Sexual grooming
[6] Children who are groomed may experience mental health issues, including "anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts.
[7][8] From 1975 to 1985, law enforcement in the United States became increasingly aware of child sexual abuse that happened to children from outside their family, committed by those who were not strangers.
[9] Previously, the focus of law enforcement had been on "stranger danger" and those who used threats of violence to ensure compliance from their victims.
[9] In these newly recognized sexual abuse cases, children were manipulated with a "combination of attention, affection, kindness, gifts, alcohol, drugs, money, and privileges.
[10] Sex-pressure offenses had a lack of physical force and behavior that was counter-aggressive, using "persuasion of reward, attention, affection, money, gifts, or entrapment.
[9] At the beginning of its use, both grooming and seduction were being used to describe this type of non-violent offender, and Lanning recalls using both terms interchangeably.
[9] A January 1984 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin used "seduction" and being "seduced" to describe the activity of non-violent offenders.
[9] By 1985, the Chicago Tribune had used the term, reporting "These 'friendly molesters' become acquainted with their targeted victim, gaining their trust while secretly grooming the child as a sexual partner.
[11] In 2008, a BBC report stated that "grooming" had taken on a pejorative meaning; no longer associated with animal care or mentoring, it had become associated with pedophiles and pedophilia.
[8] This caused outrage when the term "groomed" was used to describe the behavior of someone who had obtained leaked documents from a civil servant.
A spokesman for Facebook responded to complaints by meeting CEOP directly in person, and said that they take safety issues "very seriously.
"[24] In 2003, MSN implemented chat room restrictions to help protect children from adults seeking sexual conversations with them.
[26] Computer programs have been developed to analyse chat rooms and other instant messaging logs for suspicious activity.
[27] As this can be prevented not only on platform level but also on the point of entry, it is recommended that parents establish safe environments for their children to use the Internet, with reduced risk of encountering cyber grooming individuals.
After the pedophile gains the trust from a local cybersex trafficker, often a parent or neighbor of the victim, the online sexual exploitation will take place.
[39] Survivors may perceive aspects of human connection as threat cues, and thus may find it difficult to fully engage mentally with simple positive interactions, such as affirmation or compliments.
This directly weakens the potential support network to process traumatic experiences, increasing the risk of long-term psychological ramifications.
In its report Protection of Children Against Abuse Through New Technologies, the Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention Committee addressed the emerging issues of violence against children through the use of new technologies (the issue of child pornography on the Internet is already covered by Article 9 Convention) with particular reference to grooming both through the internet and by mobile telephones.
[42] In Costa Rica, since April 2013, the Criminal Code section 167 bis, makes it an offence to seduce a child by electronic means.
The offence carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment and automatic barring of the offender from working with children or vulnerable adults.
In R v T (2005) EWCA Crim 2681, the appellant, aged 43, had pretended to befriend a nine-year-old girl but had done very little with her before she became suspicious and reported his approaches.
