Fifty-five child victims of online sexual abuse have been identified and safeguarded by gardaí in Ireland in the last 15 months.
Gardaí said 39 Irish victims of online child sexual abuse have been identified and safeguarded by the Online Child Exploitation Unit during the period.
A further 40 child victims of sexual abuse have been identified across the globe, including 16 victims living in Ireland.
The victims were identified in co-operation with the Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB), the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau and Divisional Protective Services Units around the country.
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An additional 52 possible victims of sexual abuse have been identified globally with information provided to local, European and global law enforcement agencies to assist in the identification, location and safeguarding of them.
Since July 2024, the cyber crime bureau’s specialist victim identification team has been reviewing child sexual abuse and exploitation videos and images in an effort to identify victims in Ireland and globally. This content was extracted from electronic devices being forensically examined.
More than 30,000 videos and photographs defined as child sex abuse material have been reviewed by the team and uploaded to Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) database, including almost 900 files that involve previously unknown victims, which will support the potential identification of the child victims.
The victim identification team works closely with the GNPSB and forensic units in Europe and globally, providing them with a range of resources to help identify known child sexual abuse content, and to highlight new material.
Speaking at a media briefing, Det Chief Supt Colm Noonan of the GNPSB, said “protecting children in the digital age really does require this unified, collaborative approach. The safety of our children, sadly nowadays, it extends far beyond the safety of the streets and extends into the digital and online world.
“We really, really urge parents, educators, anybody who’s interacting with children, to have open conversations with their kids, about how they’re conducting themselves online and their online experiences. We have to be able to speak to our kids to understand what they’re being exposed to.”
Gardaí said the online threat landscape targeting children is growing and presents unprecedented challenges for law enforcement.
Risks now extend beyond traditional concerns such as online grooming, cyberbullying, and exposure to inappropriate content, encompassing more insidious forms of exploitation through social media and gaming platforms.
Targets now involve offenders using AI tools to produce hyperrealistic deepfake images and videos, often used to manipulate or blackmail children.
Gardaí said the “most disturbing” trend is a “rise in sadistic online enticement”, where violent groups exploit children via mainstream messaging platforms, coercing them into acts of self-harm or abuse while reinforcing psychological control.
Financial sexual extortion has also emerged as a threat where criminals coerce children into sharing explicit material and then demand payment to prevent its release.
Det Chief Supt Noonan explained that while the Garda recognises some of the positive values of artificial intelligence (AI), they are also seeing how generative AI is being used to create child sexual abuse material.
He described how a nudification app can take a legitimate photograph of an adult or child and put it through a process that removes their clothing, which in turn creates harm to victims through harassment, bullying and psychological and emotional harm.
Live streaming on online platforms is also enabling the sharing of child abuse.
Det Chief Supt Noonan described an operation taken by the Garda and Europol in March 2025 that dismantled the live streaming of child abuse and led to 79 arrests and 1,400 identifications.
Gardaí said they are dealing with victims as young as five to the age of 18 and into adulthood.
Det Supt Michael Mullen of the Garda’s cyber crime unit explains that they review images, videos and associated metadata to identify children who were subject to child sexual exploitation abuse.
If a child of sexual abuse is identified, the GNPSB is asked to visit and safeguard the child. If the child is located in Europe, the cyber crime bureau passes the information on to Europol and similarly, if a child is identified outside of Europe, the information is passed on to Interpol.
He recalled an example from July 2025 where three children were located and safeguarded. The children were being sexually exploited by a suspect in a different jurisdiction unbeknown to their parents.
Det Chief Supt Noonan said gardaí have to engage with private partners and organisations such as Hotline.ie as it is “not feasible” to actively monitor social media due to the volume of material. “It has to be an all-society collaborative approach,” he said.
“The key message is children and adults need to know who they’re talking to. Just because on your social media platform or on your gaming platform, it appears to be another child. Sadly, that’s not the case any more,” he said.
“People are manipulating those communication platforms to present as children, when they are in fact adults, and they are in fact adults who are trying to financially extort and try and create child sexual abuse material.
“This whole landscape of how adults and sadly, by extension, how children are interacting with people in a sexual context on the internet is changing, changing, changing all the time,” he said.
Gardaí and Europol are currently hosting a Combating Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (Cosec) international training course in the Garda College at Templemore for the second year running.
