Our research and findings confirm how modern technology and ease of access to the internet has resulted in the proliferation of child exploitation materials now available online. Court decisions support this conclusion and reveal how offenders now have access to tens of thousands of images of child exploitation and abuse, with commentators suggesting that such high demand will result in the further growth of the online child exploitation industry.

Australian offenders - those producing or viewing child abuse material - are being caught with not just an ‘album' of online images but tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of images and videos.  That is, hundreds of thousands of crime scenes; scenes where real children (and increasingly prepubescent children, toddlers and babies) are experiencing real abuse.

The recent Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has clearly evidenced the long term damage to victims of child sexual abuse over their lifetimes.  With evidence of this abuse expanding and deepening online, action is required now to ensure this dark and devastating history is not repeated.  We can’t say we didn’t know.

https://www.behindthescreen.co/the-research