Red Flags: Identifying a Perpetrator’s Grooming Behaviors
60% of abusers are acquaintances, teachers, neighbors, or community leaders. (Finklehor & Shattuck, 2012) As a parent, there are many challenges in protecting our children from predators. However, many parents may find it surprising that abusers are often living in their own neighborhoods and known to victims. Abusers may be unsuspecting because mothers are busy, and potential sex offenders that have never been caught. Some offenders never report that they are registered sex offenders when they move from one jurisdiction to another.
This blog is about recognizing what are red flag behaviors that offenders use in grooming families and children. Sex offenders will often assess a family’s vulnerability by talking to the parent first. Then, the offender moves onto grooming the child. Grooming is a slow and intentional way to gain the trust of the family, to ultimately have access to the child.
Red Flags!
Many parents are confused as to what a red flag is in a potential perpetrator. I want to first cover what the adult perpetrator does to groom a family. Perpetrators can be offenders on the sex offender registry but they can also be individuals that have never been caught committing a crime. That is why it’s important for parents to be clear with explaining to their children about boundaries, body autonomy and consent as I have provided in prior blogs.
As parents, they themselves need to be clear with their children on parent boundaries. For example, if a young child wants to play inside a neighbor’s house and you are saying “no, we don’t play inside people’s homes, just outside or at our house.” Your children may not like it but that’s a parent boundary that your child needs to recognize. Repetition is the way they get to learn about it. Many perpetrators are waiting to see if there are opportunities that they can take advantage of and they specifically see when parents are in the dark about boundaries. These types of parents are easy targets.
For example, your child expresses that she wants to go to the local swimming pool with all her friends in the neighborhood and another child’s Dad is taking several children there. First of all, a parent has to know very clearly their own boundaries, feelings and thoughts about allowing their child to be with a male caregiver. If you are a survivor that was perpetrated by a male figure, it can activate your system. You respond with a “no” to your child and an erupting volcanic meltdown ensues. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse and you may have already old this child this clear boundary and now you have to manage this meltdown. You are managing your own personal history by remaining calm even though this may be challenging to you. You deepen your bond with your child if you remain calm and help him calm him down. This coregulation is highly sophisticated and if you have learned the opposite, like being triggered when there is yelling, it’s going to be hard to establish your boundaries as a parent. Becoming the mirror to your child’s feelings will ultimately help the scenario as well as make your boundary clear. If you get pulled into the chaos of their emotions and take it personally, the deep divide between parent and child is potentially drawn. Learning how to self-regulate as a parent is what will help you not get pulled into your child’s big emotions.
As a survivor you may doubt that this father may not be a perpetrator but you still have reservations. Even if you got to know him well enough, you may not ever feel comfortable. It’s just something survivors of sexual abuse may never get over. Survivors have many reservations because they were once around a perpetrator. They know their profile and often will commit to keeping their child safe.
One of the first red flags perpetrators use on parents is recognizing that parents are vulnerable. This vulnerability can be transparent when single parents are isolated, struggling to find childcare, or suffer from a mental illness. You don’t even have to be in a tragic situation. Perpetrators know when parents are embarrassed to talk about body safety with their children and know when they have blind spots on helping their child talk about how they are the boss of their bodies.
Perpetrators will look for single or divorced parents that need help with child care and offer to take the child. Single and divorced parents are 20 times more (Sedlak et al., 2010) likely to have children victimized for various reasons. Single parents work a lot and often struggle being the main head of household. Parents that are divorced often have to send their child to the other home of the co parent. We do not know who their child is interacting with on a regular basis like a parent’s significant other and many things like if supervision is consistent. Plus, other kids from divorced homes are coming to the home and we don’t know what kind of parents or supervision they have had in their other respective homes. Even if the parent is bringing in a secure income, they often need some type of childcare. Picking up kids after school, making sure they get to soccer practice, and all the other necessary ongoing health appointments. This gets more complicated if a child has some sort of disability like autism that requires multiple caregivers to provide consistent supervision.
Isolation
Perpetrators often want to have access to children where they can be alone with them. For example, if a school neglects to have clear policy and procedures on body safety education, they may run into scenarios where the teacher is alone with a student. That makes a child vulnerable because the teacher has all the power. Many camps have little to no training for their employees on body safety curriculum and many young minors are highered as camp counselors. Children often fly under the radar but since the pandemic the rate of peer to peer abuse has risen from 30% to 70% because perpetrators had access to them while they were home. So now, we must be mindful of this aspect of how children were isolated and victimized.
If the teacher is an offender that has no past record, he can typically take advantage of this scenario. Many times, children with disabilities like autism may be isolated with one caregiver as it is very common for neurodivergent children to have multiple caregivers at any given time.
Parents must make it abundantly clear that kids are to never be alone in a car, room, with another adult. This is where boundaries are important and once children learn this at home, it’s easier for children to start identifying when a person has behaved in a creepy or tricky way.
Gift Giving
Perpetrators will often give gifts that are highly prized or liked by their victim. The victim being a minor does not fully realize they are being groomed. Vulnerable children that are missing a father figure are more than likely to feel special when a gift is presented like name brand clothing. Children need to know that gift giving is only done for birthdays, holidays or special occasions and not from people in specific scenarios. Children need to know boundaries around gift giving like when we go shopping for others. This is also a great reason to start explaining this boundary around gift giving.
Secret keeping
Perpetrators use secrecy to maintain their crime hidden and they also use it to manipulate the victim. For example, if a perpetrator buys a gift for the child, the test to see if they will keep it a secret. It’s manipulative because this grooming tactic is likely a gift that the child needs like clothing. Perpetrators may also try to guilt their victim after they have started abusing them. The perpetrator may give them a gift from their family home describing how prized it is to guilt the victim into maintaining their relationship a secret.
Saying Jokes that are inappropriate
Perpetrators will test a child’s ability to understand boundaries. They may show them an inappropriate image and joke saying that it was for someone else. They are seeing if this child will tell anyone about this tricky behavior that was done. A perpetrator will often try to see the reaction of the child in the moment. If a child responds vocally saying, “you’re not supposed to show me that.” The perpetrator can try to weasel his way out of that situation saying it was meant for another person. Many children are still learning about boundaries but especially if children are younger, they may not realize this is a boundary violation.
Desensitizing the oversexualization of children
This can be done in person or online. In person it can look like talking to children about sex during adolescence. It can also look like slapping a child’s butt at home. The child may have told the perpetrator to stop but yet he continues, minimizing the act and blaming the child for being too sensitive. A child that knows her boundaries can enforce this boundary and clearly say, “I said stop it!” The offender wants to keep his offensive behavior a secret so more than likely he will stop. He wants to make sure his victims will be quiet and oftentimes will try to make sure he can coerce the child into keeping his crimes a secret. There are other tactics that are used by perpetrators that Kimberly King describes in her new book called Body Safety for Young Children: Empowering Caring Adults. I want to emphasize that fathers who slap the mother of their child’s butts causally in front of their children are modeling to children how to treat others. Even though a man may think this is consenting behavior between a man and two adults, it may not be clear to children what they are doing. Children get confused and think this is what you may be allowed to do on the playground to their peers. Modeling body boundaries is the first thing children learn between their parents.
Healing childhood wounds
Mothers that grew up in the 80s, 90s were subjected to having zero boundaries and that placed them at risk in various contexts. Parents were surviving every day and often clueless in explaining to their children about keeping their bodies safe from perpetrators. It was often one conversation and then that’s it. I see mothers that often are still wondering if they were victims because they simply do not know. They have a strong fear that their own child will be victimized and unfortunately survivors are at risk for their own child getting victimized. Parents don’t have to wait until their child is in high school. I can support you in helping educate your child on body safety to prevent your child from becoming another statistic starting at the age of 2. You can schedule a free 15 min consultation here, email me, or call 803-573-0279.
References
Sedlak, Andrea J., et al. 2010 Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4): Report to Congress, Executive Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4) Report to Congress Executive Summary
