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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 397-1 Filed 10/29/21 Page 40 of 43

296 S. Craven et al.

Offenders frequently make the child feel responsible for the abuse (Leberg, 1997; van Dam, 2001; Warner, 2000). They convince the child that they are to blame for letting the abuse happen and that they should have stopped it (Leberg, 1997). This is reinforced by stereotypes in society, which emphasize that men cannot control their sex drive (Warner, 2000). Additional guilt may be felt if the child has been made to perform sexual acts on the abuser or another child (Warner, 2000). However, this feeling of responsibility and guilt is overshadowed by the self-betrayal the child feels as their body reacts to sexual stimulation against their will (Warner, 2000) which children may interpret as evidence that they are enjoying themselves. This is internalized and resultantly may have an impact on the child's developing identity. Disclosure is avoided because the child feels that it is "all their fault", that he/she is bad and that no one will believe them (Warner, 2000).

Each victim's experience of grooming is different, because offenders adapt their strategies dependent on the child, whose response during the grooming process is important. It seems reasonable to suggest that offenders require some level of "empathy" during the grooming process to recognize reactions in the child, so that they can adapt their strategy accordingly. For example, during the desensitization process an offender would need to recognize the limits of the victim and to strategically increase those limits. It is proposed that empathy involves four components: (1) emotion recognition; (2) perspective-taking; (3) emotion replication; and (4) response decision (Marshall, Hudson, Jones & Fernandez, 1995). Continuing with the previous example, offenders recognize the distress in their victim and make a decision based on this, because they choose to stop temporarily as a strategic part of the desensitization process. Thus, offenders appear to have ability in components (1) and (4), which are the cognitive components, but not in the affective components (2) and (3). While early research on empathy in sex offenders concluded that they have empathy deficits, more recent research has found that this empathy deficit to be victim-specific (Fernandez, Marshall, Lightbody & O'Sullivan, 1999; Marshall, Hamilton & Fernandez, 2001; Marshall et al., 1995). This is inconsistent with the suggestion that the grooming process requires some level of empathy. However, Fernandez et al. (1999; Marshall et al., 2001) provide a possible explanation for this. They suggest that victim-specific empathy deficits manifest as cognitive distortions, which protect the offenders from negatively evaluating themselves, thus allowing them to continue abusing a child. Based on this suggestion, victim-specific empathy deficits arise as a consequence rather than a cause of the abuse. These cognitive distortions therefore facilitate self-grooming.

The manifestation of a cognitive distortion relating to a victim-specific empathy deficit may be facilitated by cognitive deconstruction. Cognitive deconstruction (see Ward, Hudson & Marshall, 1995) is a state entered into to escape negative experiences and negative self-evaluation. Cognitive deconstruction involves processing at a lower, more concrete, level, i.e. muscular movements, and rewards of behaviour, rather than social action. Resultantly, the individual has much more focus on feelings of pleasure and less awareness of the consequences of his behaviour. This concrete-level focus may reinforce cognitive distortions such as victims enjoyed the abuse because they became physically aroused, which justifies the offender's lack of empathy toward their victim.

Self-grooming, grooming the environment and significant others, and grooming the child are relevant to situational and preferential offenders, extra-familial and intrafamilial offences. It is important that the different types of sexual grooming apply to these different typologies and classifications of offenders because sexual grooming is not used solely by one group of offenders and, furthermore, these categories are not mutually exclusive (Itzin, 2001).

DOJ-OGR-00005907