grooming (exploitation)
Grooming is a manipulation tactic utilized to build a trusting relationship with a vulnerable person in order to manufacture a position of power or control to exploit and abuse that person. Grooming is most commonly associated with sexual abuse towards minors, but at-risk adults, such as the elderly, people with severe mental illness, and those with developmental disabilities can be victims as well. Grooming is often subtle and can be difficult to detect. Common tactics involve gift giving, providing extra attention, and strategic emotional vulnerability in order to devise control over the victim.
Courts have described the grooming of a minor as a perpetrator “befriending” the minor. In these cases, the groomer/adult befriends the minor victim by buying them gifts, spending time with them, and/or creating emotionally or physically vulnerable situations. Together, these actions ease the victim’s hesitations and teach them to ignore their concerns. For example, Ghislaine Maxwell was accused of befriending minors by asking them about school, taking them shopping, and undressing in front of them in a casual way before trafficking them with Jeffrey Epstein. See: U.S. v. Maxwell Indictment (2020).
Federal law does not explicitly define grooming. However the act of grooming is described in 18 U.S.C. § 2242 (Coercion and Enticement) as: “Whoever knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any individual to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, to engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense…” and similarly, 18 U.S.C. § 2251 describes sexual abuse against children. Some states have defined grooming in a similar manner. For example, Mississippi Code § 97-5-32 states: “A person over the age of twenty-one (21) commits the offense of grooming of a child when such person knowingly engages in a pattern of conduct or communication…by any other means to gain access to, to gain the compliance of, to prepare, to persuade, to induce, or to coerce a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct or human trafficking or to procure the sexual servitude of a child.”
[Last reviewed in May of 2026 by the Wex Definitions Team]
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