Grooming is a process that is usually associated with CSA (Child Sexual Abuse), where a predatory individual “grooms” a young child or teenager to engage in some form of sexual activity. However, adults can also be the subject of grooming, as the process involves the gaining of trust and the handing over of control to another person, and this is how most adult sexual predators gain access to those they target and victimize.
Whilst we may imagine that we will be attacked when surprised and taken unawares by a stranger in a public space e.g., some unknown person jumping out from behind a tree/bush etc., the truth is that we are most likely to be sexually assaulted by someone we know after some form of verbal exchange/interaction i.e., after being “groomed”; putting our trust in another person, and handing control of a situation over to them.
Gavin de-Becker in the “Gift of Fear”, lists five “survival signals”, that are associated with the grooming process, these are:
1. Too much Information
2. Discounting “No”
3. Typecasting
4. Loan Sharking
5. The Unsolicited Promise
In this section of the course, we will work through these, looking at how predatory individuals use them in order to gain access to us and orchestrate their assaults. Imagine a scenario in which you have taken an afternoon/day off work – something you’ve only informed a few friends and family members of – and you get a knock on your front door.
You initially decide to ignore it, but the knocking becomes more insistent/persistent. Thinking it may be an emergency you decide to open it. When you do you see that it’s your partner’s best friend (we will call him Mike). You find this strange as he knows that your partner (we will call him John) is at work and wouldn’t be at home. After exchanging basic greetings, he says:
“I’m so glad I caught you. My car’s been in and out of the shop for over a month now and nobody seems to have a clue what’s wrong with it. I’ve got a long road trip that I’m going on next week and I really need the car fixed. I’ve been planning the trip with some college friends who I haven’t seen in three years, no actually, it’s probably five. They don’t have a car, so if I can’t get mine working, we’ll have to call it off, which would be a real shame as we’ve always talked about doing a road trip together. So anyway, I thought I’d try to figure out what was wrong with the car myself and I’ve just come by to pick up the car maintenance manual that John was meant to leave out for me. Do you have it by any chance?”
Before we look at the above statement for signs of deception, there are a couple of things to note about the scenario/situation. Firstly, you weren’t aware that your partner was leaving out a car maintenance manual for his friend to collect, and neither did he mention that his friend was coming round to pick it up on your day off.
This is an unexpected incident/encounter, and that alone is grounds to be suspicious. Unexpected events – that are not nefarious – do occur, but when they do happen, we should question and “investigate” them further. This is also the first time that you have been in this type of situation with your partner’s best friend i.e., alone at your house with him.
If we go back to our definition of a stranger being someone you don’t have experience of in a certain setting, it may be safer – at the start of the interaction – to treat them more as a “stranger” than as someone you know.
Secondly, you are in a somewhat awkward situation, as you know nothing about the supposed car maintenance manual that was meant to be left out. Creating socially awkward situations that can be difficult to navigate is one of the methods that predatory individuals use to get us to give in – against our better judgment – and capitulate to their requests/demands, which may initially seem quite minor. However, predators can use these as gateways to allow them in to make greater and more consequential demands, that do directly affect our personal safety.
The first sign that this might be a deceptive statement is the sheer volume of “unnecessary” information that it contains. The only really relevant line is, “and I’ve just come by to pick up the car maintenance manual that John was meant to leave out for me.” Nothing else is relevant to the reason that Mike has come by. De Becker refers to this as “Too Much Information”.