Sexual Grooming: Integrating Research, Practice, Prevention, and Policy

This book provides an in-depth overview of the current research on sexual grooming. It explores the process by which an individual seeking to commit a sexual offense skillfully manipulates a potential victim into situations in which abuse can be more readily committed, while simultaneously preventing disclosure and detection. This volume addresses this understudied phenomenon and comprehensively examines what is currently known about the construct. It provides a thorough introduction to the sexual grooming literature, focusing on the history of the term and how sexual grooming strategies have become more publicly recognized through high-profile cases, as well as those in child-serving organizations (e.g., Catholic Church, Boy Scouts of America). The book reviews the various proposed models of sexual grooming - including the Sexual Grooming Model (SGM) - that detail the overarching steps or stages involved in the process. It discusses attempts to define the construct of sexual grooming and addresses potential consequences of sexual grooming, emphasizing how victims, families, and communities at large may be affected.

Key areas of coverage include:

Unique contexts and facets in which sexual grooming behavior has been observed, including online grooming, personal/self-grooming, familial grooming, institutional grooming, and grooming behaviors of females.
• The ways in which sexual grooming strategies may be manifested in sex trafficking cases and in adult sexual abuse.
• Assessment and treatment of sexual grooming, as well as prevention strategies.
• The implementation of grooming research to inform law enforcement efforts and court decision-making.
• The creation and adoption of legislation and policies designed to prevent sexual grooming.

Child Sexual Grooming is an essential resource for researchers, professors, graduate students, clinicians, mental health therapists, legal professionals, policy makers, law enforcement, and related professionals in developmental psychology, child and adolescent psychology, social work, public health, criminology/criminal justice, forensic psychology, and behavioral therapy and rehabilitation.

​Georgia Winters, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology and Counseling at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center. She has been conducting research related to sexual offending and the prevention of sexual violence for a decade. Dr. Winters is one of the foremost experts in sexual grooming behaviors having developed the Sexual Grooming Model of child sexual abusers along with Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic. Dr. Winters has published more than 27 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Moreover, she has conducted clinical evaluations with both victims and offenders of sexual violence during her predoctoral internship at UMass Medical School and postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia. Dr. Winters is the director of a lab at Farleigh Dickinson University targeting prevention of sexual violence.

Elizabeth L. Jeglic, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Binghamton University. Dr. Jeglic conducts research on sexual violence prevention and evidence-based public policy and, along with Dr. Georgia Winters, is one of the foremost experts on sexual grooming. She has published more than 125 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Dr. Jeglic is the co-author/editor of three books: New Frontiers in Offender Treatment: The Translation of Evidence Based Practices to Correctional Settings (Springer, 2018), Sexual Offending: Evidence Based Legislation and Prevention (Springer, 2016), and Protecting Your Child from Sexual Abuse: What You Need to Know to Keep Your Kids Safe (Skyhorse, 2018). She is an Associate Editor of the journal Sexual Abuse and is on the editorial board of Psychology, Public Policy and Law. Along with Dr. Cynthia Calkins, she is co-Director of the Sex Offender Research Lab (SORL). She was awarded the Fay Honey Knopp Award from the New State Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers for her contributions to the prevention of sexual violence.