The FBI has issued a warning to parents and educators about sexual predators working together online to victimize children using a new tactic they call “group grooming.”
The FBI’s San Francisco field office released a statement on July 6 after performing investigations that uncovered this tactic being used by sexual predators to target and groom children for sexual exploitation.
“Group grooming” is a tactic where the online predators will pose as children online and then meet up in social media and online gaming groups. Then they share sexually explicit material to normalize that type of behavior in the group.
Children join these groups thinking they are actually joining a group of peers. The children are unaware they are interacting with sexual predators.
The predators share sexual content within the group to test each child’s openness to sexual exploitation. The predators assess each child’s reaction to determine who they can pursue for one-on-one communication.
At first they pursue the children for sexual conversations online. Then the predators will encourage the child victims to engage in sexual experiences with them online. The predators also encourage their child victims to make sexually explicit media such as child sexual abuse material to send to them.
If possible, the predators might pursue opportunities to meet the child victims in person for further sexual abuse.
The online predators try to gain a large social media following, then use that along with the online groups they have joined to give a sense of online credibility. They use this online presence to try to gain the trust of their child victims.
The report states that children are more likely to trust someone who is already being trusted by someone in their online group, or being trusted by someone they follow online.
The FBI states that educating children on this new tactic can be powerful in preventing more child victims.
“The FBI is dedicated to identifying, arresting, and stopping these predators. We are providing this information to the public so that parents, guardians, and educators can warn their children about these reprehensible tactics,” said Special Agent in Charge Robert K. Tripp in the announcement.
Who Is at Risk
According to the Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center’s website,
there are about 500,000 predators online every day. The most susceptible to the online predators are children between the ages of 12 and 15. The website states that about 89 percent of the targeting is being carried out in online chatrooms or through instant messaging.
It also mentions that 40 percent of children who use social media will remove privacy settings to attract more friends and followers.
Online grooming of a child can be hard to detect because the online predators will instruct their child victims to keep quiet, according to the website.
The website lists some signs to watch for: increased online activity, becoming more secretive about their online activity,
switching screens or closing tabs and windows when a parent comes near, starting to use sexual language that they are expected to not know, or emotional instability.
How to Report
To report these types of predators, contact your local law enforcement agency,
contact the FBI at tips.fbi.gov, and/or
file a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) at 1-800-843-5678 or online at www.cybertipline.org.
