New research has found that it can take less than 20 minutes for a “highly skilled” paedophile to groom a child on the internet.
The study found that paedophiles can use a range of techniques to persuade children into doing what they want.
While popular belief is that paedophiles always pretend to be children, the new research from Swansea University found that in the majority of cases, those doing the grooming had come forward as adults.
“We have carried out a detailed analysis of the language used by more than 100 online groomers which shows that they are skilled communicators who use a range of strategies,” said Professor Lorenzo-Dus, one of the researchers behind the study.
Analysing conversations between 192 online sexual predators and researchers posing as children, the study concluded these strategies include: “seemingly innocuous ‘small talk’ to develop a sense of trust in them, requests and commands to gauge the children’s disposition to meet online groomers’ desires for verbal or visual sexual engagement and compliments on various topics to increase feelings of trust and emotional bonding.”
The time between initial online contact and the first sexual requests ranged from between 18 minutes and 82 hours, with the age range of online predators ranging from 21 to 65.
“Online groomers are communicatively, highly skilled and can interact with their victims as if they care about them, and pretend to be romantically - rather than only sexually - interested in them,” explained researcher Dr Izura.
With only between a quarter to half of all compliments online groomers pay sexually-oriented, these conversations are often not even picked up by online grooming protection softwares, which are designed to detect paedophiles’ online activities by looking for language rich with sexual terms.
Parents have been urged to take more of an interest in what their children are getting up to online, and to have open conversations with their children.
"Listening to them carefully and taking an interest in their online activities is a good way to build their trust in us and help reduce the risk of children looking for trust elsewhere online,” explained Dr Izura.
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