Sexual Grooming Behaviors of Females Who Perpetrate Child Sexual Abuse

It has been proposed that females who commit child sexual offenses engage in sexual grooming similar to their male counterparts. The present study examined sexual grooming by females who committed child sexual abuse (CSA) as reported by adult survivors. A sample of 96 adults who experienced CSA perpetrated by a female completed a survey regarding their experiences of sexual grooming behaviors based on a content-validated model (Sexual Grooming Model; SGM). Overall, all participants endorsed having experienced at least one sexual grooming behavior in the SGM, with an average of 16 (range = 3-34) behaviors reported out of a possible 42. The vast majority (86-99%) of participants endorsed at least one behavior from each of the five SGM stages, and the most common behaviors were identified for each stage. These findings suggest that females who perpetrate CSA indeed engage in sexual grooming behaviors during the offense process.