Why Me?
Children never do anything to bring this upon themselves - the abuser wants sexual contact to a child’s body, and it could be any child who happens to be there.
Child sex abusers usually take a lot of time and effort appearing to be kind and caring towards children, in order to get children to trust them.
The abuser wants the child to trust them so that when they begin to sexually abuse, it will be much more difficult for that child to tell someone about it. This could be because the child may feel guilty and embarrassed about what is happening.
This process of building a relationship with the
child to ensure that they won’t speak out is known
as ‘grooming’.
Some paedophiles groom an entire family, so that they can gain sexual access to the children in the family and ensure that their parents/carers won’t suspect what is going on.
There are several ways that an offender may build a relationship with a child or family. He/she may:
- Attempt to gain trust by being a “really nice friend”.
- Give the child gifts/money, take them on outings or teach them to swim/ride a bike/play football etc.
- Offer help and support to a vulnerable family, i.e. if a family is having financial problems, they may offer money to help them out.
- Try and separate the child from their parents/carers, perhaps by offering to babysit or take them away on holiday.
- Begin a relationship with a single parent in order to get access to the child/children.
- Get a job working with children.
- Allow the child to do things that the parents/carers won’t, i.e. drink alcohol or look at pornography.
- Use chat rooms or game sites.
Once a relationship has been built-up, the paedophile will want to make sure the child doesn’t tell anyone. There are lots of ways that they might do this:
- Threatening the child, or someone they care about, with violence.
- Making the child feel ashamed and guilty, and implying that it is all their fault.
- Telling the child that no-one will believe them if they tell and they will get into lots of trouble.
- Telling the child that telling will split their family up.
- Offering the child gifts or other treats in return for keeping the secret.
- Telling the child that it is a ‘special’ secret relationship.
- Isolating the child from other family members and friends so that he/she is dependent upon the abuser and won’t want to lose their only ‘friend’.
If a child is told any of these things, it can be very confusing or frightening, making it difficult for them to tell anyone about what has been happening to them.