Abstract
Online grooming affects a significant number of children and teenagers. Yet research into its characteristics is scarce. This study uses a Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis approach (Herring, 2004, 2013) in order to examine a corpus of online grooming chat logs (c. 75,000 words) from Perverted-Justice.com. Results reveal the following idiosyncratic features: (1) a marked used of explicit and direct sexual solicitation; (2) a wide range of deceptive trust development strategies; and (3) an emphasis on testing the victim׳s compliance levels throughout the entire chat log and beyond groomers׳ secrecy and exclusivity establishing concerns. Online grooming is found to operate as a complex interactional network and to encompass different groomer profiles. To accommodate these findings, a new model of online grooming discourse is proposed.
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