ABSTRACT
Understanding sex offending against children is a difficult task, mainly because of ‘the secrecy which typically surrounds the commission of these offences’ (Smallbone and Wortley, 2001:1). The majority of research data on child sexual offending derives from studies of convicted offenders undergoing treatment. However, this chapter explores perpetrators’ modus operandi by focusing on data collected during covert police investigations, where suspects’ behaviour and offences are recorded and observed live. It portrays a virtual world in which sex offenders can anonymously and simultaneously target large numbers of victims within a very short period of time. Whilst there is no such thing as a typical online child groomer, it is nevertheless both possible and instructive to identify a range of distinctive child grooming behaviours. The chapter explores a spectrum of grooming behaviours from online fantasists who groom for immediate sexual gratification in the virtual world, to persistent predators who groom online to lay the foundations for child sexual abuse (CSA) in the physical world.
