The Real Red Flags of Grooming, with Elizabeth Jeglic, Ph.D.

Season 5, Episode 4

“The Real Red Flags of Grooming,” with Elizabeth Jeglic, Ph.D.

[Intro music begins]

[Intro]

Teresa Huizar:
Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “The Real Red Flags of Grooming,” I speak with Elizabeth Jeglic, professor of psychology at John Jay College, about red flag and risky behaviors for child sexual abuse.

One of the most compelling problems in child sexual abuse prevention has been how to describe to parents, caregivers, and the general public exactly what signs to look for to identify concerns. Frankly, much of the discussion has been so general because, what might, with hindsight, have been a sign of abuse, might well in another setting be of no concern at all. Describing what grooming behaviors are has up until now been fraught and difficult.

Now enter Elizabeth’s research, which has largely demystified grooming behaviors by looking at which behaviors most clearly linked to child sexual abuse. And even more importantly, identifying red flag behaviors that any mandatory reporter, parent, or professional can recognize to sound the alarm. This research has the potential to revolutionize both mandatory reporter training and the prevention education we conduct with kids in schools.

And wait until you hear the implications for investigators and prosecutors as well. This is a seminal piece of research and one we are all going to be citing and referring back to for years to come. Can you tell I’m excited about it? I know that you will find our conversation as thought-provoking as I did. Please take a listen.

[1:48] Teresa Huizar:
Hi, Elizabeth. Welcome to One in Ten.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Thank you so much for having me.

Teresa Huizar:
I’m just wondering—well, first of all, let me just say that I’m so excited by the piece of research that you recently published on grooming, and I can’t wait to dive into that. But before we do, I’m wondering, just how did you come to this work really researching sexual violence prevention?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
So I kind of fell into it. I’m originally from Canada, and I got a summer job working in the correctional services of Canada, and they placed me in the sex offender treatment division. And so while I was in graduate school, I learned about developing programs for the treatment of those who perpetrate sexual abuse.

And that’s kind of—I got hired by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and that’s what the students were interested in. So I started looking at the behaviors of those who perpetrate sexual violence and what we can do to treat them. But then after I had my children, I kind of recognized there was a disconnect between what we were learning about those who perpetrate sexual violence and then, kind of, people in the community.

And so I really wanted to focus then on informing individuals about how sexual violence is perpetrated, because there’s a lot of myths and misconceptions out there. And I wrote a parenting book. And around that time I got a graduate student, now Dr. Georgia Winters, who is my co-author in a lot of the work, who’s interested in sexual and grooming.

And then the two of us really started recognizing the importance of identifying these pre-offense behaviors before the abuse happens in terms of prevention. And so we’ve really been doing that for the last 10 years now.

[3:13] Teresa Huizar:
I saw the trajectory of the research that had been published, and I’m just wondering, you know, why grooming specifically?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
I think when we think about sexual abuse, a lot of it talks about, you know, after it happens. And by then it’s already too late. The damage has been done, you know?

And while we know that people are resilient and they can, you know, still leave productive lives, we know that child sexual abuse is a trauma that impacts people in the long term significantly. And so we wanted to really understand what we could do to prevent sexual abuse before it’s happening.

And it was kind of at the time that, you know, a lot of these large scale sexual abuse cases were coming out. You know, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America. And so it was really at that point that we kind of wanted to look at the behaviors that these people were engaging in and see if we could like, kind of in the sex offender field, we call it the “modus operandi” and identify behaviors that we could, we could see before the abuse happened, that we could identify these perpetrators.

[4:12] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I’m just wondering for our listeners, I think I had heard grooming described every way under the sun. You know, so that we’re sort of setting a base of understanding for all of us, when you say the term “grooming,” can you describe exactly what you’re talking about, the definition that you use?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Sure. So one of the things that we recognized as we started doing research in this field is that it was an issue. Like, everybody was describing grooming in very different terms. And so, what we did is we looked at the research that existed, which was largely kind of descriptive and case study based, and we identified it kind of as a process.

It’s primarily described as the behaviors that a perpetrator engages in before the abuse happens so that they can kind of gain access to the child and perpetrate the abuse without detection or having the child disclose. We then went further to kind of develop a stage model, which we call the Sexual Grooming Model.

And we identified five different stages. The first being victim selection, where the perpetrator selects somebody who is vulnerable, either because of psychological reasons—they might be lonely or isolated or have psychological or behavioral problems—or because of environmental circumstances, like they don’t have adequate supervision, or their parents aren’t resources for them.

They then gain access to them and isolate them. And so depending upon the nature of the perpetrator, that might be, you know, working in a youth-serving organization. It may be volunteering someplace. Or if it’s a family member or somebody, you know, close to the family, they already have access, so that’s a little less necessary. But then they might isolate them psychologically or physically from their family and friends.

We then see that they gain trust with the child and those around them. And that’s kind of the crux of the grooming process is this relationship formation. And that’s often what prevents the disclosure. Because they select kids who are potentially vulnerable, they give them love and attention and affection, and they find out what they need and they give it to them. And so this relationship becomes somewhat kind of important to the child. And so this becomes an important person in their lives. They also gain the trust of family members, potentially the community as a whole.

And then the final stage before the abuse happens is the desensitization to sexual content and physical contact. And that’s when they start to have those boundary violations, where they start to kind of, you know, use sexual language. They start touching the child in non-sexual ways, like hugs, but then it kind of progresses to more and more frequent touches. So that kind of the boundary gets crossed without the child necessarily recognizing that it’s happened until it’s too late.

And then the final stage we call post-abuse maintenance. So once the abuse has happened, the perpetrator generally either wants to be undetected or wants to continue the abuse. And so then they use different strategies to prevent the child from telling. Kind of explaining that, you know, this is something they wanted, this is how people show love. You know, that nobody would believe them if they told. Some people might use threats, or they threatened to abandon them or, or, you know, they would lose the relationship or they use bribes or threats.

And so that’s what kind of prevents people from detecting the abuse and the child from disclosing.

[7:20] Teresa Huizar:
When I was reading your article, I was very interested in kind of the lit review you did at the beginning. And let’s again, to catch people up who haven’t read it, talk a little bit about how good are we—in general—adults—at recognizing grooming when we’re presented with scenarios of grooming. Are we great at recognizing it, or something else?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Well, the goal in me doing these types of, you know, sessions is for us to get better at recognizing those behaviors because we’ve identified tangible behaviors. But what our research has suggested is that people as a whole are not great at identifying, you know, sexual grooming before the abuse is reported.

People now kind of can recognize, at least in some of our research, the more touching behaviors, you know, and I’m seeing people are increasingly pointing to a lot of these boundary violations. But some of those preparatory behaviors—like, you know, people, you know, spending time with their child, taking them on overnight stays—those still have yet to be identified. Or the selection of potentially vulnerable victims.

And so it’s called the hindsight bias. So when people know that abuse has occurred, they can say,
“Aha. Oh, that’s obvious.” Because we knew all these grooming behaviors had happened. But until we know that the abuse was perpetrated, we’re not particularly great at identifying which, which behaviors are grooming and which are not.

The other issue is that a lot of sexual grooming behaviors resemble normal adult child interactions. And so, you know, so giving a child a lot of attention is a great thing for a kid, right? And especially kids who are vulnerable. Mentoring can be a very important thing. But those same behaviors can also, you know, when used by a perpetrator with, you know, malicious intent, be sexual grooming behaviors.

[8:56] Teresa Huizar:
One of the things that I was struck by in the paper that I really appreciated was your effort to tease out some of that. Like what makes a difference? Does it have to do with the frequency or a cluster of behaviors or other things? And we’ll dive into that a little bit more in just a moment. But I’m wondering, when you set this, the piece of research, up, when you decided to do it, you had to have had certain hypotheses that you were testing against.

What were those, and did you have any surprises, things in the findings that you were like, “Boy, did we not expect that”?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
So we had already at this point developed a model of sexual grooming, and then we have identified 42 sexual grooming behaviors. But one of the pushbacks that we got oftentimes is, you know, how do you separate these from normal adult/child interactions?

So the biggest thing we wanted to do is to see which of these behaviors were more frequently endorsed by individuals who’ve experienced child sexual abuse as opposed to people who have, you know, adults—we used adult males for this study, adult males in their life who did not, you know, perpetrate child sexual abuse.

We suspected that the touching behaviors, because those are the ones that are the biggest red flags, the ones that precede the abuse, would be the ones that would separate those who experienced childhood sexual abuse and those that did not. And that pretty much held true.

But what we also did, what I thought was particularly interesting, was we looked at the relationship to the child. So we looked at family members, non-family members, and then community members. Because we suspected that a lot of these grooming behaviors when engaged in by a family member, would be normal adult/child interactions, right? Like, giving the child attention and touching them and—because they have to bathe children. So those would be normal. And they wouldn’t necessarily distinguish between individuals who had experienced abuse and those that did not. But we suspected, you know, for example, a community member seeing a child in a state of undress is really, you know, something that’s outside of the norm.

And that would kind of come true. And it did for the most part. But what we were surprised at is that almost all the behaviors that were reported for the community members and non-family members also came true for the family members as well. And so what we’re seeing is that, you know, a lot of these touching behaviors and these sexualized behaviors, regardless of who engages in them, you know, are sexual grooming behaviors. And those are the ones that are most likely to be reported by those who experiencedr childhood sexual abuse.

[11:12] Teresa Huizar:
You know, the thing that I was struck by—and I was looking at the sort of chart where you lay out all of the different behaviors and are comparing people who have not experienced sexual abuse to those who have.

Elizabeth Jeglic: Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: And it’s true that I think in sort of the public discourse, we have this idea that—you know, it’s so confusing because so many of them are very similar. But actually I was surprised by the number where there were enormous differences—

Elizabeth Jeglic: Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—in the amount that you saw between people who had never experienced child sexual abuse and those who did.

Elizabeth Jeglic: Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
And I thought, you know, this is very promising because it’s really by creating and understanding those differences, that we can improve prevention work and help people—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
—not feel like, well this is, you know, “How could you ever tell?” It’s like, “Actually, you know, you can.” And there are some interesting things, even just beyond touching that I thought were interesting.

[12:05]
Can you talk for a moment—and let me just go into this piece talking about victim characteristics by saying that, first of all, no matter what the characteristics of victims are, we’re not at all implying that there’s something they could have done in any way that could have prevented their abuse or that they share any blame for that.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
At the same time, it’s clear that offenders are sorting for something, you know—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—when you start looking at these. Can you talk a little bit about what they appear to be sorting for?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
So, there was actually a study that was done in the late ’90s, and they asked offenders how they selected their victims. And one of the things that they said is that the kids who had less supervision, you know, were the ones that they were kind of going for. And they also were able to identify kids that are particularly vulnerable. And that’s kind of come up, you know, when we see case studies, but also in the research that the kids who are experiencing childhood sexual abuse are vulnerable for a variety of reasons.

And some of it is because they’re psychologically vulnerable. They feel kind of unwanted, unloved. And so that’s where the perpetrator kind of, you know, gets their claws in and they try to fill those needs because, you know, children need and strive for, you know, love and affection.

And if they’re not getting it or feel they’re getting it at home or from their immediate circle, somebody from the outside can try to fill that in. But also, the biggest thing that we’re seeing is really the lack of adult supervision. One of the things that we found in a previous study was that the majority of childhood sexual abuse happens in the afterschool hours and in the summertime.

And you know, I think that is both sad but also a place where we can really intervene in the sense that these are kids who maybe, you know, for a variety of reasons, their parents aren’t able to watch them after school. They’re kind of the latchkey kids. And so they’re being accessed by people after school or in the summertime when they’re kind of, you know, hanging out. They don’t have structured activities.

And so when you think about the long-term consequences, both to the individual, the family, and society, and the costs to that, and, you know, things that we can do like low cost childcare and summer camp is really like a drop in the bucket. When you kind of compare what we can do to prevent it from what, you know, the consequences would be.

[14:06] Teresa Huizar:
It’s interesting hearing you say that because it really aligns very well with what I think Children’s Advocacy Centers experience, which is that the minute school is back in session, they can expect, you know, a wealth of reports and kids coming through the door to disclose child sexual abuse that happened over the summer.

And the same thing is true after holidays—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
—where often kids have had long, unsupervised periods of time alone. I’m also wondering, I noted that there was an element that’s related but not quite identical that had to do with parents as a resource.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Can you talk about that? The kids who lack parents as a resource are also more vulnerable or at risk.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
So parents are obviously the guardians to their children. Right? And so—you know, I say we because I’m a parent—we are the ones that kind of have to monitor how our kids are doing and who is in their environment. And oftentimes, I’ve taught my children from early on, and one of the things that I’ve written about, is that it’s really important for parents to have an open dialogue with their kids so that they feel that they can come and talk to them about anything.

Unfortunately, because of grooming, it creates a lot of shame in the child because they feel somehow that they’re culpable. And so, you know, they often won’t disclose to people. But if you have that open line of communication and the kid feels like they can say anything to their parent, their parent won’t be, you know, upset about it, they’re more likely to kind of talk about situations that they might feel uncomfortable about. And that’s really where you can intervene.

So, because kids often, like as they’re going through that desensitization stage, they don’t like that the perpetrator is pushing those boundaries. But you know, they don’t really know what to do. And so if they feel like they can tell a parent and a parent will intervene for them, then, you know, that’s really such an important thing. And if a kid doesn’t feel like they can tell their parent, or their parent will not believe them or get upset with them, then the perpetrator will be more likely to be able to engage in the abuse.

The other thing that, that one study did when they asked sex offenders back in the 1990s, you know, “How did you choose your victim?”, they said that any kid that knew the names of body parts, the anatomical names, they stayed away from. Because to them that meant the parents were talking to the kids about sexual topics and they were using, you know—

Teresa Huizar: That’s fascinating.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
And so, you know, just by having that open dialogue, you know, and having that knowledge, they felt like the children were more likely to tell. And so they were more likely to stay away from those kids.

Teresa Huizar:
Just the very fact that they had the language to tell, you know?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Exactly.

Teresa Huizar:
And be understood. That’s so interesting.

[16:22]
I’m also wondering, you know, there was a little bit of a myth dispelled, I think in this paper as well, in that, you know, in the literature up to now, and I think certainly in the public mind, there’s been this idea that sex offenders are primarily identifying kids from, you know, single-parent homes or where they’re desperate for a, you know, sort of so-called father figure.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Your data doesn’t seem to align with that. Why do you think that is?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
I think that’s partly due to the changing nature of, you know, a lot of that research looking at the single-parent home was kind of, you know, more historical in nature. And the family dynamic is changing, and we have, you know, additional people who are participating in kids’ lives.

And so, you know, you can be in at a two-parent or, you know, multi-family member household and still be feeling like their parents are not a resource. Or being, you know, like a latchkey kid as opposed to just having a single parent or looking for that father figure.

So I think the other thing too is that a lot of the kids that were looking for their father figures historically were youth going to youth-serving organizations, and that’s how they were being accessed as well. And I think we are getting better in our youth-serving organizations at recognizing and putting barriers in place. So the people that are seeking to harm our children are no longer able to do so.

[17:34] Teresa Huizar:
I want to pivot just a little bit to another area that you all explored, which was this piece around trust development.

I think this is, you know, it’s very challenging and particularly in cases that involve family members because, you know, you want kids to trust their family members and even others in the community. But in looking at the actual data, one jumped out to me that had to do with favoritism. You know, a lot of the numbers weren’t that radically different under the trust development between kids who had experienced sexual abuse and those who hadn’t, except for that one.

It seemed that, in CSA [child sexual abuse] cases, it was about twice as often, if I’m remembering the data right, that they’re saying that there was this sort of overt displays of favoritism. And I’m wondering did that relate to spending time with? Gift giving? I mean, I didn’t really, you know, remember from the paper itself that it drilled down much into that. But I’m just wondering because there was some difference there.

Is that one that people should pay attention to as well? That when they’re seeing that there’s someone who seems very, very unusually partial to one child versus another, is that something where you’re like, “You know, I don’t know. That’s not good”?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah. You know, so overall the trust development, those are some of the lower numbers because again, those are the behaviors—

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
—that most mimic healthy, normal adult/child interactions.

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
But really giving a child, you know, affection or that special attention and seeking them out like that was found to be about between two and three times more likely in children who’d experienced childhood sexual abuse.

So, you know, somebody who is again, maybe, a caring member of the community. They will kind of acknowledge all children and give all children attention. But if there’s one child that is getting more attention that potentially, you know, might be getting rewards or privileges, or getting attention that other kids are not, that might be a red flag.

The other thing that we found in that stage, and it’s more commonly seen with adolescents, is the provision of drugs and alcohol. And that’s also a big red flag. And it’s not necessarily to, you know, make the, the person more compliant. It’s sometimes—because for adolescents that’s a particularly, you know—getting access to drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and vapes and things like that is hard for them. And so if somebody gives that to them, that might be particularly valuable.

Teresa Huizar:
And boundary breaking. Right?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Boundary breaking. Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Most parents are not doing that. Or others in their lives that are responsible adults.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
So there’s, yeah. That’s interesting. I think that one of the things, you know, when I’m thinking about your findings, especially around the sort of desensitization to physical touch and contact, there’s a piece when you—I love the specificity of what you were identifying, and also it gives, I think, a parent a way to think about, really, no matter who’s doing this, you know, it warrants further investigation.

Elizabeth Jeglic: Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
That some of these things are so …  it’s a—I’m going to use a non-technical word, but—creepy, you know?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
That there’s a piece of it that it doesn’t matter if it’s Uncle Joe or Grandpa or whomever, it’s just—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—in and of itself, the behavior is something that’s a red flag and something to identify.

Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because I just remember reading through the list and I thought it was a really good list, And I thought, you know, I was thinking back to my own childhood and I was going, you know, I wasn’t a survivor. And I’m not a survivor, but I was thinking I would find all of this troubling.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
And I would’ve as a kid, you know?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
And I think, you know, as you say, there is some gradation to it. Like on the low end of the physical boundaries, it’s kind of like, you know, innocuous, non-sexual touching. So that might be hugs and you know, a hug here and there.

Teresa Huizar:
Sure, fine.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
That can be, that can be OK. But when you’re hugging children and they don’t want to be—and you can see kids who don’t want to be hugged.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
They kind of stand there and the person—or like somebody is just hugging the child all the time, or hugging them when it’s not necessary. That’s just a way for them to kind of, you know, again, cross those boundaries and desensitize the child.

Another thing that we saw was kind of, and I’ve seen this in case studies as well, is distracting the child while they’re touching them.

So they’re like asking them about the day, and they’re rubbing their back, or, you know, so that they’re not really focused on the touching. Or they’ll be talking about, “Oh, did you see that new video game? Or this and this?” And they’re touching them. So like the child recognizes they’re being touched, but they’re also trying to engage. And so the person is able to do that.

And then the touching becomes increasingly sexualized and such that it’s like, moving up the leg or moving—it might accidentally touch the breast. You know, so that, that is one thing. And then in terms of the language as well, we see, kind of at the lower end, some inappropriate sexual jokes. But then they start talking about, you know, sexual things that they did or sexual—they start asking the child if they’r—especially adolescents—if they’re in a relationship, and what have they done?

And then a lot of what we see is under the guise of sex education.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Like they’re trying to teach them and they might demonstrate, you know, sex education or show them pornographic videos to explain about sexual education. So it’s done on like, “I’m teaching you this so that you’ll know so that nobody can abuse you.” And I’ve heard that before. You know, like, “I don’t want anybody to, to, you know, take advantage of you, so I’m going to teach you what this is.” But then they take advantage of those situations.

We also do see that, you know, watching a child who is undressing or showing your naked body or being naked around the child are also big red flags.

[2:37] Teresa Huizar:
You know, it’s interesting because on all of this, and looking at the difference in data between people who had been sexually abused and not, it’s just glaring. Any of the things that relate to touch—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar: I
—it’s not like, yeah, well, there’s a slight difference, you know, a little bit. I, I just found it—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
—helpful information, but also profound, the level of differences.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep. And of the touching at the very low end, it’s four times, and at the very high end it’s 35 times more likely to happen in children who’ve experienced sexual abuse. So the increased sexual touching being the highest and the lowest being kind of the sex ed.

[23:14] Teresa Huizar:
You know, just even as you’re talking, I—this entire discussion just takes me back to so many discussions we’ve had about multi-victim cases on the podcast where people were talking, it could have been in the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, wherever, but you can just see this trajectory. Larry Nassar, you know, the entire thing.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar
It is interesting, and I’m sure hindsight bias, but nonetheless, you know, you could lay it like a template over the chart that you created, basically.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah. And that’s what we see time and time again, is it’s like, all these behaviors are reported. So we found, we’ve identified 42 sexual grooming behaviors.

And on average, our research has suggested that people who experience childhood abuse experience between 14 and 15 of these sexual grooming behaviors. And it will look different depending upon, you know, the characteristics of the child, the perpetrator, and the environment.

And so some of the behaviors and steps might be skipped because, for example, family members don’t need to gain access. Or they might already have a trusting relationship with a child. It might look different with the perpetrator as a female as opposed to a male. It might look different if it’s another youth, because we know that one third of all sexual abuse is perpetrated by another youth. And we also, from our data, have seen that they also use sexual grooming strategies.

So these behaviors can look very different. And whether it’s online or in person also can vary.

[24:33] Teresa Huizar:
Can we talk for just a moment about the post-abuse maintenance because, you know, that is as planful and intentional as all of the rest of it, it seems to me.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, I think some of these things we’ve heard about individually, before telling a child not to tell or something else. But the entire cluster of behaviors as a whole—again, there’s an enormous difference between those, you know, victims who are reporting that as child sexual abuse survivors and then individuals who’ve never experienced it.

And basically it seemed, on the whole, that the folks who had not been abused are like, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Because it’s almost non-existent.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Correct.

[25:09] Teresa Huizar:
So talk a little bit about, when we talk about post-abuse maintenance, what are we describing and what are the things that would be clear red flag concerns?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
So the post-abuse maintenance is like the behaviors that the perpetrator engages in after the sexual abuse has occurred to prevent disclosure and detection. And so, they either want to continue to abuse the child or they want to make sure the child doesn’t report what has happened.

And so they’ll try to normalize what has happened in different kinds of ways. So they might, you know, convince the child that what was happening was perfectly normal. As I mentioned, it might be like, you know, “I’m just showing you what sexual education is, that’s perfectly normal.” Or, “For people who love each other, that’s normal to do these kinds of things.”

The child may, you know, recognize that it’s not right. So they say, “You know, people wouldn’t understand. Don’t tell anybody what happened.” And they encourage the keeping of secrets. So that’s a big thing that we talk about with parents is like, “Tell your kids secrets between adults and children are never acceptable.” You know, an adult should not have a secret with a child.

And so, you know, they encourage children to keep secrets. So they might start—and this is kind of, we see this also pre-abuse—is they might start with little secrets. Like, you know, “I’m going to give you something that your parents don’t allow. Don’t tell them.” And so if the child doesn’t tell, that is an indication to the perpetrator that they can—

Teresa Huizar:
So they’re testing it.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
They’re testing it, yeah. And so what we see also is that they’ll go through these stages and if they try different behaviors and they’ll try some of the touching. And if the child is not receptive, they’ll go back. So like, they might need to do more, you know, trust development, you know, if, if the touching doesn’t work or they might have to do more, you know, innocuous sexual touching, if the child kind of is pushing back when they try to sexualize the touching, so that they can kind of keep going.

But in terms of the otherwise, is making the child feel responsible for the abuse. I think, you know, “You wanted this.” “You didn’t leave.” “You stayed here.” And that’s why a lot of kids don’t report. There’s a lot of guilt and shame associated with childhood sexual abuse is because the perpetrators make the child feel responsible.

And then the child kind of looks at their behavior and said, “I didn’t leave. I stayed, you know, I must have been culpable in some way.” And then, you know, because they formed this relationship, the person might threaten the child with abandonment, rejection, or, you know, “Your family’s not going to believe you, nobody’s going to believe you. They like me.” Or if it’s somebody who’s in the family that, “If you tell, then our family might break up.” You know, something like that. They might use rewards or bribes or, you know, promises to the child if they don’t tell.

And then again, kind of just letting the child know that the, trying to convince the child that whatever was being done is somehow normative or acceptable, that it wasn’t wrong.

[27:35] Teresa Huizar:
I mean, just the level of gaslighting that’s a part of that is—

Elizabeth Jeglic: Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—enormous. You know, one of the things that I love about this study is it has so many practical implications. You know, it’s not one of those where you’re like, “Well, let me puzzle on what we can do with this information.” It’s—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
—readily apparent. But let’s just start with the prevention aspect. I think that, I’m hopeful that any of the evidence-based prevention programs that exist out there after seeing this publication immediately, you know, took this to heart. Took your little infographic and updated their materials. But—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah,

Teresa Huizar:
—talk a little bit about what you see as the implications for prevention. Which I think, frankly, I think a lot of parents struggle with thinking that they even can prevent their children from being violated.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Correct.

And I think that’s what I want to empower parents to feel like there is something they can do.

And so I think that’s why the identification of these behaviors and learning what sexual grooming is, is so important. You know, we have Megan’s Law and Jenna’s Law where we now have state mandates to provide education on sexual abuse prevention in schools, to parents, to children, to teachers, because that’s where people get education.

We are doing a study right now where we’re looking at the inclusion of sexual grooming within those curricula, and not all states have sexual grooming as an explicit part—

Teresa Huizar:
That’s interesting.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
—of the education. And I think that’s so important because these are the tangible behaviors.

But I think we should go through these behaviors. Like they can look at my infographic and look at the behaviors and, and you know, kind of talk to their kids, talk to their co-partners, their family members. Like these are behaviors that we need to be aware of. We labeled them as kind of enhanced risk, moderate risk, and high risk based upon the odds ratio, or how many times more likely we saw these in cases of childhood sexual abuse.

But especially at the lower end, like the, the enhanced or moderate risk. If you’re observing those kinds of behaviors, that’s a warning sign to be aware and to look at that relationship more closely. Totalk to your child to say, you know, “Let me know if, you know, when you’re spending time with so-and-so, if they make you feel uncomfortable or something happens.” To maybe put additional monitoring in place. Maybe don’t let the child be alone with that person. To put an extra video camera in the home, you know, if there’s some kind of suspicion that’s aroused. And then just make sure that you are monitoring those situations.

And in some cases it might be that you need to cut off a relationship, that you really don’t feel comfortable with your child being around that person anymore. So I think that that comes into play.

I think youth-serving organizations need to be aware of sexual grooming behaviors and these red flag behaviors so that they can identify them in those who are on staff and working with children who are, you know, under their care.

You know, my hope is that on a policy level that we can think about incorporating sexual grooming in legislation, given that we know that certain behaviors are much more higher risk among those who perpetrate sexual abuse. If we can identify them before the abuse happens and legislate that, then we can prevent abuse before it occurs.

I think it’s also important kind of in like, unfortunately, once abuse does happen, but in the investigation to, you know—because still a lot of abuse doesn’t get prosecuted because it’s, you know, the child’s word against the adult’s word. So if we can kind of show this pattern of behavior, I think people are more likely to recognize that abuse did occur.

And then I think it’s also important for treatment because I think a lot of people who experience abuse feel a lot of guilt and shame. And recognizing how they were manipulated and how this is not their fault, you know, it kind of can take away some of those feelings and to recognize that it is not their fault that they were manipulated.

This is somebody who’s, you know, doing this to them. And I think hopefully, because that’s what really, you know, leads to those more long-term feelings is those guilt and shame feelings. And so, getting some absolution from that hopefully can be helpful.

[33:17] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and getting some perspective about the fact that the person who was abusing them basically was pursuing it like a full-time job.

I mean, when you go through all of these activities and the many stages that it went through, and this sort of, you know, everything from the careful selection of the victim themselves to then how they pursued that over time. I mean, this is not sort of accidental behavior—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
—that adults are perpetrating. This is really something where the child was the absolute focus of this individual.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And as you say, manipulated over a long period of time. And I, you know, like you, I hope that that helps some adult survivors too understand that this was far beyond anything that they could have identified at the time.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
Or, you know, somehow prevented from happening to themselves.

I also noted in your paper that there’s some talk around sort of the—I don’t know if you called it “familial grooming,” but something like that. The very fact that these individuals don’t just target children. They—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

Teresa Huizar:
—target families. They target communities with the same—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Institutions.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—with the same intentionality. Really.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Absolutely.

[32:24] Teresa Huizar:
Let’s talk about the investigation for a moment. You know, I noticed, and I loved that at the end of the paper you broke out, you know, implications for prevention, for investigation, for prosecution, and other types of things.

Investigatively, if someone came forward with a report of child abuse, how might this be helpful to know and understand this particular framework and your findings?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
I think it’s important in terms of, you know, the child forensic interview. We’re actually working right now with a child forensic interviewer and an advisory board to adapt our self-report scale for use in child forensic interviews so that they can get this information from the child when they’re doing the child forensic interview.

So kind of using open-ended questions, to get at those constructs and behaviors that we want to see in grooming. Because again, the more information that we have about grooming, the easier it is, I think to prosecute the case, if we can identify, you know, that they did X, Y, and Z.

Because oftentimes I think, you know, if you’re not familiar with sexual grooming, like you’ll get the touch, right? Like, you’ll get that this happened or that happened. But you don’t get the process. And it’s the process that I think is important, and it shows the intentionality of it and how it progressed over time. And if we can kind of show—like, we know that almost all cases of childhood sexual abuse involve sexual grooming and that many of these behaviors are used. And so if we can show how a case kind of fits to this model and these behaviors were used, I think the likelihood of prosecution is, is significantly increased.

[33:59] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I would agree with that. I think that often these cases unfortunately get couched as just sort of, he said, she said. It’s like—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—actually, there’s a whole pattern of behavior here that you can identify and talk about and educate jurors about and—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yep.

[34:12] Teresa Huizar:
I’m wondering, you know, since the paper’s been published, you know, we were interested right away, but have you had any feedback from prosecutors or investigators or others?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
We’ve had some feedback. Legislators are interested in it.

Teresa Huizar:
Great.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
You know, I have been called by prosecutors to kind of explain what child sexual grooming is. Some people think people, you know, that juries already know. I think people are, are kind of generally know grooming. Now they’ve heard the term.

Teresa Huizar:
They’ve heard the term.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
They may not know anything more than that.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yes, they’ve heard the term and they have a general idea that it involves some sort of, you know, boundary violations.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
They don’t know the specifics. But there’s definitely increased recognition of it. I think there’s increased interest in it. You know, I’m very hopeful that, as we continue our research, like we’re going to continue a part two of this study. In this one, we saw that people who experienced childhood sexual abuse reported twice as many grooming behaviors overall. And we looked at the specific behaviors.

In the next paper, we’re actually going to look at the frequency of behaviors—

Teresa Huizar:
Interesting.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
—like how many times did they happen? Because, for example, one text might be OK, you know. But if they’re texting multiple times or, you know—

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
—there might be a, a threshold—

Teresa Huizar:
That’s interesting.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
—that is kind of suggestive of sexual grooming.

And we also want to look at, like in this study we compared adult males to people who were as the comparison group, because they’re the ones who we know perpetrate the most cases of sexual, childhood sexual abuse. But we’re seeing increased numbers of people coming forward and saying that, you know, females perpetrated abuse against them.

And it’s estimated that up to 12% of perpetrators are females. And juveniles are about a third of the perpetrators. And so we want to know if the behaviors, the grooming behaviors, differ based on, you know, whether the perpetrator was a juvenile, a male, or a female.

[35:49] Teresa Huizar:
You know, our Children’s Advocacy Centers are seeing more and more youth with problematic sexual behavior.

So I—they’re going to be very interested in that as well when the study is published. I’m just curious myself. You know, you’ve talked about three different research projects that are ongoing here.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Or starting up. What’s next beyond that? Are you continuing to drill down into grooming or are there other research interests you’re pursuing as well?

Elizabeth Jeglic:
I mean, you know, we’re broadly interested in sexual violence prevention as a whole. And one of the reasons I was so thrilled to get this call to do this podcast is I think we really have to bridge the divide between research and practice. And our goal is really to disseminate what we’re learning to the communities. Right? And, you know, I think there’s so many people out there doing great work, and we want to make sure they’re having, you know, the most up-to-date research evidence. And so where we can bridge those divides, I think that’s so important.

You know, we’re looking at factors related to disclosure, and I think one of the biggest things, one of the most under-researched things. in child sexual abuse prevention is looking at children from ethnic and racial minority populations. Because it’s so under-researched, and we don’t know as much about sexual abuse within those groups. You know, we access the people that are the easiest for us to access. And those are populations that have been marginalized traditionally in the research. And so we need to go out into those communities and do that work. And so that’s kind of another area that we’re going to be looking to pursue in the, in the next few years.

[37:08] Teresa Huizar:
Well, I’m excited to hear all of this. You’ll have to come back on—

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—to the podcast after you have some of the newer research published as well. I’m wondering, is there anything else that I should have asked you and didn’t, or that you’d like to make sure that we talk about today? Since you do have the ear of thousands of child abuse professionals.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
I just think it’s so important for really us to work together and, you know, to have these collaborations. Because I think, for us as academics, it’s hard often to access the populations and to talk to people on the front lines. And so really, you know, reaching out to us and saying, “Hey, I want to collaborate.”

And, you know, we have the means to look. You probably have a lot of data in your records. We can look at that data, we can talk to you, we can get your insights and we can do that and, you know, disseminate that in a scientific way and look at it in kind of bigger terms. Because, like, you get case studies here, or one person says this, but when you have a, a whole lot of people and you can say, you know, “A hundred people said this,” that’s really powerful.

Having these collaborations and this ability to work together and to bridge those divides, I think we will go so far. And my goal is to eradicate childhood sexual abuse. So I hope that we can all work together to do that.

[Outro music begins]

[38:10] Teresa Huizar:
We’re with you in that fight. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come onto One in Ten, Elizabeth, and we look forward to talking to you in the future as well.

Elizabeth Jeglic:
Thank you so much for having me. Take care.

[Outro]

[38:21] Teresa Huizar:
Thank you for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And for more information about this episode or any of our others, please visit our podcast website at OneInTenPodcast.org.