Teenagers and the hidden risk of grooming
Recent episodes of ‘Coronation Street’ have shocked viewers but child welfare agencies say it raises public awareness of the issue, writes Kim Bielenberg
It is the ultimate fear of parents of teenage girls under the age of 17. Will their daughter be lured into an abusive sexual relationship by an older man? The issue of child grooming has come to the fore after it cropped up in a storyline in Coronation Street. The TV3 soap currently features a 16-year-old character, Bethany Platt, who is groomed by an older man, Nathan Curtis, and ends up in bed with him.
While the episodes have shocked and disturbed many viewers, child welfare agencies have praised the writers of the soap for raising the issue and presenting an accurate portrait of how abusers groom their victims.
Mary Flaherty, chief executive of CARI, which counsels Irish child abuse victims, says: “I think it is good that an issue like this is featured on Coronation Street, because it raises public awareness of an issue that is often hidden from view.”
Ms Flaherty says the programme can help to dispel some of the myths around child grooming.
In the past, people tended to think of the perpetrator as a much older man, the uncle-type character in a shabby raincoat. In practice, many men who lure girls into exploitative relationships are in their twenties.
Before making these episodes, the writers of Coronation Street consulted with the National Society for the Prevention Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the UK.
They spoke to a woman called Lucie, who shared her experiences of sexual exploitation. Lucie met a man through social media when he began chatting to her about school and her life. This took a terrifying turn when she was just 12 and he began sexually abusing her.
According to the NSPCC, grooming occurs when a predatory individual builds an emotional connection with a child, with a view to gaining their trust for sexual purposes. The perpetrator can be a stranger or someone they know, and the grooming can happen online or in person.
Teenagers often do not understand that they have been groomed, or that what has happened is abuse.
The perpetrators may spend a long time gaining a child’s trust. They may even win the trust of an entire family in order to be allowed time alone with a child. In a lot of cases, they build a rapport with the child by offering them praise and giving them presents.
In Coronation Street, Nathan brings Bethany under his control by showering her with gifts. In other cases, the groomers may develop a relationship with a child by posing as someone of a similar age. In a recent case before the Irish courts, a 26-year-old man was convicted of grooming a teenager online by posing as a 13-year-old girl. The man, from Ballycullen, Co Dublin, set up a profile as a girl called ‘Julie’ on a website. After he started chatting to his 15-year-old victim, he introduced himself as Julie’s older brother ‘Adam’, and paid for the girl to get a taxi to his house where they had sex. Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, former chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, says parents need to be up to speed on who their teenage children are contacting online.
She welcomed the fact that new legislation creates an offence targeting child sexual grooming on the internet.
Typically in cases that have come before the Irish courts, the defendants have been men in their twenties.
Once they have established trust, groomers will exploit the relationship by isolating the child from friends or family, and making the child feel dependent on them. Sometimes groomers blackmail the child, or make them feel ashamed or guilty, to stop them telling anyone about the abuse.
Ms Flaherty adds that the internet has bred a level of openness and risk that people would not dream of taking in the real world.
This was highlighted by a case outlined by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) to an Oireachtas committee last week.
It involved two 14-year-olds who sent pictures of themselves in underwear to a man they met online. The man threatened to make the photos public unless they sent more images. The pair did not want to tell anybody about it and were too terrified to go to gardai. They even contemplated suicide.
Ms Flaherty says parents can lessen the danger of grooming by keeping lines of communication open with their children. “If they are watching Coronation
Street and a topic like grooming comes up, that is an opportunity to have a conversation with your child about it,” she says.
“You can warn them to be careful and treat what is happening online like the real world, but let them know that if they ever get into difficulty, they can talk about it.”