Grooming hurts too: The effects of types of perpetrator grooming on trauma symptoms in adult survivors of child sexual abuse

This is a good study, published very recently, that explains what grooming is, the types of grooming and why it is damaging to people who have been sexually abused.

Some of the findings of this study are:

• 93% of all their perpetrators were male, and 7% were female.
• 30% of perpetrators were fathers, 19% were unrelated individuals known to the family and 13% were siblings of the child.
• 50% of participants were sexually abused when they were 5 years or younger.
• Participants were subjected to three types of grooming: Drugs / alcohol grooming, Verbal coercion and / or threatening / violent grooming.
• Sexual abuse alone did not cause trauma, the grooming itself caused trauma in these participants.
• The most common grooming technique used in this sample was verbal coercion (pressurising them, or telling them it was a game).
• Treatment of survivors should include a focus on the grooming they were subjected to.