Grooming is the right word of choice, because its an act, a verb. Its not to make pedophilia seem less than it is; its to further define the actions those people take to shape a person's way of thinking. Just like a person shapes the way their dog looks by grooming them. Words are strong because they can mean many things, context is important.
Pedophilia already mean this.
And like i said, the group of people who started to spread the use of "grooming" as a negative word are the people who want to legalize pedophilia.
Before this it was used, for exemple, when a mother took care of a daughter.
You dont need "new word" to "more precisely define" anything related to pedophilia... Everyone, with no exeption, who is not a trash hate pedophile, hate the act and the person who comit it and want these people to be punished the most severly.
The only reason there was to "define" this more is because people want to separate the massive hatred that pedophilia invoke with the act imself, so they took a positive word and changed it's meaning, then they started pushing their agenda.