Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in that context could be fine ("grope around").
But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning.
It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.
It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity notwithstanding.
I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when it's a human assailant either though?
And 'dig' is a tool that searches (or 'digs') for certain information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits!
I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to me.
I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (& learnt from) her writing on many occasions.
But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning.
It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.