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Well Groomed
Project type
Master's Thesis
Format
Book Proposal
Date
2025
Organization
University of Southern California, Annenberg
Abstract
Karin was only three when she met Mr. Johnny. In the decade to follow, he would embed himself in her life in the most intimate and obsessive of ways. Like a relationship devolving from love-bomb to paranoid control, the two remained locked in a cycle of abuse that reached farther into the community and eventually into the local news cycle. That is, until he was ripped from her life and put on trial for things she’d been groomed to know as normal.
At 13, Karin was informed of Johnny’s arrest and thrown into a whirlwind saga that would change her understanding of friendship, trust and reality forever. The following investigation and prosecution of John C. Walker left her community of Campbell, California fractured by embarrassment, guilt and shame, with more questions raised than answered.
Now a multimedia journalist and communication scholar with a decade of physiological treatment and interdisciplinary research under her belt, she is working to expose the personal, relational and cultural factors that open the doors to grooming and abuse, which keep children, families and communities trapped in a cycle of trauma, shame and silence.
At the intersection of investigative true crime, meticulously reported literary nonfiction and introspective memoir, journalist Karin Naragon puts the pieces of her childhood together for a gripping cultural criticism on childhood, community, sexuality and abuse. In an ongoing attempt to see the fuller picture of grooming, abuse and agency in her life and millions of other survivors, Karin’s journey into the past reveals truths from different corners of her childhood community, seeks answers to questions left unanswered, and redefines what it means to experience a life well groomed.
This story is my attempt to chronicle the competing facades of my childhood, find the truths within the trauma, and connect people to stories so often lived, yet silenced from many directions.
The book proposed in my thesis project is more than my personal story, or an account of compelling true crime. It is an interdisciplinary examination of our culture's approach to girlhood, sexuality, abuse and vulnerability. It is an investigation into what I call my “childhood drauma,” through the lens of a girl, a daughter, a woman, a journalist, a scholar of social sciences and media, and of course, a survivor of child sexual abuse and grooming.