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Grooming
Hello, I am a legal student. In a scenario where a pedophile facilitates an environment where he normalises behaviour claiming that he does so in order to "broaden a person's horizons" to a group of children including his own then what are the legal ramifications for the children that were threatened, indoctrinated and groomed. If he used standard tactics such as giving rewards, built a relationship of trust over years, and ensured secrecy through threats of death, economic ruin, and homelessness. If he started with the children at a very young age showing them sexually explicit material and targets his children's friendship group and others through an online application normalising language such as "rape", telling them all friendship is romantic in its very nature, and that no one can hate anyone because hatred just means disagreement. He also tells other adults that children are lying and ensures that they copy his behaviour through the threats above to blackmail the people he has groomed. I was wondering about whether the children that are groomed would be in any trouble legally given the circumstances. The children’s ages are [deleted] and now 28 This man started this when some of them were prepubescent and got them on an application when they were 10, 11, 16, 14, 13, 22, 29
Asked 3 months ago in Criminal Law
Religion: Muslim
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6 Answers
Inform the cops about offender abusive behaviour
if children have not explored other children they would not be in trouble
Groomed children are not legally in trouble — they are treated as victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and safeguarding law. Any apparent “consent” is invalid. Even if they copied behaviour under threats, liability does not fall on them. The full criminal liability rests on the abuser; past grooming history may also mitigate responsibility if actions continued into adulthood.
Due to rapid technological changes, online child sexual exploitation offenses are increasing in scale and complexity.
Individuals who seek to sexually exploit children through child sexual abuse material can do so from anywhere in the world by using digital devices and the internet.
Increasingly, perpetrators are grooming minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct online.
Child victims have been reluctant to come forward because they do not want an offender, who may be a peer, to get in trouble.
Technology has also made it easier for offenders to access unsupervised children. Every year, more and younger children are given unfettered and unmonitored access to devices that connect them to the internet.
Life is demanding, and many parents hardly have time to breathe, let alone coax their kids into conversations.
In this situation a girl groomed to handle at the age of 14 and having sex at the age of 22 with 15 year old can be an offence in the legal point of view.
At present, the law in India to protect children from sexual offences is The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO). Section 11(vi) of POCSO provides that a person who entices a child for pornographic purposes or gratification, with sexual intent is said to commit sexual harassment upon a child.
Further, section 11(iv) of POCSO states that a person is said to commit sexual harassment when such person "repeatedly or constantly follows or watches or contacts a child either directly or through electronic, digital or any other means" with sexual intent.
You can file complaint under provisions of pocso act
- Since, the children are victim , hence they will not face any trouble in future
- However, they can lodge a compliant against the people who have trained them wrongly and threatened them.
