So this has been something on my mind for a hot minute, and after seeing not only recent events but also everything I've been exposed to in the past two years, I have reason to believe that there's a somewhat common problem with online grooming and people not doing the right thing - namely, the perpetrators. I usually don't like butting into things like this, but given how much I've seen it happen and how it's still a problem, I think I wanna say a few words, not just for Newgrounds, but really for any person in any community who wants or needs to hear this. If you don't, I don't mind - at the very least, this serves to get my words off of my back, and because of that I'm satisfied with whatever happens to this. But here's my perspective about grooming, how to avoid doing it, and what to do if you've done it for some stupid reason.

Keep in mind before I begin - I am in no way a voice that replaces victims of grooming, as I never have been a victim and I hope that I, like you, never become a victim going forward. I don't want to speak on the behalf of those victims, but instead on my own knowledge and experiences as a bystander of several grooming callouts. That also means that this is in no way a Bible of grooming knowledge; in fact, I encourage you to do further research for more information if that's interesting to you. This is my way of helping those around me not do something stupid and giving some knowledge about the subject as well, because like School House Rock put it, "Knowledge is Power".

So in order for us to talk about how to not be groomers, it's probably best to define what is grooming from a general standpoint.

We'll use a few definitions. These definitions are from, in the order they appear, NSPCC (UK), RAINN, Metropolitan Police, and Bravehearts.

From these definitions, in general grooming is an act of sexual exploitation where an individual, regardless of age/gender/physical characteristics, builds a relationship with a minor or vulnerable adult to abuse them through acts of physical, mental or sexual means. Naturally, this means that there's a power dynamic at play - while it's impossible to generalize the motives for every groomer, it's easy to tell that there's usually a desire for power over an individual. I've seen only one individual where that wasn't the case.

Which leads me to the major thing that grooming practices - disrespect. By trying to manipulate an individual to perform sexual acts, or acts in general, it completely disrespects the victim and, naturally, can make them feel intimidated or afraid to tell someone what's going on. I feel that's why it's so hard to address the problem from the victim's side - it takes balls to bring what happened up to light, even if it's just to the everyman.

With that being said, how can we prevent ourselves from grooming others? Simple - in the same way grooming practices disrespect, practicing respect can help lead us to not groom or manipulate people.

This sounds a lot easier than it is in some cases. For some, respecting other people comes naturally; for others, not so much. To be specific, here's some tips and tricks relating to avoiding grooming practices:

• Everyone you talk to is a person. If you treat people like people, or in other words how you want to be treated (which I'm sure has been said a trillion times by now), then it'll make you less prone to abusing them, unless of course you'd be fine being abused as well.
• Respect boundaries. Every person has those things they're not comfortable with doing, so if they're not comfortable with doing something, it's okay. Forcing them to do something won't turn out good in the long run.
• Common sense. I get it's not so common nowadays, but it should go without saying that there's things you definitely shouldn't do, even in a relationship.

It all boils down to just practicing respect - a concept I know I've talked about on my now-defunct Twitter account, but still hold with to this day.

As I mentioned before, I've seen a bunch of groomers in the past couple of years, and it's unfortunate that I've seen a bunch of them. But with all of them, without fail, their rehab paths generally look like this:

The groomer's actions get revealed once someone else calls them out for their actions. They then usually make at least one apology, usually less than half-baked, and then either remain in the community or leave for less than a year, if not less than six months. Then, they try to enter back into the community while justifying themselves or, if possible, shift the negative attention to another topic.

That said, the amount of groomers who I've seen correctly go through the rehab process is exactly 0. The reason boils down to a simple word - accountability. I have failed to see a groomer be legitimately accountable for their actions, and instead, they choose to hurt others because of their carelessness.

So, in the event you do something as stupid as grooming (which I hope you don't ever choose to groom someone), what should you do?

1. Take a leave before the call out. People are still going to be angry no matter what, but waiting for someone to call you out is only going to make you look more selfish than if you own up to what you did and leave on your own terms.
2. If you make an apology, make it genuine. A genuine apology has three parts that are all genuine in their own right - the "I'm sorry", the ownership of the fault, and the plan to fix the problem. People may not accept it, but making it genuine shows at least some care.
3. Leave the online gig. The priority from here on is to focus on getting better - keeping yourself in the same environment you were called out in isn't going to help, it'll only hurt. Take yourself off of everything you can, including any alt accounts, and stay completely away from the previous environments you were in.
4. Take all the time you need. Focus, but don't rush the process - mental habits, especially one like this that's rooted in a larger issue like disrespect, takes multiple years to fix. How long it exactly takes depends on the person - while a recipe says it takes 10-15 minutes to bake a loaf of bread, in reality it's ready when it's ready. Any earlier and the bread starts hurting people; it's the same concept here.
5. Don't force "I'm better" on others. If - and that's a really large if - you choose to come back, let the people see what you've become. Saying you've done x, y and z isn't going to get people to trust you; show, not tell.

It's intentionally a long process for rehab because the issue, as mentioned before, is a larger issue than just "I had sex relations with someone, oops". It's disrespect that needs time to be fixed.

Again, I get that I have no true place to be saying this stuff, but I say it because I truly am tired of people not only failing to help themselves, but continuing to hurt others because they pulled actions that were ignorant of others. If a person wants to genuinely help themselves for the greater good, then I do wish them good luck with that because I believe every person has the capacity to help but the choice to hurt - and at the end of the day, I would absolutely prefer if people changed and redeemed themselves rather than take their own lives. But I can't keep pretending that so many of these groomers are changed people when they're clearly not. And again, this isn't just one person I'm talking about - it's a good handful of people who haven't proven they're no longer hungry for power.

That, by the way, is why I chose not to name anyone off here. As has been mentioned a time or two before, the cruelest kind of attention to give to someone isn't negative attention, but rather no attention, and that's what I intended to do here. They haven't told me they changed, so I don't believe I should give them what they want until they prove their change.

Even if there was some things that were disagreed upon here, I hope this brought some knowledge on grooming and my perspective with things. Again, I encourage you to also do your research if you want to learn more, and form your own opinions with things - this isn't the only perspective with this issue, and it shouldn't be the only perspective either.