Campaign update: 10 September 2018
Well, what a week!
Progress stats
Firstly, the campaign in statistics:
Anna Rowe's petition to have 'catfishing' made illegal now boasts 43,757 signatures - 31 more than this time last week. Brilliant. Thank you.
Our Twitter account (@Adult Grooming) is beginning to gain some traction: 24 Mentions, 4.12K Mention Reach, 84 Likes, 40 Retweets, 113K Retweet Reach.
And our new campaign page on Facebook (Campaign for Adult Protection from Grooming), up for just a week, has 64 likes. It's a good place to be if you want to help propel the discussions/have a say - we voted there on the logo an have been debating a new name for the campaign. Do join us.
Please sign and share
With just 20-100 new signatures each week, progress on the petition is way too slow. Even at 100 a week it will take years to get to that requisite 50 thousand to get this heard. We need changes in law NOW to protect people from grooming predators.
Please sign it. Share it. Yell about it. Let's protect people from future grooming:
Articles from around the web
Catch the Catfish: Grooming doesn't just Happen to Children
This Metro article is older, but helps explain why groomers manage to operate so successfully: Sexual Predators Don't Just Groom Their Victims.
And new content on this site:
Book review: The Psychopath Test
If you want to help: Get Involved
The inevitable legal bits: Terms and Conditions
Legals
One of the predators named on this site is, somewhat predictably, taking legal action.
Even if it's not illegal, I guess having what you've done made public isn't much fun. The sad reality is that groomers have more protection against being made to feel bad than their prey have to protect themselves or name them to stop others.
An update will follow when it's OK to do so.
Name Change
The name of this site doesn't make it easy to find. Expect a name change imminently.
And if you can think of a great, snappy name for the campaign, suggest away.
#AntiGroomingPlaylist
If you're on Twitter, so is this campaign, as @AdultGrooming. In an effort to stay upbeat, we're calling out for your tunes - the ones that give us hope, the ones that make us feel stronger, using the hashtag #AntiGroomingPlaylist. There are some cracking suggestions, from the upbeat Katy Perry's Roar to the far deeper Leave Right Now by Will Young. There was a great deal of excitement this end when THE Gloria Gaynor liked the tweet for her anthem I will survive.
That, however, paled into insignificance when a grooming survivor let us know, privately, how much the playlist means to her:
You have no idea how much I appreciate your daily playlist songs and I need to hear them they really help in the dark times and remind me I’m stronger. Thank you
(Published with permission)
Thank You from me
Thank you so much for your support. What happened to me, to Terri (same abuser), to Anna - adult grooming - should not be legal, but is.
I put my picture on here so you know who I am - it's not the most beautiful but it's a face to a name.
As someone said to me this week: when you've been subjected to grooming, you learn quickly not to trust people online, learn to question who's behind the words. I was not wanting to be too public because I have a job and a life outside of this campaign and although this campaign has become a passion, I don't want what one man has done to me to define me. I love my day job!
But here we are for those who naturally need and deserve that assurance. I'll try and get something onto the site about me later. It doesn't sit easily, but as it's one of the first things I tell my own clients - be human - there's a huge amount of 'dogfooding' to be done.
I can't thank you enough for even just taking the time to read this, even more if you've already gone on to read and sign the petition.
Claire
