Reports of online child sexual exploitation and abuse have increased by nearly a third within a year.<\/p>\n
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) released the Digital Child Exploitation Transparency Report on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
More than 22,000 reports were referred to the Department of Internal Affairs in 2025 – 20,920 from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States, 480 from other agencies, and 1153 from the public.<\/p>\n
It was a 29 percent increase from 2024, when more than 17,000 reports were referred – 16,223 from the NCMEC, 363 from other agencies and 921 from the public.<\/p>\n
In 2025, 151 were suspected to be AI-generated – seven times more than the 21 in 2024.<\/p>\n
DIA general manager of digital safety and identity investigations Jared Mullen said the rise in suspected AI-generated child sexual exploitation and abuse material was of significant concern.<\/p>\n
“While it may be artificially created, the harm it drives is real.”<\/p>\n
AI-generated material can normalise abusive behaviour and increase demand, Mullen said.<\/p>\n
The DIA’s digital child Exploitation team had 24 children safeguarded from further risk of harm, 12 reports of concern made, blocked 697,579 attempts to access websites known to host child sexual exploitation and abuse material and redirected 86 to access a help service.<\/p>\n
The team also executed 52 search warrants and prosecuted 18 offenders – a 32 percent increase from 2024, when 13 were prosecuted – and seized 146 devices.<\/p>\n
Mullen said making this information public ensured people understood the seriousness, as well as the action underway to detect it and to protect children.<\/p>\n
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reports of online child sexual exploitation and abuse have increased by nearly a third within a year. The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) released the Digital Child Exploitation Transparency Report on Tuesday. More than 22,000 reports were referred to the Department of Internal Affairs in 2025 – 20,920 from the National Center for Missing and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17548,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17546\/revisions\/17548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}