SPOT6
We all have a role to play in preventing child sex abuse. It means creating and promoting a culture of safety and accountability. By exposing the harm and lasting damage caused by child sex abuse, we are working to empower individuals, communities and institutions to recognize the signs, take action, prevent abuse and ensure prosecution of child sex crimes.
Educating The Community
Educating the Community
We believe in breaking silence and building safety! Here’s how you can help educate your community:
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Start the Conversation: Break the silence surrounding child sex abuse by initiating conversations with friends, family, and colleagues. Education is the first step toward prevention.
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Support Legislative Efforts: Advocate for stronger child sex abuse laws in your community by supporting organizations and initiatives dedicated to legislative change.
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Promote Prevention: Educate others about the importance of prevention strategies, such as age-appropriate sex education and teaching children about personal safety.
Join Us in Making a Difference
Will you donate today to keep this vital work going?
Spotting The Predators
Sexual predators live in our neighborhoods, shop where we shop, mingle with us in public places. Their behavior and how they try to interact with our children can be noticed – there are warning signs. The Jan Bromberg Foundation’s Spot6 Program is designed to help parents, family members, teachers and anyone else in a child’s life to identify possible grooming behaviors, and take steps to protect the child from possible abuse.
SPOT6 Program
Understanding how sexual predators isolate children and young adults and manipulate the adults responsible for them is essential for protecting children from harm which can last a lifetime. As parents, friends, teachers, youth leaders and neighbors, we can recognize the signs of vulnerability, isolation, grooming and manipulation. By intervening early, we can safeguard children from exploitation and make our communities safer.
The SPOT6 program is an essential educational tool for identifying the six stages of child grooming. Through education, resources, and advocacy, we are working to empower communities to recognize the warning signs of grooming and take action to protect children from exploitation and harm. Spot a stage and save a child!
We provide educational materials tailored for parents, educators, tweens, teens and students to help them recognize and protect against grooming behaviors.
The 6 Stages of Grooming
Stage 1: Find and Target Victim
Understanding how sexual predators isolate children and young adults and manipulate the adults responsible for them is essential for protecting children from harm which can last a lifetime. As parents, friends, teachers, youth leaders and neighbors, we can recognize the signs of vulnerability, isolation, grooming and manipulation. By intervening early, we can safeguard children from exploitation and make our communities safer.
The SPOT6 program is an essential educational tool for identifying the six stages of child grooming. Through education, resources, and advocacy, we are working to empower communities to recognize the warning signs of grooming and take action to protect children from exploitation and harm. Spot a stage and save a child!
We provide educational materials tailored for parents, educators, tweens, teens and students to help them recognize and protect against grooming behaviors.
Stage 2: Gain Trust
Unveiling Child Grooming Tactics – in Stage 2, the predator begins the grooming process, gradually gaining the trust of both the targeted child and his/her family or other “gatekeepers responsible for protecting a child.
The predator has two main targets: the child and the gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are parents, coaches, teachers, babysitters, youth workers, older siblings, or anyone the abuser has to go through to gain access to a child.
The grooming of a child can look different depending on the age, gender, and circumstances of the child or the environment. But the grooming of the gatekeeper generally looks the same. The predator wants to convince the gatekeeper that he or she is helpful, trustworthy, and kind.
The abuser wants trusted time alone with the child. Their goal is to gain acceptance and trust from the gatekeepers.. We often equate helpful, trustworthy, and kind with SAFE. To gain access, a predator will convince the gatekeepers that he is helpful, trustworthy and kind.
The abuser will seek to be in a staff or volunteer role with children to appear trustworthy and lower parents’ and children’s natural wariness of strangers. While we worry a great deal about the effects of today’s digital threats to our children’s well-being, we need to be continuously aware of the “in real life” predators who can endanger our children.
Child grooming is a sinister process, involving perpetrators meticulously forming relationships with children and their families to exploit them. They adeptly blend into the child’s life, gaining trust by posing as trustworthy figures and offering “help” by offering rides or other practical support..
Perpetrators start by observing the child, learning about their vulnerabilities, and subtly testing receptiveness. Through innocent interactions, they gain insight, laying the groundwork for trust. Once trust is established, they fulfill the child’s needs in a seemingly caring manner, reinforcing the bond and creating dependency.
Predators tend to be charming, charismatic and friendly, and even happy and secure children and their parents can be deceived and reassured by the predator’s warmth and intensity.
Perpetrators deceive parents by appearing responsible, evading suspicion while isolating the child from support systems. Vigilance and education are crucial.
At every stage of grooming, the abuser will insist that the victim feels responsible for keeping secrets about the relationship from everyone else.
Stage 3: Fill a Need and Help Victim
During Stage Three, the predator slyly spots and uses the child’s needs or desires to their advantage. They pretend to be the only one who “gets” the targeted victim, filling any need. They act like a friend to gain the child’s trust and to make them feel special.
Every predator plays on the child’s kindness and desire for connection. When the child feels their needs being met, they can become dependent on the predator. The predator acts like a buddy, but it’s all a disguise to keep control.
Especially vulnerable are children already drawn to drugs, alcohol or pornography. The abuser will look for opportunities to weave in rule-breaking activities like smoking, watching mature content and creating secrecy.
This stage is a slow, twisted game of manipulation where the predator pulls strings to keep the child and those who would otherwise be suspicious under their spell. Predators thrive on the vulnerability they’ve created, using it to get what they want, which is access to and control over a child.
At every stage of grooming, the abuser will insist that the victim feels responsible for keeping secrets about the relationship from everyone else.
Stage 4: Isolate Victim
How isolation works – Predators exploit the child’s natural human desire for love, attention, and validation, which gradually isolates them from their support network of safe people. They build false trust, portraying themselves as the best, or only, caring friend or mentor. This requires careful isolation of the child from family, friends, teachers and others whom the child trusts. The predator creates exclusive bonds with the child, making them feel special and valued. This bond blurs boundaries, making the child reliant on the predator for emotional fulfillment. At some point, the predator convinces the child that the others – parents, siblings, teachers – are not looking out for them as well as the predator does.
We need to be aware of adults who are seeking to spend “alone time” with a child, offering to take them on special trips or adventures, spending time behind closed doors in their home or the child’s home, or offering to “help out” with driving, caretaking or other activities that keep them with the child and separated from others.
At every stage of grooming, the abuser will insist that the victim feels responsible for keeping secrets about the relationship from everyone else.
Stage 5: Desensitization and Abuse
A critical stage in this process is introducing nudity and sexual touch, which involves a tactic known as “barrier testing and erosion.” Barrier testing refers to the abuser’s attempt to identify the child’s boundaries concerning touch, talk, or behavior, and to determine whether those boundaries are negotiable. The abuser systematically probes these boundaries through behaviors such as sexual comments, jokes, playful touches, or suggestive interactions—often starting in innocent or seemingly harmless ways and gradually escalating to more explicit content. For children of different ages, this process varies; for older children and teens, it may involve sexual discussions via social media, requesting explicit images, or manipulating the victim into sexual talk.
For younger children, grooming often involves playful physical contact like tickling, wrestling, or nudity during routine activities, with the end goal of eroding boundaries to facilitate damaging sexual interaction. Abusers exploit children’s curiosity about sexuality and their natural reactions to flirtatious or playful behavior, employing tactics that seem benign in the moment but serve to gradually break down their barriers, paving the way for abuse.
Abuse starts with carefully pushing past the child’s own boundaries and gradually introducing intimate activities like touching, and exposing the child to images and words that are increasingly more sexual. When it comes to online grooming, the groomer may start off sharing inappropriate images like a topless picture and progress to images and videos displaying extremely inappropriate sexual content.
Touching can start as affectionate hugs, hand-holding and kissing, leading to playful wrestling and tickling. Gradually, as the child is less self-protective, the predator will progress to touching the private parts and initiating fully sexual behaviors. The predator will overcome any fear or rejecting behavior from the child by convincing them that their reaction are “natural” and that they “need to get over it.”
At every stage of grooming, the abuser will insist that the victim feels responsible for keeping secrets about the relationship from everyone else.
Stage 6: Maintain Power and Control
Keeping the victim silent is a crucial aspect of the abuser’s strategy, and we have included it as a sign of grooming in every stage of the process. Abusers are highly skilled at maintaining secrecy, employing various tactics such as threats, guilt, and shame to silence their victims.
Many children who have been sexually abused will internalize these feelings of responsibility, believing that they are somehow to blame for what happened or that they caused the abuse through their flaws—thoughts that are completely false but common among survivors. Abusers exploit these feelings and reinforce them by using threats, and lies, such as “no one will believe you,” creating and reinforcing a powerful barrier to disclosure. Sadly, children are frequently not believed when they disclose abuse, partly due to societal misconceptions and the fact that abusers often appear trustworthy and helpful, In fact, the CDC reports that 98% of children’s reports are factual even when the child later recants. The key takeaway is that adults must be prepared to believe children when they disclose abuse. Understanding the grooming process, including tactics to silence victims, is essential for preventing child sexual abuse and providing appropriate support to those who have been victimized.
Once the physical or emotional abuse begins, the offender keeps everything in control by threatening the child and putting the responsibility for the situation on them, convincing the child that they were the seducer, the predator couldn’t help it.
The abuser will work to convince the child that nobody would ever believe them if they tell about the abuse, to ensure silence. The abuser will often threaten to hurt the child’s family if they don’t obey, keep silent and stay passive.
Abuse can be of short duration or can last for years, sometimes extending to actual trafficking in which the child’s sexual “services” are passed on or sold to others. This stage is the most frequently prosecuted as it involves more specifically criminal behavior on the predator’s part. However, it’s important to remember that harm to the child begins at the very onset of the process, with the destruction of the child’s trust and ability to feel safe.
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As parents and advocates, it’s essential to know your rights and understand how child sex abuse laws protect you and your loved ones. Here are some important points to keep in mind.