Abstract
The online solicitation and sexual grooming of minors via online settings (e.g., chatrooms, social media, gaming) is pervasive. Researchers have sought to understand the individuals who seek to commit online sexual offenses and those who may be victimized, which has included the development of typologies related to different types of offense patterns that may be observed. Thus, this chapter provides an overview of what is known about online sexual grooming and solicitation in general. This is followed by a description of several proposed models that are specific to the sexual grooming process online and a comparison of these models to a content-validated model of in-person sexual grooming, the Sexual Grooming Model (SGM). We provide recommendations for how knowledge of online sexual grooming can inform education for children and caregivers on the risks and appropriate online behavior and can also inform law enforcement practices, policy, and treatment related to online sexual abuse.
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Winters, G.M., Jeglic, E.L. (2022). Online Sexual Grooming. In: Sexual Grooming. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07222-2_5
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