The online world can be an exciting place for children. But internet-related sex crimes against children and young people are reported an average of 15 times per day in England and Wales alone.

Researchers looking into how online groomers work have found that gaining victims’ trust is a key part of engaging them in sexually explicit behaviour. During this process, groomers hide their main intention, to sexually abuse the victim, by developing a friendly and personal relationship with them.

Though you might expect that they deceive and lie to encourage their victims to go along with their plans, the truth is that, generally, online groomers are not as overtly deceptive as we might assume. Groomers’ use of identity deception – deception around age, location and appearance – is fairly low (5-33%), and some identity deceptions have actually been found to reduce the likelihood of groomers meeting offline with victims.

Deception and lies

Our research looks deeper into the language used by online groomers. We analyse real chat logs against key linguistic indicators of deception – emotional expression, pronoun use and cognitive complexity – to find out just how deceptive they really are.

When people lie they tend to use words that are emotional. Negative words, like alone, angry, or blame, represent an unconscious feeling of guilt and anxiety, as well as a lack of concern over the development of the social relationship. But lying does not always make people feel guilty, it can also make them excited or proud, which is reflected in the use of positive emotion words, such as awesome, beautiful or best. These words are particularly important during trust development, and are often used to appear convincing and “sell” the interaction.

– Laura Broome, Christina Izura

Read More: We Analysed Online Groomers’ Conversations to Find Out How Deceptive They Really Are

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