Online Enticement of Children: Motives and Tactics
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) operates the CyberTipline, the nation’s centralized reporting system for suspected child sexual exploitation. Reports made to the CyberTipline,
totaling more than 27 million since 1998, uniquely position NCMEC to spot patterns and trends in child sexual exploitation, including the “online enticement” of children.
To better understand this type of victimization, we
analyzed 5,863 online enticement reports from 2015. These reports demonstrated that someone enticing a child online can have a variety of motives and tactics: to entice a child to share sexually explicit images, to arrange a meeting in person for sexual
purposes, to engage the child in a sexual conversation or role-play or, in some instances, to sell or trade the child’s sexual images to other offenders.
The primary motives appeared to be to obtain sexually explicit images and to meet and have sexual contact.
The most common tactics used to entice children included:
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Engaging in sexual conversation/role play as a grooming method, instead of a goal
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Asking for sexually explicit images of the child or mutually sharing images
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Developing rapport, known as grooming, through compliments, discussing shared interests and “liking” their online posts
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Sending or offering sexually explicit images of themselves
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Pretending to be younger
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Offering incentives, e.g., gift cards, alcohol, drugs, lodging, transportation or food
