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To stop abuse, we first need to understand grooming | Grace Tame | TEDxSydney — Transcript

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0:00Transcriber: Royal Isaac Reviewer: Robert Tucker
0:20When child sexual abuse cases are reported,
0:23the main focus is usually on the graphic physical details,
0:29We hear numbered accounts of rape and molestation.
0:34Crimes themselves, which usually occur in minutes,
0:38yet are pulled from stories that, in fact, span years,
0:43and whose impacts lasts a lifetime.
0:47Confronting visual descriptions make for the biggest headlines,
0:52yet they only capture the smallest component of assault.
0:57In reality, most of child sexual abuse
0:59is invisible.
1:00It's immeasurable and untraceable.
1:03It is therefore, simultaneously, the hardest thing for a child to explain,
1:07let alone prove,
1:09and the easiest thing for a perpetrator to deny.
1:14Most child sexual abuse takes the form of pre meditated torture,
1:20sinister psychological manipulation.
1:24And although it is arguably the utmost of evils,
1:27it is this part of the crime that is the most difficult to criminalize.
1:32What I'm referring to is grooming,
1:35the insidious process
1:37by which predators prepare us for,
1:40and eventually forcibly conditioned us
1:42to accept abuse without even realizing it.
1:46Grooming is one of the most common practices across the globe.
1:51Why is it then
1:52that we rarely hear about it in mainstream media
1:55or our everyday conversations?
1:58Changing that is my mission.
2:01It is my mission to bring the backdrop of child sexual abuse
2:06to the forefront of our collective conscience.
2:10Grooming has never been the focus of a social revolution ...
2:15until now.
2:17Grooming is not just a weapon of psychological control,
2:21exclusive to predators who prey on innocent children,
2:25it can be used by power holders,
2:27any time in any environment,
2:31and it is the world over.
2:34Elements of grooming mirror the coercion
2:37that underpins domestic violence,
2:39and workplace bullying,
2:41as well as our political structures.
2:44Those who abuse power don't want us to understand grooming
2:49because it is a cornerstone of all corruption,
2:53from the bottom to the very top of society.
2:57I reported my experience of child sexual abuse and grooming to police
3:02when I was only 16,
3:04after it began approximately a year earlier.
3:08This was both a good thing
3:09and a bad thing.
3:11It was good in that it was almost immediately after it happened.
3:15So, the pursuit of justice began as soon as possible.
3:20It was bad because I was still so young,
3:23and therefore unaware of the depths of the psychological rewiring
3:28that had been deliberately forged
3:30by a predator
3:32in my still developing brain
3:35I didn't understand what had happened to me,
3:38even as I was going through it.
3:41It wasn't until several years after the fact
3:44that I actually thought to look up what the term "grooming" meant.
3:48It was equal parts validating and confronting.
3:52Finally, I could put a name to all of the inexplicable things
3:56I'd seen and felt.
3:58But at the same time, I realized how much I had protected the perpetrator
4:03because of my inability to articulate all the layers of his criminal behaviour.
4:08when I made my statement as a child.
4:11Despite its complexity,
4:13grooming can be simplified into six core concurrent phases.
4:18These phases are attributed to a 2016 academic paper
4:22by Georgia Winters and Elizabeth J. Glick.
4:25Over the years, I've personally adapted them
4:29as a way of processing my trauma.
4:32The following are the six stages of grooming,
4:35which together paint a picture of how predators drive abuse.
4:40The first phase is targeting,
4:43that is identifying a vulnerable individual.
4:47It goes without saying that children are the easiest targets.
4:51By definition, all children and adolescents are vulnerable.
4:55It is now an extensively scientifically evidenced fact
5:00that the human brain is not fully developed
5:02until at least age 24.
5:05And one of the slowest developing regions of the brain
5:08is the prefrontal cortex,
5:10responsible for impulse control
5:12and judgement.
5:14I was only 15 when I was targeted by a 58-year-old serial paedophile
5:19who taught at my high school.
5:21But my age was not the only factor in my vulnerability.
5:25I had also been battling anorexia for several years.
5:29When I was 14,
5:30I was hospitalized for 6 weeks.
5:32I was bedridden and tube fed.
5:34The school staff knew that I was ill.
5:37After I was discharged from hospital for the first time,
5:40a condition of my outpatient program was
5:43that all my meals had to be supervised by teachers on schooldays.
5:47On top of all this, I came from a broken home.
5:51My parents were divorced when I was only two,
5:54and although I have never doubted that they both love me endlessly,
6:00growing up, I struggled to properly attach to either of them.
6:06Until my mid-teens,
6:07I rarely spent more than a week at a time
6:10in one house.
6:11Every three to four days, I had to pack my things in a bag and uproot.
6:16I had no stability, no base.
6:20My internal insecurity was reflected externally.
6:25As soon as my outpatient program ended,
6:27I relapsed with anorexia,
6:29and was hospitalized a second time when I was 15.
6:33The circumstances were ripe for abuse.
6:36I craved attachment.
6:38I craved undivided attention.
6:42I craved a friend.
6:44Once the paedophile had learned all of these things about me,
6:47after what I mistook as a series of harmless conversations.
6:53Moving to the next phase of grooming
6:55was easy for him.
6:57The next phase of grooming is gaining trust.
7:01By presenting as a friend,
7:03by feigning concern and by offering help,
7:07predators are able to lull their targets
7:09into a false sense of security.
7:13It was during my experience of this phase
7:16that the paedophile opened up to me,
7:19to make me feel like I was able to do the same, to make me feel special.
7:25He shared details about his private life,
7:28and asked questions about mine,
7:31And I answered them,
7:32just as I would have
7:34any other person in a position of authority
7:37with a supposed duty of care.
7:39He soon discovered something else about me
7:41which guaranteed to him that I was a prime target.
7:46When I was six years old, I was abused by an older child,
7:49who asked me to undress in a closet
7:52before molesting me.
7:54Mistreatment was familiar to me.
7:57I would be easy to trigger,
7:59and harder to shock.
8:01Some of the work,
8:02some of the grooming,
8:04had already been done.
8:06I've since learned that this is what abusers do:
8:08they pick up where previous abuses have left off.
8:12This is not only to trigger targets,
8:16but to insure against them speaking out
8:19because doing so
8:20would mean throwing others under the bus to.
8:24In the third phase of grooming,
8:26the paedophile well and truly cemented himself
8:29by filling a need.
8:32This phase requires an especially high level of calculation:
8:36It involves identifying a specific gap in the target's emotional support network,
8:42and then playing the role that fills that gap.
8:46In my case, although I was surrounded by
8:48an attentive network of family and medical health professionals,
8:53theirs was a tough love approach.
8:56The paedophile therefore assumed
8:58the role of sympathizer,
9:00telling me everything he thought I wanted to hear.
9:03He then set about isolating,
9:06which makes up the fourth phase of grooming.
9:09It refers to the ways
9:11in which perpetrators drive wedges
9:14between the target
9:15and all of their genuine supporters.
9:19After they've forged an attachment,
9:21perpetrators begin slowly dissolving their target's true support networks
9:26by discrediting, mocking and discouraging contact with others.
9:31For instance, my abuser degraded my mother,
9:34who was pregnant at the time.
9:35He said she was full of hormones.
9:38He also ridiculed staff and fellow students,
9:42and undermined my perception of my father.
9:45I remember the feeling of loneliness distinctly.
9:48I became untethered to both my loved ones
9:52and my sense of self.
9:55Once these key relationships have been successfully compromised,
9:59the attachment between an abuser and their target is strengthened.
10:04And this protects the abuser
10:06against a target's ability to escape from anything,
10:09especially the sexualizing,
10:12which is the fifth phase.
10:15By gradually exposing children to explicit material,
10:18paedophiles normalize sex,
10:21so that when physical abuse is actually initiated,
10:24it's less shocking.
10:25This adds to the self-doubt of targets as well,
10:29who, upon reflection, begin to wonder whether it was there all along
10:34and thus their responsibility to stop it from happening.
10:38As the target, you beat yourself up for missing things.
10:41In my case, the paedophile encouraged me
10:44to watch films that glorified relationships
10:46between characters with significant age differences.
10:49One of them ended on the line:
10:51"Give me a girl at an impressionable age,
10:53and she's mine for life."
10:54What's more, the way in which the paedophile
10:57initiated sexual contact with me
10:59was by recreating my traumatic childhood experience of molestation,
11:03by instructing me to undress in a closet beforehand.
11:07It was my fault, I thought to myself in that moment.
11:10I gave him the idea by telling him about my past.
11:15The sixth phase of grooming is the last,
11:18but most defining:
11:20It is maintaining control.
11:23Perpetrators do this by striking a perfect balance
11:27between causing pain/
11:29and providing relief from that pain.
11:32They're at once the villain and the saviour,
11:34the poison and the antidote.
11:37Hence, why children find it
11:38nearly impossible to explain or escape from,
11:42let alone prove,
11:43the psychological harm they cause.
11:46Abuses threaten and degrade, then soothe and praise,
11:51thereby gaslighting you into cyclical cognitive dissonance.
11:57This is what they're masters of,
11:59driving you into a state of total confusion
12:02that leaves you feeling helpless, hopeless, ashamed,
12:07unable to escape and virtually insane.
12:11Just as you can't bear to be with them, you can't bear to be without them.
12:16The first time he showed himself naked to me, my abuser said,
12:21"I'll lose my job if anyone hears about this."
12:23After raping me on the floor one day, I asked him if he thought I was fat.
12:28He told me I could do with some more exercise.
12:32He weaponized my eating disorder to crush my self-esteem.
12:37But he also told me I was beautiful sometimes,
12:41when it was convenient.
12:42Ultimately, perpetrators destroy your identity
12:46and replace it with one that is completely controlled by them.
12:51As you can now see,
12:52each of these intersecting elements of grooming
12:55combine to form a powerful mechanism
12:58used by perpetrators to entrap you physically and mentally in their world.
13:05By reducing child sexual abuse to single acts of violence,
13:08we show this system from view,
13:11and we protect perpetrators.
13:12This is the very reason
13:14child sexual abuse has been able to continue for so long unchecked.
13:18We need to make understanding grooming
13:21a societal priority.
13:23As a start, we have to listen.
13:26Every single survivor has value.
13:28Every single survivor has unique insights that can inform and inspire change.
13:35Indeed, everyone's experience of grooming looks different,
13:38both internally and externally.
13:41That said, the fears, the shame,
13:44the self-destruction,
13:45are all largely the same.
13:47You lose trust in others and in your own judgement, equally.
13:52You lose yourself in a turbulent sea of self-doubt.
13:57I've only ever seen grooming from the inside.
13:59I don't know what it looks like
14:01from the perspective of a parent or a bystander.
14:04And even if I did,
14:05one thing I know for sure is
14:08that while it's happening,
14:09it doesn't make logical sense to anyone ... except the perpetrator.
14:15Also, it's important to note
14:16that perpetrators don't just groom their targets,
14:19they groom everyone
14:20to create an environment in which abuse can thrive in plain sight.
14:26It's an entire system,
14:28an ecosystem of control
14:31of which physical acts make up just one part.
14:34What's more, practised perpetrators know
14:37that after a while, after the effects of grooming start to take hold,
14:43children will invariably start behaving in ways that, to outsiders,
14:48does very much make it appear
14:50as if they don't want to leave the abusive situation.
14:54Stockholm Syndrome.
14:56When everything else is taken away from you,
14:58and you are forced to depend on a perpetrator,
15:01abuse becomes a part of your identity.
15:05Even though this isn't a conscious choice,
15:07it's inevitable, you can't help it.
15:11Your behaviour changes accordingly,
15:14You adapt to abuse.
15:16You develop a desperation
15:18to get the most painful parts over and done with as soon as possible.
15:23Eventually, you find yourself initiating physical contact.
15:28You watch yourself walk up to the person who is hurting you, and give them a hug.
15:34You hear yourself saying, "I love you."
15:37This is how you coped.
15:40It's like being possessed.
15:42You watch everything play out,
15:44and then go home and cry yourself to sleep.
15:47You cut yourself, and drink until you pass out.
15:50It's like sleep paralysis.
15:52It's like you're awake,
15:54but you can't move your body
15:56the way you want to.
15:58You dress to impress them, you become their fantasy.
16:03You feel compelled to be with them, and paranoid when they aren't there.
16:08Why?
16:09Because what's scarier than seeing
16:12that you are sharing the room with a spider on the wall,
16:16sharing a room with a spider, but not knowing where it is.
16:20This paranoia and hypervigilance
16:23stay with you long after the physical abuse stops.
16:28Elements of grooming are internalized in all of us.
16:32So, how do we undo it?
16:34How do we rewire our brains and reconnect with reality?
16:39Right before I spoke to the police, I experienced a propulsive surge of rage.
16:46The rage was so overwhelming that it actually surpassed my fear,
16:51and transformed into courage,
16:53which was what was needed to take the first step towards justice.
16:57One of the forces that drove that rage
17:00was the knowledge that my abuser had at least one other victim.
17:05He once boasted about her to me
17:07while he was abusing me.
17:10The thought of all the harm he'd cause to people just within my knowledge,
17:14let alone outside of it,
17:16made me furious.
17:18The thought of my own inaction and silence,
17:21potentially enabling further abuse
17:24became more repulsive and harder to live with
17:28than my memories.
17:29And so, in the same strange way, that rage became my courage,
17:34fear had become my conviction.
17:37Two dark forces became positive ones.
17:40And together, they combined to form the ultimate guiding light: hope.
17:46So, that's how I did it.
17:48That's how I broke the cycle of abuse and grooming.
17:53I lent into the anger and fear,
17:55and found courage, conviction,
17:57and finally hope within them.
18:00I lent into my truth and realized it was my power,
18:04its good and its bad parts.
18:07When they investigated him,
18:09the police found 28 multimedia files of child abuse material
18:13on this paedophile's home computer.
18:16They also found a trophy file
18:18of other students he'd collected over the years.
18:21Some in their school uniform, others topless.
18:26I have since been contacted by some of his other survivors,
18:30some of whose experiences of abuse,
18:34the school already knew about
18:36before I was even born.
18:38There were staff who tried to blow the whistle,
18:41but those with the power to stop him
18:44ultimately chose to protect the institution.
18:47It's my belief that they were groomed to do so.
18:50All of this is painfully true.
18:52But what's also true is that things are changing for the better.
18:55Survivors everywhere are being empowered
18:57to tell their stories,
18:59to educate others,
19:00and lead progress.
19:03Through our conversations, we are demystifying grooming,
19:07taking power away from perpetrators,
19:09giving it back to survivors,
19:11and moving steadily towards a future free from child sexual abuse.
19:16As uncomfortable as it all is to talk and hear about,
19:20nothing is more uncomfortable than the abuse itself.
19:23We'd all do well to remember that,
19:26especially if you suspect abuse,
19:28but are anxious about calling it out and being wrong.
19:32Embarrassment is a small price to pay compared to the toll of lifelong trauma,
19:39and it is a great privilege to not be able to relate to trauma.
19:44Despite what abusers would have us believe,
19:47we do have agency as a community to decide our values and priorities,
19:52to teach each other, to listen, and learn.
19:55We are not alone.
19:58They say it takes a village to raise a child.
20:02Well, it also takes a village to protect a perpetrator.
20:05Collectively, we could end abuse and grooming within a generation
20:09if we all committed to doing our part.
20:13Simply by engaging in this talk,
20:16we are getting closer.
20:19Our truth is our power.

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