Victims of Child Grooming: An Evaluation in University Students

Abstract

The appearance of new ways of committing sexual violence via technological media and virtual spaces has produced countless situations where sexual abuse of minors may occur. This is the digital scenario surrounding the phenomenon of grooming. The present study focuses on analyzing grooming experienced by Spanish university students during childhood. The sample comprised 3293 students in higher education, 68.3% of whom were female, 30.5% were male, and 1.2% identified as non-binary. The mean age was 18.83 years (SD = 2.28). The results confirmed that sexual abuse of minors has moved towards virtual environments, indicating a prevalence of 12.2% for grooming, which was more likely to have affected women and non-binary people. In addition, student victims of grooming were more often also victims of sextortion. Consumption of pornography was also shown to be particularly important, with the results indicating that students who consumed it and started consuming it before they were 16 years old were more often victims of grooming. These findings should encourage the educational community to develop preventive actions that match the reality of online child sexual abuse. In summary, the only path towards preventing and detecting grooming is to invest in high-quality digital education and sex education from a gender perspective.