Exploring the Legal Dimensions of Online Grooming

What Is Online Grooming?

What is Grooming?

Grooming is the term given to the process of gaining the trust of a child or vulnerable person so that they can be more easily abused.  The grooming process may take place over any period of time, long or short, from a day to many months or even years.  The perpetrator may assume a false identity in an effort to cover their tracks but this is not always the case.

Grooming in Person

Where the two parties are known to each other, grooming may take place on a face to face basis with meetings progressing over time and gifts or treats being presented to the vulnerable person until they feel a debt of gratitude towards the perpetrator.  This was generally how grooming looked before the internet.

Grooming in the online world

Increasingly in the modern world, grooming will take place online.  The online world allows the perpetrator to hide behind a false name or a social media account which makes identifying them difficult.  Contact can be made with the vulnerable person via messaging apps or online chat rooms.  Communication may move from one online platform to another, as the perpetrator seeks ways to isolate the vulnerable person or to ensure that their messaging will be encrypted and therefore more difficult to expose.

Does grooming involve a sexual intention?

The perpetrator’s objective might be to persuade the vulnerable person to meet with them for the purposes of engaging in sexual activity.  Or it might be to encourage the sending of sexual images for the perpetrator’s gratification.  Either way, the end-goal will generally involve the commission of a sexual offence.

How does the law deal with online grooming offences?

Of course, by the time any sexual act takes place with a child or any indecent images are sent, the abuse has already occurred.  As such, the criminal law includes offences which are specifically designed to tackle the act of grooming itself.  Law-makers have had to tread carefully in this regard, to avoid criminalising entirely acceptable and lawful communication between an adult and a child.  Because the act of grooming largely relates to activity that has yet to take place, it is the intention of the perpetrator that gives rise to the offence.  The problem for law enforcers is that the perpetrator will very rarely state his intention.  Instead, the criminal intent has to be inferred from what they do say, the circumstances in which they have said it and any other incriminating evidence that might exist.

What is the existing law relating to Grooming Offences?

S15 Sexual Offence Act 2003 makes it an offence for anyone who has met or communicated with a :

• to meet,
• travel to meet, or
• arrange to meet with that child

anywhere in the world

with the intention of committing a sexual offence (as defined by the Sexual Offences Act 2003).

This offence can also be committed if the initial meeting or communication has taken place and it is the child who travels for the purposes of meeting with the perpetrator, who must have the intention to commit a relevant sexual offence with that child.

S15A Sexual Offences Act 2003 was added to the list of sexual offences as a response to the limitations of S15 in tackling the issue of grooming itself. The need for a meeting to have been arranged (or for one party or the other to have travelled for such a meeting) severely restricted law enforcers’ ability to arrest and prosecute those who simply engaged in online communication with a child, with a sexual intent, but with no arrangement to meet having been made.

This provision was inserted into the Sexual Offences Act 2003 by the Serious Crime Act 2015 and came into force in April 2017.

S15A makes it an offence for a person aged over 18 to communicate with a person who is (and where the adult does not reasonably believe the other person to be aged 16 or over):

• for the purposes of sexual gratification, and
• where the communication is sexual
• or where it is intended to encourage the child to make a sexual communication

A communication will be deemed to be “sexual” if it relates to sexual activity or if a reasonable person would consider it to be sexual.  As such, an offender cannot argue that their communication was not sexual if the “reasonable person” would consider that it was.  In criminal trials, the role of the “reasonable person” is generally played by the jury.

What are the sentences for grooming offences?

So, while S15 deals with the offender who arranges to meet a child in order to commit a sexual offence, S15A criminalises the communication itself, provided an element of that communication is deemed to be “sexual”.

In this way, the law seeks to control an offender’s ability to communicate with a child for their own sexual purposes or as part of a longer strategy to groom that child for sexual activity.

The S15 offence carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ in prison.

The S15A offence carries a maximum sentence of 2 years’ in prison.

Conviction for either offence will result in an automatic requirement to register with the police under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.  It is also most likely that the court would impose a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which would seek to limit the offender’s contact with anyone under the age of 18.

For expert advice from our specialist criminal defence solicitors who specialise in sexual offences, please contact us.