Grooming, using patterns of behaviours that allow an offender to make a child believe that what is happening is normal and makes them feel trapped. Graphic by Mark Soliman.
Child sexual violence is a major global issue that government agencies have until now tried to de-escalate, but the rampancy of cases is far from resolved.
Studies reveal 25 per cent of young females and almost eight per cent of young boys may experience child sexual abuse (CSA) before reaching adulthood. Stopping child sexual abuse is difficult since minors tend to keep silent about the assault and it may take years for them to expose the tragedy. One reason children are reluctant to come forward is because abusers employ sexual grooming techniques.
Elizabeth Jeglic, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at John Jay College, City University of New York who is also an author of “Sexual Grooming, Integrating, Research, Practice, Prevention, and Policy”. According to an article by Jeglic on “How to Recognize the Sexual Grooming of a Minor” published on Psychology Today’s website on July 7, 2023 she defines sexual grooming as methods and behaviours of abusers use to control children, their guardians and their environment to allow sexual abuse and minimize the chance it would be found or reported.
“It is because of such manipulation of the children, they often feel very confused, guilty, and shameful because they do not know. Like when we think about sexual abuse, we think about people you know yelling out, ’no, no, no.’ But because the process is very gradual, part of the process involves making the children feel guilty and ashamed because they went along with it and they did not protest,” said Jeglic.
Children’s red flag behaviour can be spotted if they are being groomed. Baylee Schmidt, who works as a Child and Family Advocate for the Chinook Child and Youth Advocacy Centre shared some of their experiences.
“All of a sudden, their grades really start to fall in school or (there is) a drastic mood change. There are sleep disturbances such as oversleeping, or they are not sleeping at all anymore or (they may show) excessively, like crying, depression, anxiety, clinging to adults or any sort of important behaviour. (All of this) can all be warning signs or red flags that flags that something is happening,” Schmidt said.
She adds that as parents we keep asking ourselves where a safe place for our children is. Many times sexual abuse seems so difficult to imagine where the offenders are coming from. The surprising element the Chinook Sexual Assault Centre reveals is that a high percentage of the offenders are people the victims know.
“They can be friends or family friends or friends’ parents. They can be family members or can be, well, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. It can really be anyone in that child’s life that has access and then uses the access to create the relationship or make it closer,” Schmidt said.
Just this past week, the Chinook Sexual Assault Centre has just opened its Child and Youth Advocacy Centre in Lethbridge. The centre’s focus is the well-being and support of the abused youth in our community. For more information, check out csacleth.ca.
