AUTHOR(S)

International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children

PUBLISHED

2017 in The Koons Family Institute on International Law & Policy

KEY FINDINGS

• This report discusses how the grooming of children for sexual abuse is increasingly happening online, and that predators often use pornography to desensitize children to sexual advances and convince them to create and send intimate images of themselves.

EXCERPTS

• "The online grooming process often includes sexual conversation, showing adult pornography and/or child sexual abuse material to the victim, and pressuring or coercing the child to create and share sexual images of him or herself."
• "Offenders use pornography to teach the child how to masturbate, pose for sexual photos, perform oral sex, and/or engage in intercourse and other sexual activities. Often, the offender will introduce the victim to 'mainstream' adult pornography, progress to hard-core pornography, and then on to more abusive images of children. Exposure to such material primes victims for being manipulated into sending pictures or videos of themselves to the offender."