©️ By Sophie Lewis | @sophielewiseditorial

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When I started The Grooming Files in March 2025, I thought I was starting a blog.
In reality, I was building a weapon.

It began with one mission, drag the early-internet grooming era into the light. The stories we lived through. The ones the system buried. The ones no one wanted to touch.

It didn’t stay in one lane for long.

In less than a year, I’ve written over 100 articles. Full exposés. Survivor-led investigations. Psychological profiles. Research reports. Multi-part series that took months of work. Interviews with predators who volunteered to be exposed. New offender typologies the safeguarding world hadn’t even named yet.

I’ve documented the spirals of “exposure-seeking predators,” dissected the systems that let them slip through, and put language to patterns nobody else was tracking. I’ve interviewed offenders face-to-face. I’ve dug through thousands of pages of records. I’ve put police forces, councils, and private companies under the microscope.

I’ve been called every name under the sun. I’ve been plastered in smear campaigns, accused of being everything but what I am. I’ve had strangers send me abuse daily while the people in power stayed silent.

And I kept going.

Because The Grooming Files was never about easy wins or clout. It was about building a survivor-led record, raw, unapologetic, unfiltered, that would still stand when the noise faded.

But over the last few weeks, I’ve felt it: the shift. The interaction slowing. The room going quieter. And I realised… my work here might have done what it needed to, for now.

Maybe it was ahead of its time. Maybe the world isn’t quite ready to have these conversations at the volume I’ve been having them. I wanted fireworks. I’ll take the ember. Because I’ve seen where it’s landed, in the hands of survivors, advocates, and everyday people who’ve told me it made them feel less alone. That’s worth more than numbers ever will be.

I’m not disappearing. I’ll still be here in some form. I’ll still come back when a story demands it. But life is pulling me into the next phase, and I’ve always promised to follow that pull.

To everyone who’s read, shared, supported, or simply sat with what’s been written here, thank you. You’ve been part of something bigger than a website. You’ve been part of a fight to remember, to expose, and to never look away.

This chapter closes. The work lives on. 🫶🏻

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