Is being a groomer a felony? Serious question - I don't know the status of that. A vast majority of the stuff I see the term being directed at isn't in any way illegal. It always struck me that grooming itself wasn't actually a crime - it could just be a precursor to one. Kind of like casing the joint versus robbing the place.
A little googling brought up this. Basically grooming is a “civilian” word and not an actual legal definition of actions. But grooming is understood to be softening a child up so that they engage with sexual acts with them, and that element is illegal. Kind of like if we plebs says someone assaulted someone if they punched them. But that’s not assault, that’s battery, assault only means threatened in the legal sense. I think your casing to burglary analogy is a fairly accurate one. The intent with that action is still to commit a crime.
Grooming – the act of cultivating behavior to exploit a child. While the term has only recently entered the public lexicon, it has been an undercurrent of many criminal cases over the years. However, is grooming a crime?
Grooming Defined
Grooming or child grooming is the act of deliberately establishing a relationship with a child to prepare them for abuse. As an action in and of itself,
grooming does not have criminal penalties, but facilitation of a criminal sexual act is considered a crime.
Conspiracy and facilitation are the first steps in the criminal process and are therefore crimes. The difference between grooming and the facilitation of a sex crime is the fact that one is behavioral training while the other is the lead in to a crime. Behavioral conditioning does not always result in abuse, so it remains a gray area legally.
Grooming is like sprinkles on an ice cream cone; it enhances the dessert, but it is still an ice cream cone without the sprinkles. In general, grooming is a tactic used to entice and trap children to make them engage in sexual acts. Rarely is grooming used in a criminal context outside of sexual assault, trafficking, or the production of child pornography.