Sex offenders targeting and grooming victims online

Abstract

The Internet has facilitated and changed our lives completely. Nowadays, children are oblivious to how life before the Internet invention was, in fact, in 2014, statistics showed that teens between the age of 16 and 19 are spending 7.25 hours daily on the Internet (“Average duration of daily Internet usage,” 2014). Although the Internet is meant to be used in a progressive way, and people do in fact use it in the way it was designed to be used, a minority of people tend to use it to commit crimes online. The Internet, unknowingly, provided online predators with a quick and easily accessible platform to prey on and groom vulnerable children who are often fooled into thinking that they are making a new ‘friend’ online. Therefore, this study focused on online child grooming by online sex offenders, how they target and groom their victims online, what are the current legislations on this crime in other democratic countries and in Malta, what the law enforcements are doing to protect children from this crime and what preventative measures can be taken by the children themselves and their parents to avoid becoming a victim. In order to get a better understanding and analyse this aspect, the author adapted a qualitative research approach and conducted four in-depth semi-structured interviews with four different professionals. Their answers where then analysed and compared to any similarities and dissimilarities that the author previously gathered from the literature. In conclusion, a set of recommendations were gathered and included in the last chapter of this dissertation.