The process of grooming – online sexual abuse – is being further investigated through a two-year research project called ROBERT: Risktaking Online Behaviour Empowerment through Research and Training. Nine European research institutions and NGOs work together to clarify what makes young people vulnerable to digital harassment. The innovative approach will not only include interviews with victims of grooming, but also with perpetrators.
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„At first we collect existing research from different languages and try to figure out why there is such diverging data on this topic across Europe,“ says Lars Lööf, from the expert group Cooperation of Children at Risk, which is also coordinating the project. The next steps of the project will include a set of interviews, in a trusted environment, with young people who have experienced online abuse. „We want to determine what the conditions were under which the young people became victims of grooming,“ says Lööf.
Focus group interviews will then be conducted afterwards to further elaborate the conditions for online sexual abuse. They will concentrate on young people who are said to be particularly vulnerable to grooming, e.g., youngsters who live in alternative care, in institutions or with foster families, as well as young people with a disability or with same-sex preference or transgender identity. „We want to find out how they manage the challenges modern technology puts on them and where vulnerabilities in their online conduct arise,“ explains Lööf. Overall, around two hundred people between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years will be interviewed.
The ROBERT project will also conduct interviews with the perpetrators themselves. Around twenty people will be questioned who have already been convicted of online offences- again in a trusted environment. The aim is to find out if there are any specific characteristics in the online conduct of young people that make them particularly susceptible to sex offenders. By uncovering strategy patterns of perpetrators, the researchers hope that clear protection recommendations can be formulated.
„The project is designed to bring more light to the process of grooming and will serve to empower the victims of online sexual abuse,“ confirms Lööf. ROBERT was launched in June 2010 and its first results are already available through an online database. A final report and a conference are scheduled for May 2012 in Berlin.
ROBERT is funded by the European Commission’s Safer Internet Programme. It is managed and coordinated by the Expert Group for Cooperation on Children at Risk (EGCC) in partnership with the University of Tartu (Estonia), Linköping University (Sweden), the University of Edinburgh (UK), Kingston University (UK), Save the Children Denmark, Save the Children Italia, Innocence in Danger in Germany, and Stellit International in The Netherlands and Russia.
Find more info on ROBERT in this pdf
