The COVID-19 pandemic has affected how law enforcement work, and in some cases also law enforcement and judicial capacity across the world. There has been a temporary reduction in use of the INTERPOL International Child Sexual Exploitations (ICSE) database, and data shows an increase in the amount of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) consumed and circulated.

You could describe the situation during the COVID-19 pandemic as almost a perfect storm, as the increase of children online has presented a great opportunity for paedophiles.

There will be a lag in the data that shows the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child sexual abuse (CSA) crime. However, what we see is that all indicators point to that CSA has increased during the pandemic.

It is not unreasonable to think that with more adults spending more time at home, these activities would increase. However, from what we can tell now, the COVID-19 pandemic has not resulted in an accelerated and unexpected increase of neither CSAM nor other CSA crimes in Sweden.

For perpetrators, the COVID-19 pandemic is like a perfect storm. Lockdowns have had a major impact on both children and adults as they have spent more time online, and the result has been a dramatic increase of online child sexual abuse crime.

We always see an annual increase in reports, but this increase is bigger than expected, and I’m convinced that it is a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. I think offenders see an opportunity with distracted parents and more children online.

Much of the data and responses that we got from the surveyed police officers in this year’s NetClean Report, show worrying tendencies. The results indicate a considerable impact on online CSA crime and the amount of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) available online.

We have had a number of concerns during this pandemic, but we won’t know the outcome of these until sometime in the future. There is a potential increase in victimisation, both online and offline.