Grooming, Child Abuse, & Child Sexual Exploitation

Open Access: Yes.

Abstract

In the field of child sexual abuse prevention, secondary prevention services seek to engage with people concerned about their sexual interest and behaviours towards children prior to the onset of offending. There is a lack of robust information to inform program development and to seek to engage earlier with people concerned about their risk to children. Accordingly, this paper reports on the findings of a survey of 4,918 men, drawn from representative samples in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The paper described the proportion of men in the survey with a sexual interest in children (n = 642), and the factors that distinguish between men who wanted help for that interest and men who did not want help. Study findings indicate that offending behaviour is a key motivator for help-seeking amongst men with a sexual interest in children. Men who wanted help were significantly more likely to be married or living with a partner and working with children, and they reported closer social bonds, compared to men with sexual feelings who did not want help, which suggests that their help-seeking may be motivated by concern about the impact of their offending on their close relationships, social ties, and reputation. This group also displayed heightened rates of other forms of sexual deviancy, such as arousal to animal pornography, as well as the use of encrypted social media apps, potentially to camouflage or hide their offending activity. These findings may be useful for secondary prevention services in order to build motivation to seek help amongst men with a sexual interest in children.

Relevance

“This paper found that one in seven men in the survey reported some sexual interest in children… Importantly, this proportion varied considerably between countries and was highest in the United States. The United States also had the highest proportion of men with sexual interest in children who had offended, and who wanted help, compared to the two other jurisdictions.”

“Just over 40% of men with sexual interest in children wanted help for those feelings. There were few demographic differences between men who did and did not want help for their sexual interest in children. The key demographic difference was that men with sexual interest in children who did want help were almost twice as likely to be married or living with a partner or working which children. They also reported significantly higher perceived social support from significant others, family and friends. While men with sexual interest in children who wanted help were somewhat more likely to binge drink, mental health status and history of childhood adversity were similar between the two groups. The major distinguishing factor between these two groups was that, compared to men with towards children who did not want help, men with sexual interest in children who did want help were almost three times more likely to have engaged in any form of child sex offending. Their offending was predominantly online (such as viewing CSAM, grooming children, or paying for sexual content of children). They also evinced a pattern of sexual arousal to other deviant material: they were over twice as likely to watch violent adult pornography, and almost three times more likely to view bestiality material. Their elevated consumption of violent and bestiality pornography suggests that their sexual interest in children clusters with other paraphilic interests, and may be indicative of hypersexuality, which has been consistently identified as a risk factor for child sex offending.”

Citation