Grooming is a gradual process of manipulation in which an adult perpetrator builds trust, attachment and secrecy to exploit another person sexually or financially. The concept is well established in research on child sexual abuse. It is rarely applied to romance fraud and scams, in which an adult is deceived into sending money to someone they believe is a romantic partner. This PhD project bridges the two fields. It examines grooming in online sexual exploitation and abuse of children (OCSEA) and in online dating romance frauds and scams targeting adults (ODARFS).
This project looks beyond perpetrators' actions. It asks what enables grooming and which conditions promote or inhibit its success. These enabling factors operate at several levels: the individual and the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, the design of digital platforms and their affordances, and wider society.
To capture this, the project combines several theoretical perspectives from the social sciences within a multi-level framework spanning the micro to the macro levels.
The PhD thesis consists of three articles:
- A social-ecological analysis of what enables online dating romance frauds and scams, understood as a form of emotional and economic partner violence.
- A scoping review of grooming in online dating romance frauds and scams.
- An analysis of Norwegian criminal case files on the online grooming of children and young people.
This knowledge can support better prevention, earlier detection and more comprehensive investigation.
