The most common tactics groomers employ are cultivating a positive reputation within a community, introducing sexualized topics or imagery to kids, isolating them from their parents, and encouraging them to keep secrets, experts told the Daily Caller. Each of these red flags have manifested themselves in classroom policies or public programs for children across America in recent years.

“I can’t think of too many times where I would think that an unrelated person should say, ‘Don’t say this to your parents,’” Daniel Pollack, professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University, told the Daily Caller.

“[Parents] should be informed [about sex education], especially the younger kids are,” Chris Newlin, executive director of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, said. “I’m just not a fan of things being held secret from parents, and kids being told not to tell.”

Yet a culture of secrets is exactly what’s cropping up in some schools. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that a school could institute a policy in which kids change their gender identity without informing parents. In March, a Texas elementary school told 5-year-old kids not to tell their parents what adults taught during pride week classroom discussions. A new Philadelphia policy requires teachers to hide the transgender status of students from parents.

Examples are international, too: in Canada, one school hosted a “pride dance” that parents were prohibited from seeing.

The dictionary definition of groomer is “the criminal activity of becoming friends with a child in order to try to persuade the child to have a sexual relationship,” according to the Cambridge English Dictionary. Some critics of sexualized education for kids and programs like Drag Queen Story Hour allege that kids aren’t only being groomed for potential abuse, but are being mentally groomed into a particular worldview regarding sexuality and gender.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has led a political movement against the teaching of gender ideology in school, as well as other topics, said some educators are undertaking actions that match up well with that definition of grooming.

“Many school districts, including large districts such as Los Angeles Unified, have adopted explicit policies that teachers can facilitate a child’s gender and sexual transition without notifying parents. In fact, the default is to keep these transitions a secret — the child has to request notification,” Rufo told the Daily Caller. “This is extremely dangerous and an immense violation of the rights of parents to know what’s happening to their children. It opens up kids to manipulation, indoctrination and abuse.”

Another key step in grooming is exposing children to sexualized content at a young age. “They start to bring up some kind of sexual content at some point so that they can start to initiate some contact with the child,” Newlin said, explaining that only trained professionals or parents should be discussing these topics. “Who should be doing that? Professionals, in that kind of setting. I think it’s good for parents to be having conversations with their children about sexuality.”
Kids are increasingly exposed to sexualized topics in schools and other community settings. For instance, a recent pride event labeled “family-friendly” in Rome, Georgia, featured sex toys, condoms and explicit drag queen performances. One left-wing sex education group markets videos to kids as young as kindergarten and discusses topics including sexting and abortion.

“In the fourth and final stage before the contact abuse occurs, the perpetrator prepares the minor for abuse by desensitizing them to sexual content,” clinical psychologist, sexual violence prevention expert and professor of psychology at John Jay College, Dr. Elizabeth Jeglic told the Caller. She said examples can include showing them pornography, talking about sexual experiences or teaching them about sexual education.

“This should be a major red flag: adults with institutional power talking about sex with young children is a mechanism that can be easily abused,” Rufo said. “We’ve seen stories such as one in Pennsylvania in which teachers use casual conversations about sex as the first step in the grooming process.”

Oftentimes predators aren’t only grooming children for abuse. Experts told the Caller that grooming the surrounding community in order to gain trust is also critical to creating an environment for abuse.

“They are trying to gain not only the trust of the intended victim, but they’re really trying to gain the trust of the people around that victim,” Pollack said. “They are grooming, if you will, not just that victim, but they’re grooming the institution.”

Institutions have been groomed for child sexual abuse before. The Catholic church has infamously dealt with systemic, institutional issues of sexual abuse. Swap the priests out for teachers graduating from colleges with highly subversive approaches to K-12 pedagogy, and suddenly public schools are facing a similar problem.

“The goal of gaining trust is so they can easily access the minor without suspicion. Behaviors and tactics include having a good reputation in the community [and] coming across as charming and likable,” Jeglic said.