“Crime Scene: Avatar”
What does “cybergrooming” mean?
Chief Inspector Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) in her hunt for the cybergrooming phantom.
© SWR/Christian Koch
In “Tatort: Avatar” the Ludwigshafen detectives have to deal with “cybergrooming”. What exactly does the term mean?
The made-up word “cybergrooming” describes the activities of mostly adult perpetrators on the Internet who specifically prepare sexual abuse against children and young people. The criminals are often older men who initially pose as the same age to the victims on social networks and work with false profiles. In the “Crime Scene: Avatar” the perpetrator’s approach is particularly perfidious: the father of the family does not shy away from using pictures and videos of his young son to build up his fake identity.
Cybergrooming via digital channels is often just the precursor to abuse in the real world. After the victims have been given false ideas about their counterparts, meetings are then arranged outside of the chat forums. In some cases, children and young people are made to take pornographic images of themselves and send them to the perpetrator. In the next step, the perpetrators often use this material to blackmail their victims: They threaten to publish the images that have already been provided and demand additional photos from those affected.
Cybergrooming: The number of unreported cases is extremely high
The actual extent of cybergrooming cannot be measured. Apart from the fact that in some cases the underage victims are not even aware of the sexual abuse, many crimes go unreported because those affected do not turn to their parents or other adults out of shame. According to official information A total of 2,331 cases were recorded in the nationwide crime statistics in 2022 “in which perpetrators influenced children or young people via the Internet in order to prepare for sexual abuse”. However, the number of unreported cases of such crimes must be estimated to be much larger.
This is how parents can protect their children
Police crime prevention advises parents who suspect or discover a case of cybergrooming to collect as much evidence of the crime as possible. This primarily includes documenting the chat history and backing up the images and videos sent. At the same time, the legal guardians should immediately contact a local police station to block the perpetrator on the respective digital channel and have their account deleted. The further steps to identify the person behind it are then in the hands of experienced specialists. The affected families are advised to accept further help. There are numerous victim counseling centers that support children and parents in processing what they have experienced and preventing further attacks in the future.