Inside the paedophile’s playbook — understanding grooming to keep children safer

[Jim Burton]

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... ren-safer/

In 2010, Oprah Winfrey spoke to four convicted paedophiles about grooming and abuse. They described how they selected their victims, identifying a specific need, either emotional, or because they could help them achieve a goal. They then created trust, isolating their victims, none of whom were strangers, using manipulation (both of the child and their caregivers) and gaslighting to make the child doubt their reality and establish control.

Thereafter, they sexualised the relationship. Beginning with intimacy, they established a “special” relationship, making the child feel seen and heard. Seemingly innocent touches progressed to “accidental” sexual contact, which they used to normalise boundary violations, and finally, more obvious sexual contact.

Using her own experience, Oprah explained how grooming makes a violent act pleasurable to the child, resulting in them feeling both confused and complicit. She described how the child’s body betrays them and how abusers reframe these experiences to make the child believe that if it felt good, it must have been their fault.

As Oprah attests, “sexual abuse changes who you are”.

[CantChainTheSpirit]

4 convicted people is hardly representative of a group of people.
If I took 4 parents convicted of neglect, would that be a fair representation of parenting?

The fact is that anyone who's pedosexual who talks to a child respectfully will be defined as grooming the child. They might have no sexual interest in the child, might be genuinely concerned for the child and offering good advice and might be trying to build the child's confidence, but in doing that they will be considered as grooming the child. Anyone else doing the same thing isn't grooming them. The person might hate kids and be giving them bad advice for sport or is just brushing them off without care and that person isn't grooming them either.

Grooming is such a broadly used term now that's more of a club to hit pedosexuals with. It's better to leave a kid to suffer neglect and have a miserable childhood than let a map help them in any way because apparently, that's the kind of society the world wants.