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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 397-1 Filed 10/29/21 Page 36 of 43

292 S. Craven et al.

is crucial in order to prevent child sexual abuse. However, retrospective identification of sexual grooming, i.e. after a sexual offence has been committed, is much easier than prospective identification, i.e. before a sexual offence. Nevertheless, the latter is necessary in order to prevent the sexual abuse from taking place. The reason for this is because the behaviours used to groom a child for sexual abuse are not dissimilar to innocent behaviour intended to broaden a young person’s experiences. The only difference may be the motivation underlying the behaviour.

Self-grooming
van Dam (2001) reports that during treatment, offenders’ talk about “grooming themselves”. They were referring to the justification or denial of their offending behaviour. It therefore seems important to consider this as part of the grooming process. However, it may be more agreeable to refer to this phenomenon by another name, avoiding the use of the term “grooming”. Nevertheless, self-grooming is likely to play a part in the move from being motivated to sexually abuse a child to the subsequent targeting of a child, through the justification or denial of the steps child sexual offenders take towards abusing a child. Furthermore, self-grooming is likely to be affected by the response from the community and the child, and the success or failure of the efforts to victimize the child. “Success” is likely to result in further justification or denial of their actions and more entrenched sexual interest in children and motivation to offend. “Failure”, on the other hand, is likely to result in the desistence of offending or the offender developing/enahancing his skills/strategies to ensure success.

Justification and denial of offenders’ behaviour manifests in cognitive distortions. Ward and Keenan (1999) propose that child sex offenders have cognitive distortions in the form of implicit theories, which relate to themselves, the victim and the world. Implicit theories help individuals to understand the world around them. Problems arise because offenders’ implicit theories are maladaptive and supportive of sex with children. These implicit theories subsequently affect encoding and interpretation of future behaviours and events. Ward and Keenan have identified five implicit theories that account for most of the cognitive distortions held by child sex offenders: children as sexual objects; entitlement; dangerous world; uncontrollability; and nature of harm.
Of course, it is not only offenders who have maladaptive implicit theories. For example, many people have an implicit theory that children are at most risk from strangers, which is not consistent with research findings. However, it is easier to believe that strangers sexually abuse children than accept that friends and family do; hence, this implicit theory helps to shelter people from the harsh nature of reality. Offenders’ implicit theories work in a similar way, because it is easier for offenders to believe that the child seduced them than to accept that they sexually abused a child.

Grooming the environment and significant others
Grooming the child begins with identifying a vulnerable child (van Dam, 2001). Child sex offenders seem to have a special ability in recognizing vulnerable children (Conte et al., 1989). These vulnerabilities may be that the children have a poor relationship with their parents, do not have many friends (Berliner & Conte, 1990), or have already been victimized (Leberg, 1997). Alternatively, offenders may target women who were sexually abused as children, because the offender considers them easier to re-victimize.

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