Child pornography is running at epidemic proportions in Australia with the abusive material being used as currency by pedophiles to buy their way into online groups, Fairfax Media says.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) have told Fairfax that where once there might have been hundreds of images on a suspect’s computer, there are now hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of images of young children being molested.
The AFP’s cybercrime unit head, Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan, said that although there might have been no increase in the number of adults sexually assaulting children, the attacks are being recorded and uploaded onto the internet.
“There’s no empirical evidence of an increase in child abuse, but we’re seeing an increase in the number of violent images that clearly have not been commercially made,” Mr Gaughan said.
There was was a 30 per cent jump – from 136 to 180 – in the number of Australians arrested by federal police for child pornography offences last year compared with 2010.
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