Offenders' approaches to overcoming victim resistance in technology-assisted child sexual abuse

Perpetrators of technology-assisted abuse use an abundance of strategies to manipulate and sexually abuse children online, however victim resistance during and post abuse has yet to be explored in detail.This study aimed to explore the strategies perpetrators use to overcome direct victim resistance and the strategies victims use to resist perpetrators' demands.The sample was recruited through Childline, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). This consisted of 10 semi-structured interview transcripts of 1 male and 9 female victims of technology-assisted sexual abuse, who were aged between 9 and 15 years old at the time of the abuse (M = 13.09, SD = 2.0).This study qualitatively analysed secondary data collected by Hamilton-Giachritsis et al. (2020). The interview transcripts were analysed using a thematic analysis.The thematic map consisted of two key themes and six sub-themes. Results identified how all perpetrators appeared to adapt their strategies of overcoming victim resistance using a variety of approaches. These ranged from isolating victims and depriving them of sleep, to more extreme approaches such as threats to share sexual images of the victims. Victims also used a range of strategies to resist and de-escalate the abuse, such as feigning ignorance and complying with some but not all requests.This study identified the key strategies used by offenders to overcome victim resistance, and the strategies young people used to resist, de-escalate and end the abuse.