Child grooming is a third-degree felony under Texas Penal Code § 15.032 — two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, rising to a second-degree felony with certain prior convictions. Created in 2023, the statute punishes persuading a child toward sexual offenses even when no contact ever occurs. Below: the verified statute text, penalties, defenses, and county-by-county practice notes.
Free, Confidential Case Review
Tell us what happened. A defense attorney reviews every submission — usually within the hour during business hours.
Published 2026-06-11 · Reviewed by Reggie London and Njeri London, Co-Founding Partners · Last reviewed: 2026-06-11
Peer Recognition
Martindale-Hubbell® 2026 Honors
Independent peer-review ratings recognizing legal ability and ethical standards.
Awards reflect peer-reviewed ratings only. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Controlling statute:Texas Penal Code § 15.032 (eff. Sept. 1, 2023) Classification: Third-degree felony; second-degree felony with a prior conviction listed in § 15.032(b) Punishment range: 2–10 years in prison + fine up to $10,000 (third degree); 2–20 years + up to $10,000 (second degree with a listed prior)
What is child grooming under Texas law?
Texas Penal Code § 15.032 is one of the newest offenses in the Texas Penal Code. The 88th Legislature created it through Senate Bill 1527 (Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., ch. 93, § 6.01), effective September 1, 2023. Before that date, “grooming” was an investigative and evidentiary concept — something experts described to juries in child-abuse trials — not a crime by itself. Now it is a standalone felony, and prosecutors across Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant Counties have begun filing it both as a primary charge and as a companion count in online-sting and child-exploitation cases.
Under § 15.032(a), a person commits child grooming if, with the intent that an offense under Chapter 43 (public indecency), or an offense involving sexual activity punishable under Chapter 20A (trafficking of persons), Chapter 21 (sexual offenses), or Chapter 22 (assaultive offenses), be committed, the person knowingly persuades, induces, entices, or coerces — or attempts to persuade, induce, entice, or coerce — a child younger than 18 to engage in specific conduct that, “under the circumstances surrounding the actor’s conduct as the actor believes them to be,” would constitute one of those offenses or make the child a party to one.
The legislature placed the offense in Chapter 15, the preparatory-offenses chapter, alongside criminal attempt (§ 15.01), criminal conspiracy (§ 15.02), and criminal solicitation (§§ 15.03, 15.031). That placement matters: like every Chapter 15 offense, child grooming punishes steps taken toward another crime. The child never has to comply, no meeting has to occur, and no underlying sex offense has to be completed. An unanswered string of messages can satisfy the statute, because the text reaches the bare attempt to persuade.
Elements the State must prove
To convict under § 15.032, the State must prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt. Each element is a separate pressure point for the defense:
1. Knowing conduct
The persuasion itself must be done “knowingly” under Penal Code § 6.03(b). Messages sent by someone else from a shared account, misattributed posts, or conduct the accused did not direct at a child all attack this element.
2. Persuades, induces, entices, or coerces — or attempts to
None of these four verbs is defined in the statute, so courts give them ordinary meaning. This is the conduct-pattern element: prosecutors assemble message threads, gifts, secrecy requests, and escalating contact to argue a campaign of persuasion. The attempt prong means the offense is complete even if the child ignores every message.
3. A child younger than 18 years of age
Section 15.032 protects everyone under 18 — a broader class than the “minor” definition keyed to age 17 in the online-solicitation statute. The complaining witness’s actual age is an evidentiary fact the State must establish.
4. Specific conduct tied to a qualifying offense
The persuasion must aim at specific conduct that would constitute a Chapter 43 offense or a sexual-activity offense punishable under Chapter 20A, 21, or 22 — or make the child a party to one. Generalized attention, affection, or even unsettling behavior that never connects to identifiable criminal conduct fails this element.
5. Intent that the offense be committed
The State must prove the actor’s purpose was that a qualifying offense actually occur. Innocent explanations — mentorship, coaching, family friendship — are aimed squarely at this element, and it is where most contested grooming trials are won or lost.
6. The belief standard
The statute measures the conduct “under the circumstances surrounding the actor’s conduct as the actor believes them to be.” That subjective framing is what lets the State prosecute decoy cases where the “child” was an undercover officer.
What are the penalties for child grooming in Texas?
Child grooming carries flat felony grading under § 15.032(b) — and that flatness is one of the statute’s sharpest edges. Unlike criminal attempt, which is punished one category below the offense attempted, grooming starts as a third-degree felony no matter which predicate offense the State alleges the persuasion was aimed at. Persuasion aimed at a misdemeanor Chapter 43 offense indicts at exactly the same grade as persuasion aimed at aggravated sexual assault.
Scenario
Classification
Confinement
Fine cap
Base offense — § 15.032(b)
Third-degree felony
2–10 years TDCJ (Penal Code § 12.34)
Up to $10,000
Prior conviction listed in § 15.032(b)(1)–(5)
Second-degree felony
2–20 years TDCJ (Penal Code § 12.33)
Up to $10,000
Actor under 18 meeting § 15.032(c) criteria
Affirmative defense — close-in-age dating relationship or spouse
—
—
The priors that trigger the second-degree bump are themselves child-sex convictions: trafficking involving conduct described by § 20A.02(a)(7) or (8), continuous sexual abuse (§ 21.02), indecency with a child (§ 21.11), sexual assault of a victim under 18 (§ 22.011), or aggravated sexual assault of a victim under 18 (§ 22.021). The statute also carries its own built-in close-in-age affirmative defense in subsection (c) — unusual for a Chapter 15 offense — for actors under 18 whose conduct involved a dating partner or spouse not more than three years apart in age, with the conduct occurring only between the two of them.
Community supervision, deferred adjudication, and parole eligibility all carry offense-specific rules under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 42A and the Government Code; how they apply to a § 15.032 count depends on the indictment’s structure and your record, so have counsel map those consequences before any plea decision.
How do prosecutors prove a child grooming case?
Because the offense criminalizes persuasion rather than contact, the State’s case is usually built from communications and context rather than physical evidence:
Device and platform extractions. Search warrants for phones, tablets, gaming consoles, and cloud accounts produce the message threads — texts, DMs, in-game chats, disappearing-message apps — that prosecutors arrange into a persuasion timeline.
Pattern evidence. Gifts, money transfers, rides, secrecy instructions (“don’t tell your mom”), gradually sexualized content, and efforts to isolate the child from other adults are offered to prove the persuade-induce-entice-coerce element.
Forensic interviews and outcry testimony. Children are typically interviewed at a county children’s advocacy center, and the State will designate outcry witnesses — often a parent, counselor, or teacher who first heard the allegation.
Undercover and decoy operations. Because of the belief-standard language, task-force officers posing as minors generate § 15.032 charges directly, frequently stacked with online-solicitation counts.
Intent inferences. With no completed offense to point to, prosecutors argue intent circumstantially — from the content of messages, the direction the conduct was heading, and any steps toward a meeting.
Hypothetical example: a youth-league assistant coach exchanges months of late-night messages with a 14-year-old player, sends gift cards, asks her to delete the chats, and steers conversations toward sexual topics. No meeting ever happens and no touch ever occurs — but a grand jury could still indict under § 15.032 on the theory that the message pattern was persuasion toward indecency with a child. The defense fight would be over what the messages actually show about intent and whether any “specific conduct” was ever solicited.
What defenses work against a child grooming charge?
L and L Law Group builds § 15.032 defenses around the statute’s own architecture — and around how new and untested it still is:
No qualifying intent. The State must connect the communications to an intent that a specific Chapter 20A, 21, 22, or 43 offense be committed. Mentorship, coaching, tutoring, and family friendships generate exactly the kind of frequent adult-child communication that can be recast as sinister; forcing the State to prove criminal purpose, message by message, is the core defense.
No “specific conduct.” The statute requires persuasion toward specific conduct that would constitute a qualifying offense. Vague, boundary-crossing, or merely inappropriate communication that never identifies conduct amounting to an offense does not satisfy the text.
Authorship and identity. Shared devices, logged-in accounts, spoofed profiles, and group-used gaming handles raise reasonable doubt about who actually sent the messages. Digital-forensic review of IP logs, device artifacts, and account-access records is standard defense work in these cases.
Constitutional challenges — the open frontier. Section 15.032 criminalizes pure communication, and its operative verbs are undefined, so vagueness and First Amendment overbreadth challenges are the developing battleground. The first appellate test failed without reaching the merits: in Riddle v. State, No. 06-25-00088-CR (Tex. App.—Texarkana Jan. 30, 2026) (mem. op., not designated for publication), the court overruled the constitutional complaint because conclusory assertions that a statute is unconstitutional are inadequate, and a facial challenge requires the appellant to establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the statute would be valid. The merits of a properly briefed challenge remain undecided. The playbook the courts will likely apply comes from the online-solicitation litigation: in Ex parte Ingram, 533 S.W.3d 887 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017), the Court of Criminal Appeals adopted a narrowing construction of the word “represents” to save § 33.021 from overbreadth, while reaffirming that offers to engage in illegal transactions are categorically excluded from First Amendment protection. Expect § 15.032 litigation to follow the same pattern — narrowing constructions rather than facial invalidation — which keeps carefully framed as-applied challenges alive.
Entrapment. In decoy stings, Penal Code § 8.06 entrapment applies when law enforcement used persuasion likely to cause an ordinarily law-abiding person to commit the offense — inducement, not mere opportunity. Decoy transcripts showing the officer steering, escalating, and re-initiating contact feed this defense.
The § 15.032(c) affirmative defense. For accused persons under 18, the close-in-age dating-relationship or spouse defense can defeat the charge entirely.
The election clause. Section 15.032(d) provides that conduct violating both § 15.032 and another Penal Code section may be prosecuted “under either section but not both.” Where the State stacks grooming with other Penal Code counts arising from the same conduct, (d) is a motion waiting to be filed — see the stacking discussion below.
Hypothetical example: an officer posing as a 15-year-old on a chat app re-initiates conversation six times after the adult stops responding, proposes sexual topics first, and suggests the meeting location. The belief standard keeps the case inside § 15.032, but the transcript supports both an entrapment instruction and a no-intent argument — the persuasion ran in the wrong direction.
Can a child grooming charge be dismissed or expunged?
Yes — both outcomes are possible, and the paths matter because the allegation alone is reputation-destroying. Felony charges must be indicted, so the first exit is the grand jury: a no-bill ends the case. Pre-indictment advocacy — presenting the full message history, context, and witness statements to the intake prosecutor — is often the highest-leverage work in a grooming case. After indictment, suppression motions targeting the device searches (defective warrants, overbroad scope, stale probable cause) can gut the State’s communications evidence, and intent-proof failures drive reductions or dismissals on the eve of trial.
On the record side: an acquittal, no-bill, or qualifying dismissal supports expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 55A, which erases the arrest from your record. A conviction can never be expunged. Sealing through an order of nondisclosure after deferred adjudication runs through Government Code Chapter 411, Subchapter E-1, which excludes whole categories of offenses — whether a particular § 15.032 resolution qualifies turns on the final charge and disposition, so the record endgame should be negotiated into any plea, not discovered after it. Our expunction and record-sealing practice handles both petitions.
How is child grooming different from online solicitation and enticing a child?
Three Texas statutes occupy neighboring territory, and charging decisions among them drive radically different consequences:
Offense
Statute
Core conduct
Key differences
Child grooming
§ 15.032
Persuading a child under 18 toward conduct constituting a sexual offense
Any medium — in-person counts; protects under-18; not on the current registration list
Luring a child from the custody of a parent or guardian
Protects custody, not sexual integrity; misdemeanor unless felony intent is shown
The stacking rules between grooming and online solicitation are a genuine statutory puzzle. Section 15.032(d) says conduct violating both § 15.032 and another Penal Code section may be prosecuted under either section but not both. Section 33.021(g) says the opposite for solicitation conduct: prosecution may proceed under § 33.021, another law, or both. In the first appellate case to touch the question, the Texarkana Court of Appeals affirmed convictions under both statutes, relying on § 33.021(g), where the defendant briefed no cogent argument against it. Riddle v. State, No. 06-25-00088-CR (Tex. App.—Texarkana Jan. 30, 2026) (mem. op.). No published authority has squared the two clauses, which makes a developed § 15.032(d) election motion a live issue in any stacked indictment. Related charges in the same family include sexual performance by a child, electronic transmission of sexual material to a minor, and sex trafficking.
County-by-county practice notes: Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant
Child grooming is a felony, so every case runs through a grand jury and lands in a district court. The buildings and rhythms differ by county:
Collin County. Felonies are presented by the Collin County District Attorney and heard in the district courts at the Collin County Courthouse (Russell A. Steindam Courts Building), 2100 Bloomdale Road in McKinney. Frisco, Plano, McKinney, and Allen police departments refer their cases there, and child-offense investigations typically include a forensic interview at the county children’s advocacy center before charges are filed. From our Frisco office we appear in these courts routinely.
Dallas County. Felony dockets sit at the Frank Crowley Courts Building on Riverfront Boulevard in Dallas. Large urban DA offices, Dallas included, staff child-exploitation cases with prosecutors who handle those dockets repeatedly, so expect the State’s file to be organized around digital-forensics reports from the start.
Denton County. Felony cases are heard in the district courts at the Denton County Courts Building in Denton. Internet-sting prosecutions from Lewisville, Flower Mound, and the Highway 380 corridor file there.
Tarrant County. Felonies run through the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth. As in the other counties, grooming counts frequently appear alongside online-solicitation counts arising from task-force decoy operations.
Across all four counties, expect bond conditions in grooming cases to include no contact with the complaining witness, no unsupervised contact with minors, and internet- or device-use restrictions — conditions that take effect at magistration and can upend work and family life long before trial.
What happens after a child grooming arrest in Texas?
The procedural spine follows every Texas felony, with grooming-specific wrinkles at each stage:
Investigation first, arrest second. Most grooming cases begin weeks before any arrest — a parent’s report or a decoy operation triggers device warrants, platform records requests, and a forensic interview. Pre-arrest representation can shape charging decisions before they harden.
Arrest and magistration. After arrest, a magistrate gives statutory warnings and sets bond, typically within 48 hours under Code of Criminal Procedure article 15.17. Expect protective bond conditions immediately.
Bond and conditions. Felony bonds in child-offense cases routinely carry no-contact, no-minors, and device-restriction conditions; violating one revokes the bond. Conditions can be litigated and modified.
Grand jury. The State must indict. This is the defense’s highest-leverage early window — no-bill presentations, context packages, and charge-reduction advocacy happen here.
Pretrial. Discovery under the Michael Morton Act (art. 39.14) delivers the State’s extractions and interview recordings; the defense runs its own forensic review, files suppression motions, and litigates the § 15.032(d) election issue where counts are stacked.
Resolution. Dismissal, reduction to a non-grooming count, deferred-adjudication negotiation structured around the record endgame, or trial. Because the statute is so new, jury instructions and definitions are still being shaped case by case — another reason developed motion practice matters.
Collateral consequences of a child grooming conviction
Sex-offender registration — currently not required by the list, but verify. Code of Criminal Procedure article 62.001(5) does not name § 15.032 among its reportable convictions, and its preparatory-offense paragraph (G) reaches only attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation as defined by Chapter 15 — child grooming is a separate Chapter 15 offense the list does not mention. Contrast § 33.021 online solicitation, which is expressly reportable under paragraph (J). That asymmetry makes the charging statute itself a negotiation battleground. Future legislatures can amend the list, so confirm current law before resolving any case.
Firearms. A felony conviction triggers Texas Penal Code § 46.04 possession restrictions and the federal lifetime bar under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Employment and licensing. A child-sex-related felony ends careers in education (TEA/SBEC certification and the do-not-hire registry), child care, healthcare, and any role requiring a clean background check — often at arrest, before any conviction.
Immigration. Offenses against children carry severe immigration exposure, including removability categories; non-citizens need coordinated criminal and immigration advice before any plea.
Family law. An allegation alone can reshape custody and possession orders, and a parallel Department of Family and Protective Services investigation is common when the child is in the accused’s household.
Housing and reputation. Background-check databases pick up the arrest immediately; expunction or nondisclosure, where available, is the only mechanism that claws that back.
Key Legal Terms
Child Grooming (§ 15.032)
Knowingly persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing — or attempting to persuade — a child younger than 18 to engage in specific conduct that would constitute a qualifying sexual offense or make the child a party to one; created by S.B. 1527 effective September 1, 2023.
Preparatory Offense
A Chapter 15 crime — attempt, conspiracy, solicitation, or grooming — that punishes steps taken toward another offense. No completed underlying crime is required.
Predicate Offense
The qualifying offense the grooming allegedly aimed at: a Chapter 43 public-indecency offense, or an offense involving sexual activity punishable under Chapter 20A (trafficking), 21 (sexual offenses), or 22 (assaultive offenses).
Election Clause (§ 15.032(d))
The provision stating that conduct violating both § 15.032 and another Penal Code section may be prosecuted under either section but not both — in unresolved tension with § 33.021(g), which permits prosecution under both.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is child grooming a felony in Texas?
Yes — child grooming is a third-degree felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The charge becomes a second-degree felony, carrying 2 to 20 years, if the accused has a prior conviction listed in Penal Code § 15.032(b), including indecency with a child, sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, continuous sexual abuse, or certain trafficking offenses.
When did child grooming become a standalone crime in Texas?
September 1, 2023. Senate Bill 1527 (Acts 2023, 88th Leg., ch. 93) created Penal Code § 15.032 and placed child grooming in Chapter 15 alongside attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation. Conduct before that date cannot be prosecuted under this statute, although older statutes such as online solicitation of a minor may still reach earlier conduct.
Can I be charged with child grooming if no sexual contact ever occurred?
Yes. Child grooming is a preparatory offense — the State does not have to prove a completed sex offense or any physical contact. Persuading, inducing, enticing, or coercing a child toward qualifying conduct, or merely attempting to do so, completes the offense by itself.
Can prosecutors charge both child grooming and online solicitation of a minor?
The two statutes pull in opposite directions. Section 15.032(d) says conduct that violates both § 15.032 and another Penal Code section may be prosecuted under either section but not both, while § 33.021(g) says online-solicitation conduct may be prosecuted under that section, another law, or both. In the first appellate test, the Texarkana Court of Appeals let convictions under both statutes stand because the issue was inadequately briefed, so the conflict remains unresolved. Riddle v. State, No. 06-25-00088-CR (Tex. App.—Texarkana Jan. 30, 2026) (mem. op.).
Does a child grooming conviction require sex-offender registration?
Not under the current statute list. Code of Criminal Procedure article 62.001(5) does not name § 15.032 among its reportable convictions, and its preparatory-offense paragraph reaches only attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation. By contrast, online solicitation of a minor under § 33.021 is expressly reportable. Registration law changes session to session and plea structure matters, so confirm current exposure with counsel before resolving any case.
What if the “child” was actually an undercover officer?
The statute can still apply. Section 15.032(a) measures the conduct “under the circumstances surrounding the actor's conduct as the actor believes them to be,” which is the same belief-based framing Texas uses in sting prosecutions under related statutes. The realistic defense lanes in decoy cases are lack of qualifying intent, the absence of specific conduct, and entrapment under Penal Code § 8.06 — not the decoy's true age alone.
What counts as “persuades, induces, entices, or coerces”?
The statute does not define those verbs, so courts give them their ordinary meaning. Prosecutors typically build this element from a pattern: escalating private messages, gifts, requests for secrecy, desensitizing sexual content, and isolating the child from trusted adults. That breadth is also the statute's main constitutional vulnerability, because purely communicative conduct sits close to protected speech.
Is child grooming the same as enticing a child?
No. Enticing a child under Penal Code § 25.04 protects a custodian's right to custody — luring a child away from a parent or guardian — and is a misdemeanor unless intent to commit a felony is shown. Child grooming under § 15.032 targets persuasion toward sexual offenses and starts as a third-degree felony. The two charges can arise from the same facts, but they protect different interests.
Can a child grooming charge be expunged?
An acquittal, a no-bill, or a dismissal can support expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 55A, erasing the arrest record. A conviction cannot be expunged. Nondisclosure (record sealing) after deferred adjudication is governed by Government Code Chapter 411, Subchapter E-1, which carries offense-specific exclusions — whether a § 15.032 resolution qualifies depends on how the case ends, so map the record endgame before accepting any plea.
Reggie London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on federal criminal defense, complex felony defense, and TEA/SBEC matters. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Njeri London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on DWI defense, family violence cases, and juvenile defense. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Charged with Child Grooming? Talk to L and L Law Group.
Co-founding partners Reggie London and Njeri London personally handle every case. Free consultation. Frisco, Texas.
L&L Law Group represents clients across North Texas counties for DWI, assault, drug crimes, juvenile defense, outstanding warrants, bond reduction, and expunction matters.
