MAIN Post 4b: Narrative/Character Research

In order for our group to get a better understanding of how to portray our characters and improve our narrative, we all undertook some research. The research is shown below:

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Child-Sexual-Abuse-6-Stages-of-Grooming/1
The link above leads to information about sexual grooming children and how there are 6 main stages. These stages outline how an offender targets a victim and then sexualises the relationship between them. 
The stages an offender follows when tageting a victim are:
1. Targeting the victim
2. Gaining the victims trust
3. Filling a need
4. Isolating the child
5. Sexualizing the relationship
6. Maintaining control
By reading through the 6 stages from this website, it's helped our group in developing the rest of our film. We decided to use these stages and interpret them into the film and into the development of Sophie's relationship with Paige's father. 



http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/cpsu/resources/briefings/understanding_grooming_entrapment_process_wdf77040.pdf
The link above leads to some more information about sexual grooming, giving a deeper understanding about sexual grooming. From this site it even gives a quote from an abuser which is as follows:

"I look for a child who seems to be lonely or sad looking for attention. Then I take my time gaining her trust and becoming her freind. In time she will do anything I ask."

This site also gives information from David Finkelhor who proposed a model of child abuse. However this model, unlike the one above from the Oprah link, only has 4 stages in sexual abuse to a child. The stages though, are very similiar to the above ones, they are as follows:
1. Sexual motivation
2. Overcoming internal inhibitions against acting on that motivation
3. Overcoming external impediments to committing sexual abuse
4. Undermining or overcoming the child's resistance to the sexual abuse

This website has helped in the development of our film as from the quote, it's given us a small insight of how we could phrase our voice overs as if an abuser was talking. This will help us with making Alan the sexual abuser and what kind of things he may say at the beginning in the voice overs.


http://www.parenting.org/article/victim-grooming-protect-your-child-sexual-predators
This link leads to information mainly targetted at parents and them protecting their children from any sexual groomers. Some information gathered from this is who sexual abusers target. The list below shows types of children they may make their victims:

Unpopular

Feels unloved

Seeking attention and friendship

Low self-esteem and lack of confidence

Isolated from peers

Spends time alone

Often unsupervised

Experiencing family problems

The main word from the site is 'vulnerable', this is because abusers may find it easier to victimise vulnerable children.
From this we can develop Sophie's character to be vulnerable, possibly with some family problems. Therefore making her more isolated and vulnerable for Alan to target.