Groomed

“Groomed”: A new documentary by director Gwen van de Pas and 2x Oscar winning executive producer Bill Guttentag.

 

Guilt. Confusion. Complicity. These were feelings that filmmaker Gwen van de Pas held onto for 20+ years, after being sexually assaulted by her swim coach as a child. What she didn’t realize, was that these feelings were caused by a psychological process called “grooming” that her perpetrator had put her through.

 

While an estimated 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the US are survivors of sexual assault, we hold many misconceptions about it. Most importantly, we believe that sexual assault is violently committed by scary-looking strangers. In reality, however, ~80% of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim and involve a psychological process called “grooming”. Grooming is the process of 1) targeting vulnerable victims, 2) building a relationship that makes the victim feel special, 3) ensuring the victim feels complicit in the assault, and 4) therefore invoking feelings of guilt, shame, and hesitation to report.