Offender strategies for engaging children in online sexual activity

Following technological developments, there has been increasing interest in online offenders' use of digital communication technology to sexually groom and abuse children. However, research has thus far primarily explored offenders' interactions with decoys instead of actual children, and initial evidence indicates that conversations with actual children may include more overt persuasion and extortion than conversations with decoys.

This study aims to describe online offenders' interactions with actual children when inciting them to engage in online sexual activity.

Swedish court judgements including 50 offenders (aged 16-69, median = 28.9) and 122 child victims (aged 7-17, median = 13.0) were analyzed.

By using an explorative mixed-methods approach, we thematically analyzed what strategies the children were exposed to, and looked for patterns between the strategy used and the characteristics of the abuse, victim, or offender.

We identified two types of strategies that the children were exposed to: pressure (threats, bribes, or nagging, N = 56), and sweet-talk (flattery, acting as a friend, or expressing love, N = 25). Overall, the offenders who used pressure were younger and targeted older children than the offenders who used sweet-talk.

This study expands the existing knowledge about the variety of manipulative strategies used by online offenders and adds support to the initial literature showing substantially more pressure and coercion in online offenders' interactions with actual children. The study also identifies some patterns between the strategy used and the age of the offender and victim that warrant further investigation in future studies.