Grooming is when an adult builds an emotional connection with a child with the intention of exploiting the child’s trust by using them for their own sexual gratification. Groomers will first gain the trust of the child so that the child is less likely going to question their intentions. Groomers can do this by offering to buy gifts for the child, giving the child attention or pretending to be a child themselves therefore deceiving the child who may not know they are being groomed. Thus leading to sexual abuse, and as the groomer would find ways to convince the child to meet up with them to then take sexual advantage of the child. After review, it was found that a method or framework was missing. To address that gap, in this paper, we propose a theoretical framework to investigate child cybergrooming offences in the jurisdiction of England and Wales. The data was gathered through interviews, and grounded theory was applied to create the framework which could then be applied at the operational or managerial level. Future work would also focus on applying digital policing skills to investigate how cybergrooming could be reduced and tackled in this day and age of the cyberworld.

Cybergrooming Digital Forensics Investigation Framework.