What Adult Survivors Tell Us About Grooming

Teresa Huizar: Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten.  In today’s episode, What Adult Survivors Tell Us About Grooming, I speak with Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic, the nation’s foremost researcher on grooming behaviors and a frequent guest of the podcast.  If you haven’t listened to our prior two interviews yet, I’d urge you to do so.

They include the Real Red Flags of Grooming  and How Good Are Parents at Recognizing Grooming?  What today’s episode adds to those two, and to our knowledge, is the weight of lived experience. In this episode, Dr. Jeglic discusses recent research in which adult survivors were asked about their experience as the recipient of grooming behaviors.

By understanding the prevalence, how common this is? We can help both adults and children better recognize these red flags and avoid this before it even begins. Want to be better equipped to protect children?  Then please take a listen.

Hi Elizabeth, welcome back to One in Ten.

Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic: Thank you so much for having me once again. It was the joy of my week looking forward to this conversation.

Teresa: You know, this is a topic that I’m always very interested in and happy to talk about your latest research. But for those who may not have listened to the other podcast episodes we’ve done with you. There are a couple of them. So listeners, go find those. But for those who haven’t yet, can you just kind of recap how you became interested in the topic of grooming in terms of your own research?

Elizabeth: Sure. I had been studying perpetrators of sexual violence and that’s how my career got started off. And then in 2008, two things happened. One, I became a mom and two, there was an article published by Jeffrey Sandler and colleagues showing that 95 percent of all new people who are prosecuted for sex crimes would not have been on the sex offender registry. So that means that most of those people were not known to the system. And so focusing on the perpetrators, we were really missing a large part of, you know, who is perpetrating sex crimes.

So, I kind of started thinking we need to focus on prevention. And it was at that time that, uh, Georgia Winters, now Dr. Georgia Winters became my doctoral student. And she was really fascinated by the Jerry Sandusky trial and how All of this happened, and people didn’t really recognize that he was sexually abusing children, and we kind of started looking at sexual grooming, and so that kind of got us into these preparatory behaviors, and then we recognized that there wasn’t a lot about it, but nobody had really studied it empirically, and so, we developed a model and a measure and a definition and we have been measuring it in survivors of childhood sexual abuse and we really found a lot of great findings in terms of identifying these behaviors specifically and which behaviors are more likely to be reported in cases of childhood sexual abuse which we call our red flags and that was a previous podcast that we had done together. So, the goal really is to use these to prevent childhood sexual abuse.

Teresa: So, let’s talk about that grooming definition for a moment because when I was re-reading the paper, one of the things that I was thinking about as I was reading it is that I really appreciate the specificity of the definition that you’ve developed. I think that there have been different definitions out there, and some of them honestly have been vague enough that when you’re trying to describe this, especially to lay people, I mean, they don’t even know what to do with it. And so, just for our listeners who may not have heard that, and it doesn’t have to be word for word, so feel free to paraphrase it, but when we’re talking about grooming, what are we talking about?

Elizabeth: So, these are the generally overall, the preparatory behaviors that perpetrators engage in prior to contact sexual abuse to prevent disclosure and detection. And we have defined it specifically as they select, um, a vulnerable victim and the person can be vulnerable either psychologically or because they lack guardianship, they then seek to gain access and isolate the child, um, they then gain the trust of the child, um, they’re often their family and institutions in the community.

The final stage before the contact sexual abuse happens is what we call the desensitization to sexual content and touch and so they start crossing those boundaries. The contact sexual abuse then ensues and then afterwards we have developed what we call the post abuse maintenance stage and this is what they use to make the child feel guilty or culpable or they make them feel like they’ll get in trouble if they tell or that it’s a secret so that they don’t disclose the abuse and it’s not detected by others.

Teresa: So, as you were saying in your prior work, you really identified that while there’s a whole range of behaviors that can be classified as grooming, I think 42 or something like that, you know, are more high risk than others that when you see them, they should cause more. I guess you would say alarm or vigilance than others. Can you talk a little bit about those red flag behaviors before we talk about the specific study that we’re here to talk about today?

Elizabeth: Sure. So, we did a study where we’ve identified 42 behaviors, as you mentioned, across all five of those stages, and we did a study where we had people who were survivors of childhood sexual abuse complete our measures to indicate if they’d experienced a behavior. And then we had people who had not experienced childhood sexual abuse complete that same survey, but designed to for an adult in their lives. who they had the most contact with an adult male. And we found that of the 42 behaviors, there were significant statistical differences between 38 of those behaviors. But, specifically, they fell out, you know, this is kind of the big stat stuff, but in low, moderate, and high effect sizes. But the ones that are high effects, meaning there’s a huge difference, they were between 7 and 30 times less more likely in those who experienced childhood sexual abuse were those touch behaviors.

So increasing sexual touching over time, engaging in seemingly innocent non sexual touching. So that’s the hugs, the cuddles, the sitting on the lap, the accidental touching or the touching while distracted. So accidental, oops, I grazed your breast or your buttocks area, or I’m talking to you while rubbing your leg, for example, exposing the naked body to the child, showing the child pornography, telling the child about their own past sexual experiences. And the only one that wasn’t in that. That stage for that sexualization stage was separating the child from peers and family. So, those are what we saw that were most indicative of childhood sexual abuse.

Teresa: Okay, now I feel like we’re ready to dive into the actual piece of research we’re going to talk about because you have done just years worth of work on this and looking at lots of different aspects of it. Why did you decide to sort of dive into the issue of prevalence? Because that’s really what the study that we’re here to talk about today was sort of like, how often do you see these behaviors? Why was that so important in advancing work and what we know about grooming?

Elizabeth: I think one of the things that I often come across and still even to this day, I just got an article rejected by saying not all sexual abuse involves sexual grooming, because it was a student who had submitted it and hadn’t quoted our recent research, but we really wanted to show how important sexual grooming is to the child sexual abuse process because we need to a understand it so that we can prevent it, but also how to identify it and prosecute it. And so we’ve been citing old statistics, like from the, the 1990s where they hadn’t really comprehensively defined grooming. I think they, they use like giving gifts, for example. So, it was just a very finite thing. And that was the only study that really talked about how common these behaviors were. And they had an estimate of about 50%. But those of you in this field know when you talk to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, almost every single one of them, describes sexual grooming.

And so we wanted to put a number on that so that we can show how important this work is, so that we can integrate it into prevention, detection, policies, procedures. And so we wanted to know how often are people reporting these types of behaviors who experience childhood sexual abuse.

Teresa: I mean, a lot of ways I feel like so much of your work has been about mystifying the issue of like, how could we have known? Or, is there a way to know ahead of time, um, and identify things, which I just really appreciate because I think that a lot of parents and caregivers feel at an utter loss. Like, they’re like, I really want to protect my child, but how big a problem is it? How vigilant do I need to be? What do I need to look for? So, in a lot of ways, I think that your research has had a lot of practical application to it as well. But just set the study up for us. So how did you approach it? Where did you find your subjects? Who were they? Just a little bit about their characteristics. And then let’s dive into the findings.

Elizabeth: Sure, so we have been surveying survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and we had two large data sets. We’ve generally been doing it online through the website Prolific, which gathers people who want to complete surveys in exchange for monetary compensation. They’re generally reflective of the U.S. population. And so we had a sample at this point of over a thousand individuals who had experienced childhood sexual abuse, largely females, as we know that girls are more often abused than males. So, one in 20 boys and one in four girls, according to the CDC’s latest data. And so, we had them complete the surveys online because there’s evidence to suggest that for subjects that are more sensitive, people tend to be more honest when they complete anonymous surveys online.

So, we didn’t have, you know, any identifying information about these individuals. And then, they completed our sexual grooming scale, which are the 42 behaviors, whether they experienced them or not. And then some characteristics about the abuse, like, you know, what type of abuse did they experience, who the perpetrator was, how old were they, um, the number of times they were abused.

And so, we then compiled this data to look at prevalence rates to see, like, how many people endorsed any of those 42 behaviors, how many behaviors did they endorse on average, and then were they endorsing behaviors in all five of those stages that we talked about of the grooming process.

Teresa: And so, when you got your findings, when you looked at it, was there anything about it that surprised you?

Elizabeth: We had been getting, with smaller samples, quite high frequencies. Like a previous study that we used with undergraduates, we found 99 percent of them had reported sexual grooming with an average of, I think, close to 15 behaviors. So this time, we found also 99 percent of all individuals reported at least one sexual grooming behavior with an average of 14.25. I think what was really the most shocking to me was that the highest vulnerability characteristic where the kids were compliant and trusting, because we talk about kids being vulnerable because they lack guardianship or because they have psychological problems, but not necessarily that trusting piece. And then, that kind of made me think about what are the messages that we give our kids, you know, trust adults, be respectful of adults, listen to what adults say, how does that figure into prevention initiatives? So, I think that to me was probably the most surprising.

Teresa: Yeah, when I read that, I was thinking in a certain way, this really makes all children very vulnerable, right? Because This is kind of a universal message that is a part of our culture and in lots of cultures that children need to be obedient to adults. They should expect that adults are helpers and sort of automatically trust them and rely on them. And of course you don’t want to make children suspicious of all adults either, so I think that there’s this piece and you wrote about this in the article around consent and bodily autonomy and how to talk to kids about that that I think is going to be of increasing importance based on what you learned from this study.

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. I think really having those conversations with kids, like, you know, generally, adults are trusted individuals. We don’t want to scare people, but at the same time, these are boundaries, and if anybody is crossing those boundaries, be it a parent, be it a sibling, another youth, or an adult who’s supposed to be caring for them, they need to tell somebody, and they need to share that with them.

Teresa: You know, like you, I was not surprised by the prevalence. 99 percent-100 percent like  it would not have surprised me based on talking to adult survivors and listening to children’s disclosures. I think that this is just a reminder of just how intentional all of this behavior is. I was interested in the fact that it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference who they were saying the offender was.

You know, they were virtually all known to the child only what 6 or 7 percent were strangers. There was a fairly sizable pool that were extended family or neighbor or a sibling, those kinds of things. And if I’m remembering right,  That didn’t really, there didn’t seem to be any significant difference in terms of this grooming pattern applying to that. Is that right?

Elizabeth: Yeah, so we see basically across relationships, and we’re actually in the midst of doing an analysis specifically looking at the relationship to the child and how that in fact affects their behavior. impacts the grooming behavior. But we do see grooming across all contacts. Like we’ve done a paper on sibling sexual abuse, and we know that siblings use grooming tactics.

We know that it happens with youth on youth, female-perpetrated sexual abuse abuse within institutions. And it’s happening in the home as well. So these are really universal behaviors. So, we have 42 behaviors, and the average is 14.25. So about a third. There are various permutations and combinations. And we believe that based on the relationship and the And we have a paper that we’re about to submit on the characteristics of the child and the perpetrator, the impact which behaviors are used in the perpetration of the abuse. But, they are used universally, yes.

Teresa: I wonder what you think the sheer number of them means. Do you have any speculation about, with some kids, it was one. With others, it was a very high number of grooming behaviors. Do you imagine that that is about basically that perpetrators keep trying until something is successful? Or, is it about something else entirely?

Elizabeth: I mean, I think there are various factors, and I think that’s still something we need to tease apart, but, you know, just anecdotally, you see that when somebody has intense power, we saw in the Catholic Church, when that priest is, is kind of acting in persona Christi, that they might not have to engage in a lot of grooming, because the child fully trusts the priest, the community trusts the priest. And so, they don’t really have to do a lot of those behaviors. And they would maybe just do a more targeted attack. But we also see grooming in clergy, which we have found looking at the Catholic Church data.

But also, like, when it happens within the context of a home or a more intimate relationship, like where it’s a peer, there’s also more access to the child, right? So, they don’t have to do a lot of those gaining access and isolation. There’s an innate trust, so they don’t have to make themselves more trustworthy to the child or portray themselves to be someone they’re not because they already have that pre-existing relationship. So, I think the more distant the person is from the child and the more they have to do to gain access to the child, the more grooming behaviors we’re seeing. But again, that’s an empirical question and one that we would still need to investigate.

Teresa: One of the things, which was not necessarily the key point of the study, but that I personally found interesting and sad, was that while the subject pool was relatively young, I mean, I think the average age was what, 35, something like that was the median age, that at the same time, So few of these adult survivors had ever told anyone. Not just that they hadn’t told police or CPS or someone else, but just even informally. In many cases, I think your survey was their first disclosure, essentially.

Elizabeth: It was, and so I think only 40 percent had told somebody else informally, and I think only 10 percent had formally disclosed. So I think that really speaks to the guilt and shame that goes along with childhood sexual abuse. And, how we really have to start having these conversations and making, you know, children and adults aware that this is not their fault and that the way that they’re going to heal is by coming forward and relieving some of that guilt and shame that, you know, and it’s, it’s really quite tragic. And because they’re not coming forward and sharing that they’re not getting access to resources or potential interventions that could help them and maybe others as well.

Teresa: The other thing is they’re also old enough to be parents themselves, and I was thinking about the fact that for many of them, they’re taking the survey, but it’s also probably prompting thoughts about how to protect their own children. And to your point about shame, one of the things I liked about the paper, and I would encourage people to read it, not just listen to this podcast. It’ll be attached in the show notes. Go read it because it quoted many of the survivors because you were looking for additional comments to explain when they said one of the behaviors that had occurred, right? To have some, okay, instead of me explaining your story, let me let you, can you talk about that? Because I found the comments very powerful.

Elizabeth: Sure. So one of the things that we asked them to do is not only say, did you experience this or not, is to describe it and not obviously in these self, you know, these surveys, everybody takes the time. And so we kind of provided a synopsis for every single one of those 42 items of examples of what the survivors were saying.

And it really, I think, provides context. And you can see how based on the gender of the perpetrator or the age of the child, they’re reporting different things, but it’s all the same construct, right? You know, they’re talking about how they might have been vulnerable or what the strategy that the perpetrator used was.

So I think we’re recognizing the role of survivors in forming, you know, research and policy and being at the table. And I think they have so much to offer. And, I fortunately have never been victimized. So, I think having that perspective really forms the way that I ask the questions and hearing what survivors think about. So, I’m so thankful for our participants for offering that.

Teresa: Oh, absolutely. And I was struck by how many of the comments. They were filled with shame or attempts by the perpetrator to shame them. I mean, just explicitly that this was part of the post abuse maintenance routine, essentially, was if it didn’t work to reassure the child that what they did was perfectly normal, then they moved to it must be your fault or something else.

And, I was also thinking about in our own sort of prevention education efforts, that often when we talk about these things, we talk about them in abstract. And it’s helpful to have adult survivor statements like this so that when we’re talking about examples of it, these are very concrete examples. Of things that are said or ways that it occurred that could be used for educational purposes beyond this study as a way of saying, well, we don’t have to just imagine things. There are adult survivors out there who have told us exactly how this worked.

Elizabeth: Absolutely. And I think that helps to, to provide validity to the construct as well, because we have these, as you said, abstract items, right? Like, you know, they, they make the child feel culpable. But when you hear the words of the survivor and what that perpetrator said to the child, that really takes on a whole new meaning.

And, it really makes it us understand that really this is a tactic that’s being used and this is exactly how it’s being used. being used. And so when you can train adults in, in kids lives to look for these types of behaviors or to, to teach kids, like if somebody ever says this to you, you tell me so that I can help you. I think that’s so important.

Teresa: You know, you’re headed directly to my next question, which really was around prevention education. And, I know that we’ve talked in the past about the fact that there are some real gaps that exist. For one thing, it’s not equally distributed across the U. S. by any means. And so some children get information, some don’t, some parents get information, some don’t, some adults get information, some don’t, and then how much of any of that is evidence based is a whole other question. What do you think about our current state of knowledge in terms of designing these programs for adults and for kids and the way in which sort of not just the study, but the cumulative weight of your work? What is your advice to people who are devising these programs?

Elizabeth: So, I think about this a lot. Um, it’s a big question and I wish there was a simple answer. I think we have to target multi layered approaches, right? But, I think we have to teach the kids themselves because sexual abuse happens in private. So, it’s very infrequent that somebody observes it happening. It’s often they separate the child and they do it in a place where nobody else sees. So, if we don’t teach the child about bodily autonomy, about what grooming behaviors look like and who to report to.

We’re gonna not catch the perpetrator. So I think the biggest way to do that is through schools because almost all kids are in school. And so Aaron’s law is passed in 38 states. Not all states have passed it yet, but that requires, you know, sexual abuse prevention education in schools at age appropriate levels.

I think that’s step number one. I think step number two, obviously, is reaching parents, but that’s hard because there’s no uniform way of doing that. And I, I still grapple with how to do that most effectively. I think schools can do emailings, but if you do trainings, very few people come, even if they’re Zoom, online trainings, and then potentially it’s the parents who need it most who won’t be able to, because they have so much on their plate.

And then I think we always have to train Teachers because they’re the ones who get most of the reports. So teachers need to know about these red flag behaviors. They need to know what they look like. They have to know how to report it. Teachers are mandated reporters. And so, I think that’s really important, but also other people who work with kids.

So, in youth serving organizations and daycares, things like that because those are the people outside of the home that kids are going to be talking to. And so, we know that a third of kids are abused in the home. Just teaching parents is going to miss those kids and they’re not going to get the help. So, we need to have others aware as well.

Teresa: Do you feel that you have seen, and I won’t put you on the spot by asking you to name it, but have you seen any  curricula, either for kids or adults, that you feel really Reflects well, the cumulative weight of your work around grooming.

Elizabeth: I think it hasn’t really permeated the curriculum yet. I think people are talking about grooming. I’m seeing it more and more, but they still have it as this nebulous construct or they, they identify a few behaviors. And I think that infographic, I think that you’ve shared previously is really very important because we have to identify those specific behaviors and, and talk about them and what to, what they mean.

And I think we also have to talk to kids and adults, and youth service workers about what to do when they see those behaviors and how to approach them appropriately. So, I think our research, while we’ve been doing it for a decade, has really only been published for the last four to five years, and it takes a while to trickle down. So, I so appreciate this forum to reach out to many individuals and then just talking about it and hoping that more people integrate research into the practice that they’re doing.

Teresa: I hope they do, too, because I think it’s just critical in terms of having prevention education that’s actually valuable. Mentioning these topics in general, of course, is better than not mentioning them at all. But, what’s even better is giving the adults around kids the information they need to keep them safe, and also, as you say, telling kids themselves some of this key information that they need to know, because this pattern of behavior. You know, it seems so clear in hindsight, right? But if we could just pick up on it as it’s happening, we could save so much suffering.

While you were talking, you know what I was thinking? Not that we have showrunners that listen to One in Ten, but if one ever does, I hope they pick up this idea. There are so many programs that allude to child sexual abuse on cable and on TV and on Netflix and on everything. And often, I sit there and like, just grit my teeth through the whole thing because I’m like, that’s wrong. That’s wrong. I bet you do too. I would love to see one of them take on the mission of actually portraying some of this the way it actually happens.

Elizabeth: Yeah, adults talk about it to the kids.

Teresa: Yeah.  Yeah.

Elizabeth: Get that message. Like, what is this? And what does it look like?

Teresa: We need Elmo to talk about this or something.

Elizabeth: I was actually thinking about that before Integrating it and thinking programs like Sesame Street.

Teresa: Yeah.

Elizabeth: It’s a hard topic to talk about and parents get scared, and I think a lot of states don’t even have sex education, nonetheless, sex abuse prevention education. So, I would say knowledge is power, and we know that if we give kids information about sexual abuse prevention in healthy, age appropriate ways, we’re empowering them. And we’re not going to cause them to have sex earlier, we actually delay onset of sexuality. So, I think there’s still this fear in our society that by talking about this, we’re going to make kids go out and have sex and, and that it’s shameful somehow. And, we really need to destigmatize that.

Teresa: I think adults are really the people who have problems talking about this. I really do. Like, when I think about the bravery of kids who make disclosures and somehow summon up the courage to talk about such a difficult thing, it’s really, I feel like the adults who start wincing and acting like they can’t bear to hear the things that kids have already experienced.

And, I had this interesting experience a couple of weeks ago where I was talking to someone in a corporate setting about education that they want to do with employees, which is great around this topic. I’m delighted by it. But I have to tell you, the level of nervousness and anxiety that they had in even contemplating it, it was really enlightening because it’s been a while since I’ve talked to someone who was that nervous about it. You know, this is probably the average adult reaction right here. I’m not sure I’m seeing anything unusual. But, how are we going to get to a point where adults can recognize grooming if we can’t have these conversations and if people start immediately, their shoulders go up to their ears the minute you start talking about child sexual abuse.

Elizabeth: I know. And if we, as adults, have that level of anxiety, we transmit that to the children, and they internalize that, right? That they, they say, Oh, this is something that’s bad, and this is shameful, and so therefore, I can’t share that information. And so, when you talk about these things, talk about them as if you’re talking about normal things. And, if you talk about them consistently to your children, they’re not going to feel that shame. So, you want to make sure that the way that you convey this information to the children, shows them that you’re okay hearing it because if they think that you’re not okay hearing it, they’re not going to tell you.

Teresa: We miss specificity. Like, when was the last time that you heard a parent say to a child, you know, if someone, whether they’re an adult or your own age, starts showing you naked pictures of other kids or of adults, that’s something you should tell me about. Like, that just doesn’t happen, I don’t think, or at least it’s very weird.

You and Elizabeth Letourneau are having those conversations with kids, but in a lot of places, I think it doesn’t. Instead, it’s more like this vague, if someone does anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, okay, well, uncomfortable about what? In what way should I be feeling uncomfortable? It’s like left to this great mystery for children to suss out exactly what we’re talking about.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and that goes again to our discomfort with talking about sex and topics related to sex and sexual abuse and so the more we’re able to be, as you said, specific and talk about these specific behaviors and we’ve always encouraged people to use anatomical names because again that conveys shame. You don’t give your elbow a different name, right?

You call your elbow an elbow, but we call our general areas different things because for some reason the anatomical name is too painful to hear. So we convey shame that way, right? There’s something wrong with those parts of our body because we can’t name them appropriately.

Teresa: I mean, the hang-ups of adults, right? We could spend a whole episode just on that. Because I know, and I’m so grateful for the fact that you are not going to move away from this topic soon. What are you working on right now that relates to grooming, because we all know that there’s this lag between, you know, the time that you’re researching something and it gets published and you come on One in Ten to talk about it, do you have something new and exciting that you’re working on right now?

Elizabeth: We have too many projects, and not enough time, but I think the next project to come out is the one I mentioned that we’re looking at grooming behaviors based on the characteristics of the child and the perpetrator. So whether the perpetrator is an adult or a youth, whether it’s a male or female, And whether the child is under the age of 12 or a teenager and a girl or a boy.

And, we’re seeing really interesting fact patterns. What we’re seeing is that with adolescent females, when the perpetrator is an adult male, they’re using those loving tactics. They’re taking girls who have low self esteem and feel kind of lonely and isolated and they’re showing them affection and love.

And so, they believe that they’re in a consensual romantic relationship. With adolescent males, when the perpetrator is a female, that they’re using more overtly sexual tactics, you know, so they’re exposing their naked bodies to the adolescent male so that they kind of entice them that way to the abuse.

With the younger children, they’re using a lot more isolation tactics and gaining the trust of the families in order to gain access to the child, because, as you can imagine, the parent is a guardian, right? So, they have to usurp the parental guardianship. So, I think that’s going to be really important when we talk about targeted strategies and how we see different patterns of abuse with adolescents and with children because I think especially in the teenage realm, we see they believe that they’re in love and then later on they recognize how they were manipulated and abused and how much it has hurt them. So, I think that’s really important going forward.

We’re also empirically studying familial grooming. So, how are perpetrators grooming families of survivors? So, parents who’ve had a child who’s experienced sexual abuse, and we’re looking at sexual abuse and grooming within sport because while we know that it happens. And, we’ve seen it with Sandusky, Nasser. We don’t have a lot of individual reports of what it was like. And, we think that there might be specific characteristics that are unique to sport and unique to each sport. So, you know, swimming versus soccer, versus equestrianism, versus skating. I think there might be different ways that perpetrators are grooming in each of those sports.  Hopefully that will be out in a few years, I guess.

Teresa: A few years, well, hopefully not quite that long. No, I’m so glad you are looking at that. I think that we’ve had folks on the program before, including adult survivors, to talk about their experience with sport, and that is just a really unique realm, the level of control and power that coaches, doctors, others have, and the way in which I have to say I was just shocked, honestly, with the degree to which parents give over basically every bit of not just control and oversight, but even common sense to these coaches, especially at the elite level, where you have people who ban parents from the practice room or what I was just like, I’m astounded that anybody would agree to it.

You know, there’s a grooming process that is happening. That’s not just about sexual abuse. I think that happens way before that. That’s really about gaining and amassing as much power and control as possible, which then makes, you know, all the rest of it easier or something. I mean, I’ll be fascinated to read because I just, my mouth fell open. I’m like, seriously?

Elizabeth: Well, it’s the culture, right? And that’s the sport culture, and we have designed the culture to be that way and to enable coaches to have that power. So, I think a lot of the organizational sexual abuse, we’re seeing that in order to really impart change, you have to change the culture and the way that it spoke, that it happens because in these hierarchical cultures, you know, not just like society cultures, but unique individual cultures, you know, religion, sports, things like that, when there’s a hierarchy, then people have who have that power are more able to abuse without any consequences and without people reporting. So, I think we really have to think about cultural factors when we think about prevention.

Teresa: The other thing that just really struck me too, and I wonder if this will be, this will come up in your own research and support, but the survivors themselves  really talked about, especially ones involving a doctor, really talked up this Larry Nassar case. It really talked about the fact that because they endured so much physical abuse from their coaches that what Nassar was doing to them  was secondary and their concern and, and they sought him for comfort, essentially. So I wonder if you’re going to see some dynamics there that are less like, this is my boyfriend kind of thinking to, let’s see, I’m having to perform while seriously injured, which is really common. I’m verbally abused. I may be physically abused. And how does that tie into the vulnerability for then being exploited sexually? Maybe not even by that person. Maybe somebody else who’s a part of the sport or has contact with them, but not even necessarily the coach him or herself.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Absolutely. We actually, some of the research that has been done on sexual abuse in sport has shown that the abuse happens in 40 percent of the cases by another athlete. So that might be a factor to consider as well. So yeah, I am interested in looking at all of those things. And I think, as I said, that that those might vary between by sports. And as you brought up doctors, Dr. Winters also just got a grant to study medical professional child sexual abuse.

Teresa: Oh, interesting.

Elizabeth: That has yet to be studied empirically. We’ve had some with adult on adult doctor patient sexual abuse, but none with, you know, adult child sexual abuse. And we had, I think, seven people in our sample that reported that it was a doctor that perpetrated the abuse. And a lot of it was in the context of the evaluations. And so, the kids didn’t know what to expect. And so, they were abusing them in that context, so they would have the parents stand outside. So those are also potential red flags.

Teresa: You know, what’s interesting is that for Children’s Advocacy Centers, some of the largest multi victim cases we’ve had have been doctor cases. And I, I mean, they just have such access. A new kid coming in every 15 minutes. So, if it’s a pediatrician abusing them, there’s just the potential for hundreds and hundreds of victims  over a period of time. So, I’ll be so interested once that’s published and what you all find. What do you think? Are the public policy implications of this? I did notice that your paper cited, I think, Texas, which is criminalized grooming behaviors. Is that right?

Elizabeth: They have, there are a few states that have, now I think Delaware, and we are actually very excited because both Dr. Winters and I testified in front of the Vermont Legislature,  and they used our research in developing their sexual grooming legislation.

Teresa: Oh, interesting.

Elizabeth: Yeah, they used our red flags, and so, I’ll be, they just passed it this past summer, so I’m interested to see how that pans out. I know that we’ve been working with different advocates who are trying to pass sexual grooming legislation at the state level. So, I think it’s really important to have it on the books. I know there’s going to be issues around intent because these are pre-offense behaviors, but I think one of the advantages of text messaging, there’s obviously a lot of disadvantages, but our social media is that you have it in writing or you have images that are being shared. And some of those, once you see that it’s incontrovertible, this is clearly grooming.

And so, if we get that kind of evidence and then map it on to our red flags and our model, I think that can demonstrate intent and we can prevent sexual abuse and we can criminalize it before it actually happens. So, I think that gives people additional power and tools in their toolkit to help protect kids.

Teresa: You know, in a lot of ways, as you were talking, I was thinking that this is a lot like conspiracy behavior, right, where the individual act might not, except for the context, be illegal, you know, the phone calls, the whatever, whatever. It’s what it is setting up to have happened is what makes it essentially illegal, and I think it’s the same here in terms of sexual grooming behaviors. When you’re looking at those states that have decided to adopt the framework that you all have established, are you planning to study sort of the outcome of that over time?

Elizabeth: We have not yet put anything in place, but I think that is something that we will be looking at. We’ll be looking at kind of, you know, grooming prosecutions and what’s going on and how successful it is and, you know, where it is successful and where it’s not successful and how our research can aid in that.

I think your One in Ten podcast has given us a form to reach out to many different organizations who are doing this work out in the field. And so we are often, we’re, very open to working with prosecutors and advocates and whoever else is listening to help you develop policies, procedures, prosecutions, in order to keep our kids safe.

Teresa: I mean, Elizabeth, I could talk to you all day and I would give you even more ideas for things.  I would love it if you guys would research. But I know you have a full research agenda without my help. So, I am wondering before we sign off today though, is there anything else that you just wanted to make sure that we talked about or anything that I didn’t ask you and should have?

Elizabeth: You know, first of all, I want to thank you for all the work that you and your organization does to keep our kids safe. But I think the biggest message is really just keep talking about this and destigmatizing it because The more kids that are aware of these behaviors and the more adults that are aware of these behaviors, the more we can prevent kids and kids that have already been hurt.

If they hear this and they know about this, they can come forward and hopefully they can get that person put away and not hurting other kids. And we can also get them the help that they need because the earlier that kids get help, the less likely they are to suffer some of those longterm consequences. So, just talk about it and, and don’t make it something that is shameful because it is not your fault.

Teresa: I’m glad you said that because I was just thinking as you were talking, Elizabeth, that if someone listens to this, when you think about how recent the research is on this topic, no one should ever feel like this is something they should have known, should have done differently, would have, could have, should have, because We’re just now learning about these things, and certainly children aren’t responsible anyway. It’s the adults that are responsible. So, just thank you for your continued work, shining a light on all of this. I hope you enjoy your sabbatical, but not so much that you won’t come back and talk to us the next time you have something published. We love to have you.

Elizabeth: I am always happy to come and talk to you. So, thank you so much again for having me and for highlighting our work that we’re doing.

Teresa: Thank you for listening to One in Ten. This episode wraps up season six, and we look forward to rejoining you in January for all new episodes. In the meantime, all of us at One in Ten are wishing you a healthy and safe holiday season.