Grooming Online to Offend Offline: How the Internet Impacts Sexual Offenders’ Journeys-to-Crime

• In Event: Poster Session 1

Abstract

The Internet has transformed almost every aspect of human life, including how sex offenders engage victims. While traditionally groomers had to identify, groom, and offend against their victims offline, contact-driven offenders use the Internet to identify and groom minors to meet offline to engage in illicit sexual contact. The offline sexual contact remains constant, but how have offline journey-to-crime distances evolved as the Internet has become more ubiquitous? When new communication technology emerges that facilitates online offender-victim contact (e.g., Snapchat), do journey-to-crime distances change in tandem? In this quasi-experimental study, the authors extracted data from federal court dockets for cases in which the defendant was charged under the federal anti-grooming statute (18 U.S.C. 2422) from 2000 through 2019 to gather information on offenders, travel distances, and offense dates. Results from the time-series analysis will allow researchers to gain a better understanding of the relationship between technological advancements and the distances contact-driven offenders travel to assault youth offline. Conclusions can guide policymakers in determining the extent to which local, regional, and federal investigative coordination and data-sharing efforts are necessary to combat this type of crime in the coming years.

Authors

• Sydney Alexandra Fay, George Mason University

• Gretchen Baas, George Mason University