When we hear about child sexual abuse, we often focus on the abuse itself. However, in many cases, that moment marks the end of a longer process. This process involves gradually gaining the child’s trust, encouraging secrets, and crossing boundaries—all to make the abuse easier and harder to detect.

A helpful way to understand grooming is by examining it through the social ecological model: what’s happening at the micro (children and close relationships), meso (organizations and communities), and macro (laws, culture, systems) levels. Each level can either make grooming easier or much more difficult.