Online sexual grooming: Exploratory comparison of themes arising from male offenders' communications with male victims compared to female victims.

The majority of current grooming research makes no distinctions between male and female targets. This study therefore aims to provide an initial attempt to rectify this state of affairs. Thematic analysis was used to analyse eight transcripts from the Perverted Justice website, revealing five main themes: positivity, emotional connection, self-protection, sexual content, and arranging to meet offline. Unlike O’Connell (2003) themes were not consecutive. While no thematic differences between target genders were found, it was clear that more sexually related words were used towards male targets. It was concluded further investigation of target gender differences was warranted