Grooming
Content warning: This page contains information that readers may find confronting or distressing.
Help is available if you or someone you know has experienced or is at risk of child sexual abuse. Our Get support page has a list of dedicated services if you need help or support. For information on reporting child safety concerns, visit our Make a report page.
If you or a child are in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000).
In order to keep children and young people safe, it is important to understand what grooming is and how to prevent it.
Actor, author and child safety advocate Madeleine West explains what grooming is, how it can occur and the importance of having conversations about this topic with children and young people.
Read the transcript
I'm Madeleine West. I'm a mum of six. Actor by trade, author, activist, and now very firm advocate for the protection of children.
Some people are probably aware that I was a victim and am now a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and I now work in the space. And one thing I've noticed is that prevention is possible, but the most important component is conversation. Here we have the crime that has the highest ratios of victims and our most vulnerable victims. We're talking about children.
Grooming is where an adult seeks connection with or communicates with a child, with the intention of seeking sexual engagement with them. So often, groomers will intentionally groom an entire family, an entire organisation. They're insidious and meticulous, and that involves communicating with kids, whether it's online or in person. It could be in a sporting group, an institution, a school.
The way it generally rolls out is slowly but insidiously the groomer will introduce sexual or gratuitous content, whether it's in conversations, whether it's materials such as photos to normalise sexual engagement for the child, with the hope that with enough exposure, that child won't speak up when they're actually approached sexually.
There are fantastic resources available if you go to the website for the National Office for Child Safety or ChildSafety.gov.au. There's an incredible resource hub there.
When you're opening up a conversation around grooming with children of any age, we understand it's an uncomfortable topic to tackle, but it's a necessary topic. In my experience, the best way to approach it is anecdotal. So just saying I heard about this. Have you heard about that? Or I saw the strangest thing on TikTok. It made me feel really weird. Have you ever seen anything online that made you feel weird? Maybe you're driving somewhere. If a child opens up about something they've experienced, go through every drive through in your area and keep them talking.
One of the things that I do with my kids, I've learned to game online. I found that when my child is sitting next to me and we're in game play, that will open up about what they're seeing, what they're experiencing, what is going on at school. So make it more a side-by-side camaraderie conversation rather than one where they feel like they're being interrogated.
The abuse of children is an area that as a society we have kept silenced because it's uncomfortable, but the impacts are absolutely cataclysmic. And if we can circumvent those impacts right here and now, we're looking to a much brighter future.
To help adults to learn more about grooming, we have developed a factsheet that summarises the information included on this webpage. It can be printed out and hung up at home or in organisations to help raise awareness about grooming and the role adults can play in prevention.
Find further guidance on having conversations with children, young people and other adults about child sexual abuse in our conversation toolkit
What is grooming?
The term ‘grooming' refers to intentional behaviours that manipulate and control a child, as well as their family, kin and carers, other support networks, or organisations in order to perpetrate child sexual abuse.
Grooming can occur online or in person. Online child grooming is the process of establishing and building a relationship with a child or young person while online, to facilitate sexual abuse that occurs either in person or online.1 This is achieved through use of the internet or other technologies, such as phones, social media, gaming, chat and messaging apps.
The intent of grooming is to:
- gain access to the child or young person to perpetrate child sexual abuse
- obtain sexual material of the child or young person
- obtain the child or young person's trust and/or compliance
- maintain the child or young person's silence, and/or
- avoid discovery of sexual abuse.2
While child sexual abuse often occurs after or alongside grooming, acts of abuse do not need to occur for grooming to have taken place. Similarly, perpetrators can also sexually abuse a child without grooming having taken place.
Behaviours involved in grooming
Child sexual abuse and grooming can occur within families, by other people the child or young person knows or does not know, in organisations, and online. Behaviours related to grooming are not necessarily explicitly sexual or directly abusive, and may be consistent with behaviours or activities in non-abusive relationships. They can often be difficult to identify and may only be recognised in hindsight. In these cases, the main difference between acceptable behaviours and grooming behaviours is the intent and motivation behind them.3
Grooming of a child or young person, online or in-person, may include:
- building their trust, including through special attention or gifts
- treating them like an adult to make them feel different and special
- gaining the trust of their parents, family or carers
- isolating them from supportive and protective family and friends
- convincing them to use different online platforms to evade detection, including those using encrypted technologies4
- coercing them, including through threats, stalking and asking them to keep secrets
- manipulating them to blame themselves for the situation
- encouraging or blackmailing them to engage in sexual activity, produce child sexual abuse imagery or participate in sexualised virtual chats
- non-sexual touching of the child or young person that develops into sexual behaviour over time.
Online grooming may lead to perpetrators meeting the child or young person in person.
How grooming occurs
There are a number of stages that may occur throughout the process of grooming. However, not all of these stages need to have occurred and they may occur in any order.
- The child or young person is targeted. While any child can be sexually abused, some perpetrators may target children that are particularly vulnerable. For example, children and young people that are socially isolated or are part of a marginalised social, economic, racial or cultural group.
- Building trust. Perpetrators often present as trustworthy, reputable, generous, and likeable, and may build a child or young person’s trust through special attention or gifts. In some situations, whole families or organisations can be groomed as a result of the perceived trustworthiness of a perpetrator.
- Isolation. Perpetrators may progressively isolate a child or young person from supportive family and friends, and may seek to fill roles in a child or young person’s life that provide practical or emotional support.
- Sexualisation. Perpetrators may gradually introduce sexualised content or discussions to a child or young person in order to normalise this behaviour. They will often then exploit this to encourage or coerce the child to engage in sexual activity, produce child sexual abuse imagery or participate in sexualised in-person or virtual chats. This behaviour may escalate slowly or quickly.
- Control. Perpetrators often use secrecy, shame, blame, coercion and threats to maintain control in order to perpetuate the abuse and ensure the child or young person’s silence.
The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse’s Perpetrators and grooming practice tool includes further information about the stages of grooming.
Signs of grooming
Being aware of the signs of grooming can help protect children and young people from child sexual abuse. A child or young person may show signs of being a victim of grooming in different ways. They may show all or some of the following signs:
- developing an unusually close connection with an older person
- having gifts or money from new friends or someone that they cannot account for
- being very secretive about their phone, internet or social media use
- going missing for long periods of time
- appearing extremely tired, including at school
- being dishonest about who they have been with and where they have been
- substance misuse
- assuming a new name, having false identification, a stolen passport or driver licence, or a new phone
- being collected from school by an older or new friend.5
How to prevent grooming
Teaching children and young people what is appropriate and inappropriate contact (both online and offline), and encouraging open and honest communication, without shame or stigma, will help to better protect them. This includes supporting children and young people to:
- understand safe and unsafe behaviours and situations, including being able to identify early warning signs and their body's natural reactions when they feel unsafe, worried, or scared. These may include feeling butterflies, and having sweaty palms and a racing pulse
- practice safe online behaviour, including deleting and blocking requests and messages from people they don't know, and reviewing and updating privacy settings
- know what to do and who to talk to if something feels uncomfortable, as well as what support services are available if they are unsure or if something has happened
- say no to requests to engage in unsafe behaviours or sexual advances
- block unsafe users, make a complaint to social media companies and report online grooming
- understand body boundaries, respectful relationships and consent
- feel safe and protected when disclosing what is happening to them.
Our website has further guidance on having conversations with children and young people about personal and body safety. We also have useful information about how to respond to a child sexual abuse disclosure.
What to do about suspected grooming
Children and young people may not understand they are being groomed, and may not tell you that they are being groomed directly. It is important to understand the signs of grooming and talk to children and young people if you notice changes in their behaviour and suspect something isn't right.
If you suspect someone is grooming you, a child or young person, or an adult you know, you can make a report to law enforcement. You can report online grooming or inappropriate contact to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. ACCCE’s website offers further information about how and what to report. Grooming that occurs in person should be reported to local police on 131 444.
For more information about reporting child safety concerns, see our Make a report page.
For information about what to do if something goes wrong online, visit the eSafety website.
Our Get support page provides a list of dedicated support and assistance services.
Other helpful resources
eSafety is Australia's national independent regulator and educator for online safety. It provides tools and resources for parents and carers to help keep children safe online, including access to free webinars. Issues covered include:
For young people (secondary school age), eSafety's page about unsafe or unwanted contact has specially tailored advice. eSafety also has resources for kids (primary school age).
Educators can also use the unwanted contact and grooming scenarios with students – these are designed to start conversations that help build online safety skills.
You can also find out more about grooming on these websites:
1 ECPAT International 2016, Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, Interagency Working Group on Sexual Exploitation of Children. Accessed November 2020 from: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Children/SR/TerminologyGuidelines_en.pdf.
2 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2017, Final Report: Our Inquiry – Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Volume 1, page 323.
3 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse 2017, Final Report: Our Inquiry – Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Volume 1, page 323.
4 Five Country Ministerial 2020, Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, page 4. Accessed November 2020 from: https://www.weprotect.org/wp-content/uploads/11-Voluntary-principles-detailed.pdf.
5 Victorian Department of Education and Training, Child Sexual Exploitation and Grooming. Accessed April 2021 from: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/health/childprotection/Pages/expolitationgrooming.aspx