UNDERSTANDING GROOMING STRATEGIES

NCA’s CEO, Teresa Huizar, often highlights articles and studies in the child abuse field. Here’s her summary of a new study about grooming. (with some editing for clarity and brevity)

I want to turn your attention to a new study about grooming, published in the journal Child Maltreatment and entitled “Predictors of Abuse Duration in In-Person Child Sexual Grooming Cases.”^[1] In this study, the researchers start with the “six encompassing domains that can be grouped as either pre-abuse or post-abuse maintenance strategies” for grooming. Id., p. 2. These pre-abuse strategies are:

“(1) Identifying that a child is uniquely vulnerable to abuse (e.g., lacks supportive or consistent family structure, basic needs such as housing or food are inconsistently met, psychological or developmental vulnerabilities);
(2) Building trust or a relationship with the child (e.g., parental, friend, ‘romantic’);
(3) Enticing and controlling the child by fulfilling or withholding needs (e.g., shelter or food; alcohol or drugs).” Id.

Post-abuse strategies “are used following an abusive event to maintain the perpetrator’s relationship with the victim, potentially facilitating future abuse while specifically targeting opportunities for abuse detection.” Id. These post-abuse strategies include

“(4) Desensitizing the child to sexual abuse by gradually exposing them to sexually related materials or activities until it becomes normalized (e.g., sexual conversations, exposure to pornography, playing games that involve increasingly sexual touch);
(5) Physically isolating the child from potential support systems (e.g., inviting the child to the offender’s home, vacations alone, taking them to an isolated room); and
(6) Concealment of the abuse by asking for secrecy, blaming or confusing the child about the abuse, or threatening the child (e.g., threats to harm the child or the people they care about, stating that the child will be taken away from their family, telling the child they will get in trouble for the abuse if it is disclosed).” Id.

Here is Teresa’s entire note:

March 2, 2026

Six grooming strategies abusers use to keep secrets Good morning and welcome back to Monday. I hope this finds everyone continuing to stay safe and healthy. As professionals in the field, we are all familiar with the concept of sexual grooming strategies. There have been numerous studies that examine the phenomenon of grooming, and how perpetrators use it to gain access to and exploit children. We also know that grooming takes place whether the perpetration occurs online or in-person, and that it occurs prior to the abuse, during, and after the abuse, to maintain access and to maintain secrecy. This morning, I want to turn your attention to a new study about grooming, published in the journal Child Maltreatment and entitled “Predictors of Abuse Duration in In-Person Child Sexual Grooming Cases.”[1] In this study, the researchers start with the “six encompassing domains that can be grouped as either pre-abuse or post-abuse maintenance strategies” for grooming. Id., p. 2. These pre-abuse strategies are: “(1) Identifying that a child is uniquely vulnerable to abuse (e.g., lacks supportive or consistent family structure, basic needs such as housing or food are inconsistently met, psychological or developmental vulnerabilities); (2) Building trust or a relationship with the child (e.g., parental, friend, ‘romantic’); (3) Enticing and controlling the child by fulfilling or withholding needs (e.g., shelter or food; alcohol or drugs).” Id. Post-abuse strategies “are used following an abusive event to maintain the perpetrator’s relationship with the victim, potentially facilitating future abuse while specifically targeting opportunities for abuse detection.” Id. These post-abuse strategies include “(4) Desensitizing the child to sexual abuse by gradually exposing them to sexually related materials or activities until it becomes normalized (e.g., sexual conversations, exposure to pornography, playing games that involve increasingly sexual touch); (5) Physically isolating the child from potential support systems (e.g., inviting the child to the offender’s home, vacations alone, taking them to an isolated room); and (6) Concealment of the abuse by asking for secrecy, blaming or confusing the child about the abuse, or threatening the child (e.g., threats to harm the child or the people they care about, stating that the child will be taken away from their family, telling the child they will get in trouble for the abuse if it is disclosed).” Id. In the current study, the researchers sought a greater understanding of the “effectiveness of these strategies in prolonging abuse.” Id. Their hope is that, with this greater understanding, we can create “more targeted and effective interventions for both prevent abuse from continuing and to encourage early disclosures.” Id. So they first “explored if the number of grooming strategies used in a single case was related to abuse duration. Second, we assessed if any particular grooming strategies were related to longer abuse durations.” Id. To do so, they used the Canadian Legal Information Institute’s public database of written decisions from all levels of Canadian courts, looking specifically at cases that included mention in the judicial decisions of “child abuse grooming” from 2017 to mid-2020. They further narrowed the parameters by focusing only on cases that had “police-reported instances of abuse that met the standard for criminal charges and were ultimately tried in court” and only on cases of “in person grooming where a duration of abuse could be calculated….” Id., pp. 2-3. The final pool included 153 cases. The findings of the study are enlightening and confirm explicitly much of what we understood implicitly. For example, the researchers found “[a] lack of significant difference in abuse duration based on the number of judicially reported strategies [which] suggests that the type of strategy may be more impactful than the number used, regarding abuse duration.” Id., p. 4. Moreover, “the current study suggests that abuse duration is most influenced by reported concealment.” Id. The researchers note that “[t]his is an important finding because, although intuitive, the establishment of the relationship between attempts to conceal and its actual effectiveness conveys urgency in education about the ongoing nature of this strategy.” Id. Interestingly, attempting to conceal the abuse is not the most common in-person grooming strategy, at least as compared to sexual desensitization, physical isolation, and building trust. It is, however, “the only strategy in the present study to be significantly associated with increased abuse duration above and beyond all other variables, making it perhaps the most impactful strategy related to maintaining victim compliance following abuse.” Id. For the researchers, this finding means that “interventions and initiatives may benefit from including education for children related to combatting secret keeping in the face of being physically or psychologically threatened…. While parents and other adults require training on recognizing grooming, concealment specifically targets a child’s likelihood to disclose anything related to the abuse. Therefore, ensuring initiatives exist specifically for children and adolescents may be of particular importance.” Id., p. 5. This finding affirms the work that we, as CACs and MDTs, are already engaged in, both in our prevention and in our intervention work. We are already educating children, parents and caregivers, and community members on ways to counter abuse concealment grooming tactics. We are already teaching our clients and our communities about the importance of talking about abuse – and about how to hear a disclosure once it is made. We know that delays in disclosure “impact opportunities for both legal intervention and psychological support for the child, as well as the likelihood of continued abuse.” Id. This study gives us further support for the work that we do, and the importance of it to the children and families we serve. As such, I hope you will download it and share it with your colleagues and MDT members, particularly those who work in the abuse prevention education arena. As always, I appreciate all your work on behalf of the children and families we serve. Warmest regards, Teresa [1] This article is open access.