Journey into the criminal mind of a child sexual cyberbully

The Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Computer Crimes and Contraventions receives four complaints per week. What are the main psychological traits of “groomers”. A growing problem that puts children and adolescents at risk

The last week of May R.P. agreed to an abbreviated trial with the prosecutor Daniela Dupuy, who heads the Prosecutor's Office Specialized in Computer Crimes and Contraventions of the City of Buenos Aires, which is in charge of investigating - among others - cases of grooming. R.P. (whose name is not revealed because the abbreviated trial has not yet been approved) is 50 years old, married and father of two children. He had been discovered in 2016 when he virtually harassed boys and girls from the same grade at a private primary school in Belgrano. He sent photos of his genitals and asked for intimate photos of the minors. When they refused, he blackmailed them by saying that if they didn't send more images he would tell their parents. And if they did not send them their photos, they had to send those of other classmates or girls in the grade. In 2018 he was sentenced - for the mere fact of contacting minors - to a suspended one-year prison sentence, which he served. He was convicted of grooming.

Google - like other internet companies - has a collaboration agreement with the organization called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which is dedicated to combating child exploitation. The City Attorney General's Office also has an agreement with NCMEC for the exchange of information. Companies - by Law - must monitor the storage of images that are linked to child abuse. And when they detect them, they have the obligation to notify NCMEC, which in turn informs the judicial authorities in various places around the world.

In 2021, Google reported an IP address associated with an email in Argentina from which several child pornography videos were uploaded to the cloud. The investigation carried out by Dupuy's prosecutor's office again led to R.P. A raid took place, they arrested him, they seized his cell phone and there were 120 pornographic videos stored there - circulating on the web, not produced by him - in which the protagonists were children. Then R.P., who had already been convicted of contacting the boys and girls of that primary school, committed the crime again. This time he had child sexual exploitation videos (previously called child pornography) to distribute. He again requested an abbreviated trial and the prosecution and his defense agreed on an effective sentence of one and a half years in prison. He will have to go to jail for 18 months, not one day more and not one day less. For repeat offender. He had committed the other crime: that of distributing images.

That of R.P. It was one of the many judicial convictions for the crime of grooming. Grooming consists of the harassment of a child or adolescent, through the Internet or other electronic means of communication. The harasser or groomer intends to obtain some type of sexual gratification through erotic conversations or sending sexual images of the child or adolescent. But the grooming does not end there because it is essential to keep the situation secret, which is why the harasser threatens to spread the private and very intimate images of the victim if the demands are not met. A situation of virtual harassment can, on many occasions, end with a personal encounter and lead to behaviors such as child sexual abuse. Grooming is a growing problem worldwide that puts minors at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation.

The Penal Code in its title III, that of crimes against sexual integrity, has an article that penalizes grooming. It is article 131 that establishes that. “Anyone who, through electronic communications, telecommunications or any other data transmission technology, contacts a minor, with the purpose of committing any crime against the sexual integrity of the same.” For Argentine legislation, it is only enough to contact a minor with some sexual intention to commit the crime.

It usually happens, although not always, that when the identity of a groomer is discovered after a complaint from the victim's family, images of child sexual exploitation are found. Article 128 of the Penal Code contemplates penalties of three to six years for anyone who “produces, finances, offers, trades, publishes, facilitates, disseminates or distributes, by any means, any representation of a minor under eighteen (18) years of age engaged in activities. "explicit sexual acts or any representation of their genital parts for predominantly sexual purposes, as well as those who organize live shows of explicit sexual representations in which said minors participate." In the same article, those who possess the images, those who distribute or sell them to three, and those who "facilitate access to pornographic shows or supply pornographic material to minors under fourteen (14) years of age are punished with lower penalties." All penalties provided for in that article increase by one third when the victim is under 13 years of age.

What is the criminal mind of a groomer like? Maybe an answer can be found in the book Harassment of children and adolescents online, the first in a collection directed by prosecutor Dupuy. There are exposed several aspects of a growing problem that is as traumatizing as physical abuse.

In the book there is an entire chapter to try to decipher how the groomer thinks and acts. That person who exchanges messages, photos, videos of sexual content with minors and then distributes them - or not - and who ends up found by the authorities after in-depth and often prolonged investigations.

The psychological profile of the groomer was carried out by Marcela Scarafia. Official expert of the Judicial Branch of Córdoba from 1989 to the present, Sacarfia has a degree in Psychology. He graduated from the National University of Córdoba where he also obtained a master's degree in Neurosciences. For the specialist - one of the most recognized in the field - the psychological profile of the groomer could be summarized as: “Male pedophiles between 30 and 40 years old, from broken families and who lived alone, there have been cases with adolescents between 16 and 17 years old who sexually harass girls, parents with children with an apparently normal life, people from a high cultural and living level, retirees, people from all professions, and even cases of women who harassed minors”. Scarafia explains that it is not necessary for the groomer to relate personally with his victims: “It is not necessary, then, for physical contact to occur so that the imprint and effect of some actions, understood as sexual abuse, promote psychological injury and affect consequently the normal psychosexual development of a child or adolescent.”

From Sacarafia's extensive work, Infobae selected fifteen characteristics and behaviors that describe the criminal mind of the child sexual cyberbully or groomer.

1-“…These people, to ensure their anonymity, as a community, assist each other, because in places that are not accessible to the majority of people, you can find manuals, guides and documents written by those with more technical knowledge to cooperate with consumers of children's images with sexual content and with groomers who do not have technical expertise in matters of security and access to more anonymous sites. But, without prejudice to this, the knowledge that leads groomers to contact children and adolescents is that of web platforms, knowledge that, finally, is within everyone's reach."

2-“The virtual stalker addresses and violates the privacy of the child or adolescent's body, as he crosses the screen and invades the privacy of the victim. From a distance it appropriates a personal space that should substantially only remain within the sphere of its owner's control. He does not agree to physical contact, but from the scrutinizing and lascivious gaze he can manage to suppress the victim's sense of intimacy and ownership of the body. Likewise, it is the screen and the distance that it proposes that makes the act of observing nudity impersonal and at the same time violating and invasive, whether it is in the form in which it is produced, partial or total, symbolic or concrete. I say symbolic, because once the very spirit of his victim has been penetrated, the groomer commandeers and hijacks feelings, cognitions, vulnerabilities, fears, dreams and concerns; “He manipulates them and then destroys them in an embarrassing attempt to gain satisfaction.”

3- “The active subject of grooming seems to have few internal and external barriers; uses top-of-the-line technology, transgresses current national and international norms on the consumption, production and distribution of child pornography, systematically carries out actions that violate socially agreed upon ethical and moral guidelines, attacks the psyche of children and adolescents, slips away from the parental and social view of both the victim and the personal context.”

4-” … It is characterized by the pleasure it feels at the prospect of hunting. It feeds on the adrenaline of capturing victims and manipulating them. The groomer has developed a special taste for the challenge, anticipating in his fantasies the events that will be unleashed once the victim is caught. Such anticipations operate as reinforcing factors of their behavior, since success activates the desire for the strategy aimed at the next group of potential victims. He will thus be inclined to make repeated attempts to capture the attention of another child or adolescent. The means of satisfaction in this case will be several: sexual enjoyment, the enjoyment of fishing, the challenge of manipulation, control, dominance, the victim's acceptance of contact and then the acts of exhibition. Each of these steps involves a different type of pleasure. All of them intrinsically related and associated emotionally and neurobiologically. I believe that this may be one of the reasons why grooming has grown exponentially in recent years. It is an infinite promise of pleasure, as long as the groomer manages to remain anonymous and in the dark, both for the prey and for justice.

5-“The groomer has a passion for going hunting. But like any good hunter, he must know where and how to look for his prey. You must be able to access the pages that display child pornography and you need to learn the procedures that will allow you to upload the material provided through the harassment and extortion actions themselves. Searching for prey is no small task in this process. To do this, you must carry out different contact attempts with different children or adolescents; It must detect vulnerabilities and/or small cracks through which to enter in its potential prey. You must carry out progressive tests that allow you to envision a fertile land in which to plant, and then, in due course and when the fruit is ripe, harvest the precious harvest. This seems to be one of the most repetitive behaviors of the groomer, considering that statistics show that one in three children has received relatively uncomfortable communication through social networks.”

6- “Patience is one of the characteristics of the groomer, without which he or she would not be able to obtain progressive progress in the bond with the child or adolescent. Patience is key in this process of capturing and softening the victim's psychic defenses. The conventional abuser does not always need perseverance or patience. In some cases abusers take time to seduce and manipulate the victim. Many of them are the ones who later corrupt the child or adolescent. However, another group only uses physical force, coercion and threats to obtain what they want, as well as to ensure the silence of their victim. The conventional abuser often settles for simple tricks that allow access to the child. It does not require a very sophisticated strategy to achieve dishonor of the victim's body, and the abuser knows it. This clearly distinguishes him from the virtual stalker, since he would not be able to obtain what he wants if he does not first manage to strengthen the bond with his prey."

7-”(The groomer must)...building an ad hoc character requires a process of social engineering that involves time and dedication to trace the traces that the victim leaves in the different spaces he inhabits, that he travels through; That is, the evidence that you provide in your exchanges or posts on social networks. The groomer must internalize and learn the tastes, tendencies, fantasies, illusions, desires, concerns and even fears of his designated victim. The stories they tell their victims and the descriptions of themselves that the groomers make are intended to generate pity or manipulate to gain the victim's trust. These stories can be developed on any topic, but they usually have a “script” that they have already tested and if it has been effective, they polish it over time in successive approaches to other victims. The chameleon ability will open the way for easy and quick passage in the process of imposing between different moods, different conclusions and dissimilar behaviors. The groomer uses as one of his basic strategies the simulation of emotions that he does not have, that sometimes he cannot feel (love, sincere friendship or feeling of guilt).”

8-”The groomer expresses behaviors that would be inappropriate for the majority of the population adapted to moral and socially consensual norms. However, this does not detract from the groomer's ability to discriminate the modesty and ethical value of each of his extortion and manipulative actions. It's just that he appeals to them to move towards his goals. He knows and understands the difference between bad and good, fair and unfair and can give well-founded reasons for the difference between these concepts, however he chooses procedures and behaviors that he considers conducive to the satisfaction of his desires and fantasies. The other prominent aspect, the social façade, will serve to demonstrate an adaptive social performance and thus conceal its underlying efforts motivated by immoral vices. He is capable of organizing each of the steps he will take in the process of recruitment, manipulation, seduction and extortion. He will propose goals and then subgoals or partial goals that direct him to the final objective: obtaining control of the victim through manipulation, procuring visual material of sexual content for his own consumption and/or to upload it to the networks in which he browses and also, to satisfy oneself sexually.”

9- “…unlike the conventional abuser, the groomer must have a complex strategic system to capture, sustain and affirm the relationship with the victim. On the contrary, the conventional abuser does not need it. It is enough to intimidate him to seek physical contact and reassure the secret. Of course, we cannot ignore the existence of abusers who are very sophisticated in their stratagems and seduction behaviors, such that over time they can even corrupt their victim. But these abusers have a pattern similar to that of the groomer, with obsessive traits, excellent intellectual level, capacity for systematization, patience and abundant psychopathic components and are not so frequent within judicial cases.

10-”(The groomers) are skilled in theatricality, they know how to handle easy talk and false sentimentality as part of their action plan. They know what and how they have to express themselves, even if they don't feel it. How do you present an unlikely but compelling story or circumstances or emotions? Without a doubt, the manipulation of language constitutes the classic and unavoidable instrument of the groomer. The cyberstalker gradually realizes what the victim wants and needs to hear, and that is why he will try to give phrases with endless compliments, at least until he decides to change his strategy, for whatever reason."

11-“The groomer's most powerful weapon is language, since it constitutes the main and perhaps only means through which he communicates with the victim. The art of manipulation with words can be perfectly attributed to this subject. These artists of deception know or sense that the form is worth more than the content. Both psychopaths and politicians know this. “Once they have chosen the words to use, they know very well where to place them. The groomer knows these manipulation mechanisms inside out, even if he has not formally learned to use them. He does it effortlessly and naturally. “Insinuating” is another common mechanism in psychopaths and groomers. When the psychopath meets his victim he “implies” many things that the child or adolescent, in his or her naivety and inexperience, takes as concrete truth and, taking advantage of that situation, our subject of analysis lets us assume that this is how things are. False promises, proposals for the future, are only empty words that “hint” that this will happen and that is a perfect bait to keep the victim deceived and to keep their full attention active. The lie operates in the groomer constantly. Lies to get and hold the victim's attention. It imposes roles, emotions and experiences. But unlike other people, he does not need to control his gestural language to adjust it to his false words, since the communication he establishes with his prey does not require eye contact. This greatly facilitates the objective of this subject, since hidden by the absence of glances he can operate from the shadows.”

12-”Another of the aspects most frequently observed in groomers and that is typical of personalities with psychopathic traits or structure is the communion and coexistence of an external facade with an underlying internal world. Regarding the façade, his behavioral performance does not differ from that of a normal person who carries out his family, his profession or work, and his social relationship networks. Some of these individuals even stand out and usually generate admiration and appreciation in the rest of the environment in which they operate, since they perform a social or professional role with correctness and dedication. For this reason, it is difficult to notice the hidden world of the groomer from the usual and conventional intercommunication. The groomer's personality makes him be who he is, except when he has to change his mask, but his inner world often ends up giving him away sooner or later.

13-“In voyeurism, it is the act of looking (spying) that produces excitement and not the fact of maintaining a sexual relationship with the person observed. Voyeurs do not seek sexual contact with the people they are observing. That is why, I believe, many groomers are content with obtaining images of the victims, without requiring meetings. When the latter happens (the face-to-face call), the pedophile tendency is present in the need for physical contact to satisfy the sexual excitement emerging from this deviation."

14-”The groomer likes to collect images and videos not only of his activities with children or adolescents, but also productions of other pedophiles. He also likes to compete with other subjects for the quantity, quality and variety of the material uploaded to the web and available privately. Collecting and competing for the largest and best “exemplars” is part of the behavioral performance of this subject. Collecting behavior is one of the characteristics of people with important obsessive elements in their psyche.”

15- ”The groomer must be orderly in his behavior; To do this, he programs, anticipates, calculates, presumes. In the same way, he does not choose just any victim, he approaches the one he detects as vulnerable or the one he selects for a particular taste, such as a physical characteristic or a special style of making comments on the networks or for the tastes and tendencies detected. with whom the groomer may feel the most affinity and, in this way, the approach will be easier for him. Finally, the groomer, like a collector, will enjoy “showing” what he has, what he has achieved through his tricks, while at the same time he will desire, therefore, weight in the network of pedophiles. That is to say, the groomer can be a collector, passionate, organized and careful, with a point of obsession, constant and who likes to display the fruit of his work."

In the prosecutor's office led by Dupuy, about four complaints are filed weekly for grooming and about 300 reports arrive from NCMEC. There are about 100 cases of grooming under investigation. In each of them there are victims who – especially because they are children and adolescents – are accompanied by psychological specialists from the first minute. The victims are very affected and also need the support of their families to recover from the enormous emotional trauma of having been cyberbullied by a groomer.

Fuente: https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/policiales/2022/06/12/viaje-a-la-mente-criminal-de-un-ciberacosador-sexual-infantil/