MU researchers reveal communication tactics used by sexual predators to entrap children

As perpetrators are grooming their victims and building deceptive trust, they also work to isolate them both physically and emotionally from their support network. Isolation strategies may include offers to baby sit, giving the child a ride home, and taking advantage of fragile family and friend relationships. Isolation causes the victim to become more and more dependent on the perpetrator.

A third strategy is approach, which is the initial physical contact or verbal lead-ins that occur just prior to the sexual act. Examples of approach strategies include suggestions to play sex games, more explicit discussions about sexual issues, giving a child a “rubdown,” bathing or undressing a child, and instigating wrestling and other physical games as a means to escalate sexual physical contact.

Olson, and her co-authors analyzed existing published material on pedophilia and child sexual abuse and proposed their theory that explains the communication process used by child sexual predators. Their theory of luring communication is part of a new area of study which Olson calls “the communication of deviance.”

“The more we know about how these adults are entrapping children and building a sexual relationship with them, the better we can either intervene and stop the cycle from happening, or de-escalate it,” Olson said.

According to the study, the theory of luring communication also may offer important insight into social, deviant and communicative problems plaguing society, such as how con-artists lure victims and the recruitment strategies of gang or cult members.

The study, “Entrapping the Innocent: Toward a Theory of Child Sexual Predators’ Luring Communication,” co-authored by Joy Daggs, Barbara Ellevold and Teddy Rogers, was recently published by the International Communication Association journal, Communication Theory.