Unraveling the Complexities of Offender Strategies as Part of Online Sexual Grooming and Technology-Assisted Child Sexual Abuse: A Systematic Review

Over recent years, there has been a notable increase in online sexual grooming and technology-assisted child sexual abuse. However, to date, a comprehensive overview of the manipulative strategies used by individuals with a history thereof to approach, identify, and engage children and young people in these contexts, with a focus on real-world, naturally-occurring data, is absent from the existing literature. The systematic literature review presented here therefore intends to fill this gap. A mixed-methods systematic literature search was conducted in September 2023 across six databases, in addition to a gray literature search, using relevant terms. A total of 12 articles were included in the review, and a thematic synthesis approach was used to integrate the qualitative and quantitative data. Eight themes and 37 subthemes were identified. The findings highlight that individuals use a number of different strategies which are of a highly manipulative, adaptive, and individualized nature in order to identify, approach, and engage victims in online sexual grooming, and technology-assisted child sexual abuse respectively. Our findings are discussed with a view to informing directions for future research and practical implications.