“Grooming doesn’t look like danger — it looks like trust.”
In this episode of Family Matters, Simon sits down with Anna Sonoda, a licensed clinical social worker, author, and child safety advocate who spent years working as a cognitive behavioural therapist alongside convicted sex offenders.
That experience — counselling predators day after day — gave Anna a rare, inside understanding of how grooming actually works, and it fundamentally changed how she parents her own five children.
Now, she’s on a mission to replace fear and paranoia with calm, practical, evidence-based prevention strategies that any parent can use. In this conversation, she breaks down:
🔹 Why 82% of child sexual abuse happens in a home — not in the shadows
🔹 What grooming really looks like — Anna describes it as a “perverse form of courtship” that starts sweet, not scary, and unfolds slowly over time
🔹 The Four F’s of Grooming: Flattery, Favouritism, Forbidden Fruits, and Fear
🔹 The GAS concept: Grooming, Access, Space — and why removing just one stops abuse
🔹 Be a pattern recognizer, not a people picker — how to watch for the movement of a relationship (becoming more isolated, less supervised, more intimate) rather than trying to identify a single “bad person”
🔹 “Strange behaviour” vs. “stranger danger” — why we should teach kids to recognize when an adult’s behaviour is unusual or out of bounds, regardless of who that adult is
🔹 How to create a home where your kids actually bring you their concerns
This conversation is difficult by nature. But as Anna and Simon make clear, avoiding it is not protecting our children — talking about it is. What makes Anna’s approach so powerful is that it’s not about fear. It’s about awareness, preparation, and giving families the language and the tools to act before harm occurs.
This is not about paranoia. It’s about preparation.
Whether you’re a parent, stepparent, grandparent, teacher, coach, or simply a caring adult in a child’s life, Anna’s calm and practical approach shared in this podcast will reshape how you think about trust, access, and the everyday patterns that matter most.
To access more of Anna’s work, check out www.annasonoda.com 🔗 Anna’s also on YouTube @knownandtrusted and across other social media platforms. 🔔 If this episode helped you, please share it. The more families who have the language and the tools to talk about grooming, the safer our children will be. Share it with a parent, a teacher, a coach — anyone who has time and space with the children in your life. 💬
