Watch out for 'grooming' in child abuse cases, say experts

Perpetrators of child sexual abuse “groom” children based on their age, stage of development and family dynamics.

To mark 10 years of the passing of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, the Nimhans Child Psychiatry Centre recently conducted a public talk on ‘Child forensics in child sexual abuse cases’.

According to experts, children’s understanding of abuse is dependent on their cognitive and socio-emotional development. So younger kids are not going to recognise abuse.

Adolescents, on the other hand, will rationalise the perpetrator’s behaviour especially if the perpetrator is someone the child admires or looks up to. Parents have to watch out for such patterns as it affects the disclosure process, they said.

On the panel were Dr Shekhar Seshadri, a former professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Nimhans, who has 40 years of experience in the field. He said “grooming” is used by perpetrators to vitiate consent. “When there is no element of physical coercion to abuse, grooming is an essential element in most cases of sexual abuse. It is important to identify patterns and examine how this evidence can be used in court,” he said.

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Dr Justice Shalini Phansalkar Joshi, a former judge of the Bombay High Court and author of ‘Decoding Child Sexual Abuse’, said: “When a child is emotionally manipulated to become isolated, vulnerable and dependent on the abuser, it is called grooming. Abusers identify targets based on family dynamics like poverty, broken family or aspects like disability of the child. Younger children may be showered with gifts and lured.

“The abuser may say “we’re having a secret relationship that you should not disclose to anyone, you are special to me’.”

After initiating sexual contact, the abuser will take control of the child, and parents must watch out for signs, Dr Joshi said. “The abuser wants to lower the defences of the child as he/she does not want his action to be disclosed. By the time the child realises what has happened, he/she gets into self-blame and guilt. This deters the child from growing,” she said.

Karen Müller, who established the Institute for Child Witness Research and Training in South Africa, said: “It is difficult to show or prove grooming. Many children don’t realise what has happened is abuse because of the context in which the abuse has taken place. For example, between a teacher and student, or a 15-year-old partying late outside without the knowledge of the parents.”

Her advice was to focus on context to understand grooming.

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