What to do if you suspect grooming

If you think something is happening, you do not need to be sure before you act. Reports are made on suspicion all the time, and that is what the system is built for. What follows is the order of operations, including the well-intentioned first moves that cause the most damage.

1. Do not delete anything

The instinct is to make it go away: delete the messages, delete the account, block the person, wipe the photos. This is the single most common mistake, and it destroys the evidence that investigators need to identify an offender who is very likely doing this to other children at the same time.

Preserve, in this order:

• Screenshots of the full conversation, not just the alarming part. Include the beginning, where the relationship was being built, because that is what establishes the pattern.
• The person's username, profile URL, display name and profile photo, on every platform where they appear.
• Dates and times, and the platform each exchange happened on.
• Any payment or gift records: gift card codes, in-game transfers, delivery confirmations.

Keep the account open and do not change the password yet unless the account itself has been compromised. Store the screenshots somewhere your child cannot delete them in a moment of panic.

2. Do not confront the person

Messaging the offender, or having your child do it, tells them they have been discovered. The predictable result is that they delete their account and disappear, taking the evidence trail with them, and in sextortion cases it can trigger them to carry out the threat.

Do not pay anything either. Payment in sextortion cases reliably produces more demands rather than fewer.

3. Talk to your child before you talk to anyone else

They need to hear two things from you, in this order, before anything procedural happens:

1. They are not in trouble, and nothing that has happened changes how you feel about them.
2. You are going to report it, and you will tell them what happens at each step.

Do not promise secrecy you cannot keep. Children can handle "I have to tell someone who can help, and I will tell you before I do it." They cannot handle being told it would stay between you and then finding out otherwise.

4. Report it

You can and should do more than one of these.

• NCMEC CyberTipline, at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678. This is the national clearinghouse in the United States. Reports are forwarded to law enforcement and are how cross-platform patterns get connected.
• Local law enforcement, which is the route for anything involving a local person, physical contact, or an attempt to arrange a meeting.
• The platform itself, which can preserve account data and remove the offender. Report after you have your own screenshots, because a suspended account can become unreadable to you.
• FBI IC3, at ic3.gov, particularly for sextortion and financial extortion.

5. If intimate images exist

There are free services built specifically for this, and they work without you or your child ever sending the image to anyone.

• Take It Down, at takeitdown.ncmec.org, for anyone currently under 18 or who was under 18 in the image. It generates a digital fingerprint on your own device and uses it to find and remove copies across participating platforms. The image itself never leaves the device.
• StopNCII, at stopncii.org, for adults, using the same fingerprinting approach.

6. Expect the aftermath to take longer than the incident

Children who have been groomed frequently feel complicit, because being made to feel complicit is the method. They may defend the person. They may be angry at you rather than at them. They may minimize it. None of that means it was not serious, and none of it means you handled it wrong.

Consider a therapist with specific experience in child sexual abuse or online exploitation rather than general family counseling. The dynamics here are particular, and the shame response responds to being treated specifically.