Offenders' approaches to overcoming victim resistance in technology-assisted child sexual abuse

Abstract

Background: Perpetrators of technology-assisted abuse use an abundance of strategies to manipulate and sexually abuse children online, however victim resistance during and post abuse has yet to be explored in detail.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the strategies perpetrators use to overcome direct victim resistance and the strategies victims use to resist perpetrators' demands.

Participants and setting: The sample was recruited through Childline, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). This consisted of 10 semi-structured interview transcripts of 1 male and 9 female victims of technology-assisted sexual abuse, who were aged between 9 and 15 years old at the time of the abuse (M = 13.09, SD = 2.0).

Method: This study qualitatively analysed secondary data collected by Hamilton-Giachritsis et al. (2020). The interview transcripts were analysed using a thematic analysis.

Results: The thematic map consisted of two key themes and six sub-themes. Results identified how all perpetrators appeared to adapt their strategies of overcoming victim resistance using a variety of approaches. These ranged from isolating victims and depriving them of sleep, to more extreme approaches such as threats to share sexual images of the victims. Victims also used a range of strategies to resist and de-escalate the abuse, such as feigning ignorance and complying with some but not all requests.

Conclusions: This study identified the key strategies used by offenders to overcome victim resistance, and the strategies young people used to resist, de-escalate and end the abuse.

Keywords: Child sexual abuse; Child sexual exploitation and abuse; Offender behavior; Online child sexual abuse; Online sexual grooming.