Sexual Grooming Behaviors in Adult Sexual Abuse: An Exploratory Examination of Behaviors Involved in Unwanted Sexual Experiences

In the United States, more than one-quarter of women and one in nine men have experienced unwanted sexual contact (adult sexual abuse; ASA) in their lifetime, mostly perpetrated by someone known to them. To prevent ASA, it is important to know how it occurs. Existing research on the behaviors preceding ASA has primarily investigated cases of stranger rape or multiple detected sexual assaults. While there is substantial empirical evidence on child sexual grooming, researchers have yet to comprehensively explore sexual grooming in cases of ASA. Thus, the goal of this descriptive exploratory study was to examine whether sexual grooming behaviors, as defined by a content-validated model of child sexual grooming, were reported in a sample of 455 adults who experienced ASA. Overall, we found that at least one sexual grooming behavior was reported in 99% of ASA cases, with an average of 13.5 behaviors. Sexual grooming tactics were reported across all stages of the sexual grooming process. These findings represent an important first step in establishing whether sexual grooming, as a construct validated in child samples, extends to ASA, thereby laying the empirical groundwork for future research examining whether adult sexual grooming constitutes a distinct and measurable construct.