How Cyberspace has Changed Journeys to Crime: Examining Distances Sexual Groomers Travel to Commit Offline Offenses Against Minors Using Federal Court Records

Sydney A. Fay

Advisor: David Weisburd, PhD, Department of Criminology, Law and Society

Committee Members: Allison Redlich, Jin Lee, Roberta O'Malley

Online Location, #Online
October 14, 2024, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Abstract:

The Internet has transformed almost every aspect of human life, including how sex offenders engage victims. While traditionally groomers had to identify, groom, and offend against their victims offline, contact-driven offenders use the Internet to identify and groom minors to meet offline to engage in illicit sexual contact. The offline sexual contact remains constant, but how have journeys-to-crime changed as our society becomes increasingly reliant on the Internet, and are contact-driven offenders different from traditional offline groomers? Both the existing literature and opportunity theories suggest that: (H1) contact-driven offenders will travel longer distances to meet their victims when compared to traditional offline groomers; (H2) contact-driven offenders who communicate online for longer durations of time will travel longer distances compared to contact-driven offenders with shorter durations of engagement; and, (H3) contact-driven offenders are younger and more educated than traditional offline groomers. To test these hypotheses, the author extracted data on offenders, victims, crimes, and distances traveled from federal court dockets for cases in which the defendant was charged under the federal anti-grooming statute (18 U.S.C. 2422) from 2000 through 2019. Journey-to-crime distances were measured at both an ordinal- and interval-level. The author qualitatively reviewed 50 cases from the full sample (n = 331 journeys-to-crime committed by 308 offenders) to describe the types of cases in the full sample and contextualize the quantitative findings. Results from a series of regression analyses supported Hypothesis One in that contact-driven offenders on average traveled farther to their victims than traditional offline groomers. Results also supported Hypothesis Two in that contact-driven offenders’ duration of communication with victims was significantly associated with jurisdictional journey-to-crime distances and significantly predicted longer journey-to-crime distances that were measured at the interval level. Finally, the results of testing Hypotheses Three did not suggest that contact-driven offenders tended to be younger or more educated on average when compared to offline traditional groomers, as these results were not statistically significant. The author concludes with a discussion of findings, implications for policy and practice, limitations, and a path for future research.