THE DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATION OF ONLINE CHILD SEXUAL GROOMING: FROM CHATLOGS TO COURT RULINGS

Abstract

The article examines the discursive representation of online child sexual grooming (OCSG) in two different genres: OCSG court rulings and chatlogs. Following the OCSG discourse model developed by Lorenzo-Dus (2023), and deploying (im) politeness frameworks (Brown & Levinson 1987; Culpeper 1996; 2011), we analyse a dataset comprising court rulings associated with OCSG cases, as stored in the CENDOJ repository, and a dataset comprising OCSG chatlogs between groomers and child victims, shared by Spain’s Ministry of Justice for research purposes. The analysis identifies one OCSG case being included in both datasets, which is then further examined with the assistance of the qualitative software package NVivo14. Comparison of the chatlog contents and all the chatlog excerpts included in the ‘Proven Facts’ section of the court ruling for that OCSG case shows that the judge primarily references chatlog content that is punishable under Spain’s Criminal Code. However, other grooming tactics that are present in the chatlog and impact on the child victim’s well-being, such as mental isolation, are not as well represented in the court ruling documents. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine real OCSG chatlogs in Spanish, which highlights its significance.