Apologizes in advance for this long post… I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about the ‘grooming’ scenarios also, based on some research I’ve done for this and other cases.
LURING
First, there is some confusion over concepts such as ‘grooming’ and ‘luring’. You don’t necessarily need to groom a child to ‘lure’ that child somewhere. Random pedophiles might lure a 4-year-old from a playground into their car with the promise of candy, for example. That could be a crime of opportunity.
And if any child will do in this case, there were plenty of young teens who looked just like Andrew walking unattended around London back in 2007. If he decided to go to London by himself and there was no ‘groomer’ in his life, Andrew could have been unlucky to run into such a predator and was naively lured into a second location. So it's possible.
Bottom-line is: luring can be independent to grooming, and grooming might not involve any luring at all. In fact, most abuse cases resulting from grooming happen places the child would be going voluntarily and with the consent of their parents, who were oblivious of the threat.
GROOMING
Usually, a grooming process is a combination of kindness, attention, material enticement or special privilege that are expertly applied to earn a child’s trust and keep them in control. The child might not realize they’re being coerced or abused.
In the in-person grooming cases, such criminals might insert themselves into institutions that give them access to young boys, like church activities or scout’s clubs, or could just be adults in the community, like the manager in the local video store if the kid is a movie buff and has no one else to talk about this passion. Their families might also be groomed to trust this person.
That’s invariably the case in the extreme examples of sex trafficking, with criminals that are after a child not to fulfill their own fantasies, but that of potential customers. They target poor families from underprivileged communities in underdeveloped countries, swayed by the promise of a rich family in a first world country offering the kid a better life etc. The criminals don’t want to attract attention to themselves or to have the crime being immediately reported as a potential kidnapping.
ONLINE GROOMING
Nowadays, with smartphones in everybody’s hand, online grooming (as in a predator who never met the child in person) can escalate more quickly. You can target multiple victims at once, build an online friendship, then bring up the subject of sex, and the next thing you know the minor might be asked to send nude pictures etc. A creep might satisfy some of their sexual urges without even luring the kid to their place.
Back in 2007, even if Andrew had unlimited access to the internet in his home, technology was not that advanced, and the risks would be much higher. The kid could be using a shared home computer in the family’s living room, others might have access, taking and uploading a digital photo wasn’t as easy… And if the expectation of the groomer was to get this boy to meet them in person, there are way more accessible victims that don’t need to be convinced to take a train all the way from Doncaster.
WHAT ALL KINDS OF GROOMING HAVE IN COMMON
In-person grooming, online grooming and in person-grooming that also relies on online communications with the victim ALWAYS depend on the criminal dedicating a considerable amount of time to the child and/or their family. Such cases tend to lead to repeat sexual abuse – it’s not practical to put so much effort to abuse this child just once and then disappear with the kid.
Sexual abuse by a groomer leading to the child being murdered and the body being concealed is usually rare – unless the child threatens to tell or something. If Andrew lived in London and was just going about his day, with no major deviation from his routine, I believe any random criminal just luring him somewhere would be more probable than grooming. But I also came to entertain another scenario…
A DIFFERENT KIND OF GROOMING
So, another variable... Many, many, many boys that go through the hormones of puberty start experimenting with close friends and/or cousins around the same age. Touching each other, etc. It starts out of simple curiosity. One might be twelve, the other ten or eleven etc. Back in the day, there wasn’t such an unrestricted access to adult websites to feed a young teen’s imagination. You’d be surprised at what goes on in the stalls in a boy’s bathroom. Or how easy it is for misfit kids to bond in certain contexts that are not natural to them (a church, a boyish activity).
We know, for instance, that Andrew helped his mother run a kid’s club in their church in August 2007, one month before he went missing. Those clubs have kids up to the age of 10. If Andrew was in contact with these kids at 14, any 14-year-old could be in contact with him when Andrew was 10. Those church families are usually close, they could be a part of each other’s social circles.
An older boy who Andrew could have been experimenting with in the past could be living in London and back in Doncaster during the summer break to reconnect with Andrew through the church. They also could have met in other occasions, like the day Andrew came home late and said he chose to walk. (Maybe, the timing of Andrew leaving church and the boy scouts might have coincided with this other person moving out of Doncaster.)
A POSSIBLE, NOT SO ENTERTAINED THEORY
In this scenario, it could have been planned as an afternoon London, but the older boy made advancements that Andrew wasn’t receptive to, and the other person panicked with the possibility of Andrew telling on them etc (this person would already be in a whole world of troubles.)
This is just a theory, of course, and the circumstances may vary. But I believe that, for a possible relationship to get Andrew to London, this wouldn’t be a stranger on the internet and possibly not even an adult. I tend to believe it was someone closer in age, and I tend to believe the ‘foul play’ wasn’t that much premeditated. If this boy was killed, I believe the act might have happened inside a car to make it easier for the body to be moved without drawing too much attention.
To wrap this up: I believe a closer look in the Doncaster community and the families that were part of their Gosden's social activities could be productive in this case. Perhaps, even more so than an investigation based mostly in London. Maybe go over the criminal records of men who were in their late teens or early adulthood back in 2007 - this person could have been involved in some other crimes of a sexual nature.
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