Behavioural Differences Between Online Sexual Groomers Approaching Boys and Girls

ABSTRACT

This study focused on the behavior of convicted offenders who had approached profiles of boys and girls online for offline sexual encounters. A detailed coding scheme was designed to code and analyze offenders’ grooming behaviors in transcripts of conversational interactions between convicted offenders and 52 volunteer workers purporting to be girls and 49 volunteer workers who masqueraded as boys. Behavioral differences and commonalities associated with the gender of the groomed child decoys were examined. Results showed that offenders approaching boys were significantly older and pretended to be younger than offenders approaching girls. When compared to offenders grooming boy decoys, offenders grooming girl decoys typically built more rapport, were less sexually explicit, and approached sexual topics carefully and indirectly. Offenders also used more strategies to conceal contact with girls than with boys.

KEYWORDS:

• boys
• girls
• gender differences
• offenders’ behaviors
• online grooming

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Evianne L. van Gijn-Grosvenor

Dr. Evianne L. van Gijn-Grosvenor, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.

Michael E. Lamb

Michael E. Lamb, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.