Building Trust Through Fantasy Disclosures: A Qualitative Analysis of Offender-To-Offender Child Sexual Exploitation Chats

Research on technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse has largely focused on offender-child or offender-investigator interactions, with less attention to offender-to-offender communication. Using qualitative content analysis, we examined the trust-building processes in 32 offender-to-offender chatlogs from two closed cases: an adult male “bad parent” offender (22 chats) and a juvenile male “bad brother” offender (10 chats). Drawing on Signaling Theory, these disclosures may be interpreted as costly signals that communicate shared interests and authenticity. Although trust was not directly measured, the findings suggest that fantasy disclosures may play an important role in offender-to-offender communication as they navigate credibility and trust.