Chatbot

Exercise 1: Different approaches to minors

With the above ideas about different groupings in mind, think about the following questions. Also consider if your behaviour changed over time, and why that might have been:

  • Did you think about your contact with a minor or minors as being consenting and intimate?
  • Were your conversations prolonged and frequent with sexual content introduced slowly?
  • Did your online conversations often lead to planning or arranging offline meetings to develop the relationship?
  • Did your online conversations lead to the sending and/or receiving of sexual images?
  • Did you see the minors you spoke to as mature and sexually knowledgeable?
  • Did you change your style of communication depending on the minor you spoke to, and how they responded?
  • Did you introduce sexual content very quickly i.e. within seconds or the first few minutes?
  • Did you use a false identity?
  • Did you try to develop a relationship with a particular minor or minors?
  • Did you use sexual chat for your immediate sexual pleasure?

What do your answers to the above questions, tell you about your motivations?

What do they say about how you viewed the minor or minors you chatted to?

And what was the likelihood of you meeting up with a minor you had chatted to online? What stopped you?

The different stages of sexual communication with children

In order to understand more about how to avoid situations which may lead to you communicating sexually with a minor in the future, it can be helpful to break the process down into different stages, like those suggested below, based upon the work by Rachel O’Connell. We can consider each of these stages using one of the examples earlier, Rob:

  • Friendship forming stage – Rob would provide support to young people who were struggling.
  • Relationship forming stage – Rob continued this contact with Claire and communicated that he had feelings for her.
  • Avoiding detection stage – The messaging between Rob and Claire took place mostly in the evening. There was also a secret meeting planned.
  • Sexual behaviour stage – An arrangement was made to meet, which could have resulted in Rob committing a contact sexual offence against Claire.