Grooming is taking away someone’s ability to recognize and resist abuse. It is trapping a person in perception where anything harmful done to them is actually “normal” and “acceptable”, while making sure the victims cannot safely make boundaries, or get away. Sexual grooming is the most commonly known type, but people can be groomed into any kind of behaviour, to accept any kind of abuse, exploitation and damage to their life without resistance.
Victims of grooming are most often children, who do not have the chance to judge for themselves what is right, what will hurt them, what is okay to do to them, and what is abuse. It’s fairly easy for predators to insert themselves in a child’s life, and become an authority on what is okay and normal, and to include a whole lot of abusive behaviour under the “normal and acceptable to do to you”. Predators will often pretend their relationship with the child is one of affection, curiosity, mentorship or authority, so anything they say to the child is automatically to be accepted as true, and anything they suggest is the right thing to do. Predators usually go as far as to pressure and persist even when the child is trying to say no, they use the inexperience and the fact the child is weaker than them physically, to slowly convince the child into non-resistance and have them obediently suffer damage.
Grooming can be worse than other forms of abuse precisely because the victim has a feeling they participate in their own abuse; they failed to fight back, to recognize something bad was going on and to resist, maybe they even did something to enable it or make it easier, maybe they kept it a secret, or defended the abuser and insisted they were trustworthy. Maybe they felt affection and love for the abuser and the idea that the abuser was hurting them so badly was too devastating to consider. The burden of guilt and shame can be crushing, especially if the victim was manipulated into doing things they would have never had done if they knew it was abuse, and if they were aware of the consequences.
The groomers, however, already know they would have never been permitted to do this to the child, or get the child to act that way if not for grooming. They are already aware of severe consequences this will have for the child, they know what they’re doing is wrong, and they know child has no way to resist them, and is under their control. The whole point of grooming is to get control over someone to get them to do things they would never have done out of their own volition, and out of their own choice. And nobody can consent to something if they’re not aware it’s abuse, and that it will have long term consequences for their body and mind. Nobody consents to someone that traumatizes them, any kind of participation and failure to resist is only because the victim is disabled from reacting otherwise.
Groomers are most often people very close to victims, their parents, grandparents, teachers, relatives, even peers and relationship partners. These people already have a lot of power over victims, and will mostly use grooming to gain their silence, so they can do damage without taking a risk of being reported for it. They will pick victims who are vulnerable, who have nobody to protect them, whose parents don’t much care (and are already neglected and groomed by parents to accept and crave any type of attention), and who will react strongly to guilt and emotional blackmail.
Grooming is designed to make a person completely helpless to resist abuse. Anyone who is trapped in it, is not weak or susceptible, this is made to trap and brainwash people who are already vulnerable. Whatever awful thing you couldn’t fight under the influence of grooming, is not your fault. Whatever happened between you and the person grooming you was completely in their control, and 100% their fault. You take no blame for predator singling you out and aiming at your worst vulnerabilities to destroy your defences and cause damage to your life, you did not participate in that, and it is not your fault you were put in that situation. No one is immune to grooming.
