a spouse, you may be the subject of their manipulation and abuse, while your partner treats everyone else positively.
The groomer will look for ways to gain their target's trust, often with gifts or promises. Eventually they'll start to ask for something in return, and this eventually leads to abuse. Because groomers work to befriend their victims, some organisations refer to it as “mate crime”.
In fact, narcissists prefer to target someone who is strong-willed, and who has talents or characteristics they admire, because they believe it makes them shine too. "Narcissists are drawn to those who can boost their own self-esteem and validate their sense of importance," Wasser told Insider.
The expert testified that grooming includes such behaviors as showing a child extra attention, complimenting them, giving gifts, making promises and increasing contact —behaviors that may seem innocent to the lay person.
People who engage in grooming behaviour are in the process of preparing a child or young person for sexual abuse. Grooming is the lead up to conducting acts of sexual abuse. Grooming behaviour involves the perpetrator manipulating a child to gain their trust, build rapport, and exert their power over them.