Ireland’s illegal online content watchdog detected 14,772 cases of child sexual abuse on the internet last year – more than all of the 21 previous years combined.
In its latest annual report, Hotline.ie said 2021 was the most “onerous” in its history working to detect and remove online abuse.
A quarter of the abuse images detected “appeared to have been generated by children themselves”, the report warned.
In these cases, there was evidence of “grooming or coercion by adults, particularly in the video material, such as a child receiving compliments, instructions or even threats [over video chat, other times from someone present in the room whilst not visible on camera]”.
Almost one in 10 (9 per cent) of the images were computer generated or drawn to depict gross child sexual abuse. Such images are illegal under Irish law.
Hotline.ie said “virtual” child abuse online had been steadily increasing over the past five years. Last year marked an “all-time high” in such images being detected.
“It is a concerning trend as it seeks to normalise the consumption of child sexual abuse imagery, in an attempt to desensitise from the physical and psychological harm suffered by real children who suffer sexual abuse and exploitation,” the watchdog said.
The report also details how sexual abuse images and videos of children aged from just four years old to 12 were the “most prevalent”, accounting for two-thirds (66 per cent) of all images detected.
The severity of the abuse ranged from “explicit sexual activity of a child to penetrative sexual assault of a child by an adult, to sadistic sexual torture and bestiality involving a child”.
In September last year, Hotline.ie launched its dedicated service targeting intimate image abuse (IIA) – the sharing of intimate images or videos without consent.
In its first 12 months of operation, it dealt with 773 reports. A similar operation in the UK dealt with 500 reports in its first year of operation, according to Hotline.ie.
Of the Irish reports, 525 contained the necessary information to locate the imagery online where it could be removed.
Hotline.ie said initial analysis suggested men were most likely to be victims of “sextortion” through “webcam blackmail” or a threat to expose sexual images.
Victims reported being threatened over social media, through dating apps or on video-chat services. However, only one in seven opted to have the abuse reported to An Garda Síochána.
Launching the report, acting Minister for Justice Simon Harris underlined the “important, worthy and difficult work” done by Hotline.ie.
“Each image is a crime,” he said. “Each image has a victim, or victims, who have suffered abuse, and who are re-victimised each time their abuse is viewed as it is shared across the globe. We must never become hardened or inured to these figures.”
Ana Niculescu, chief executive of Hotline.ie, said it could be “overwhelming” uncovering the online abuse “but we can’t afford to look away”.
“There is reason to be hopeful with online safety and cybercrime moving up the national and global agenda,” she added.
Last week, it was warned a three-year backlog in Garda forensic examinations of computers and devices used to view child sex abuse material (CSAM) put children at risk of “preventable abuse”.
Dr Conor O’Mahony, special rapporteur on child protection, said of almost 7,000 reports of online CSAM reported by a national hotline to gardaí in 2020, just 160 were investigated.
Describing such inaction by gardaí on CSAM as “alarming”, he said it left perpetrators “at large for extended periods” even after they had come to the attention of the Garda.