More and more cases of child abuse are being uncovered in NRW. According to experts, this is also due to the improved organization of law enforcement agencies. However, most references to pedophile crime come from the USA.
In the fight against child abuse, the North Rhine-Westphalian security authorities have to process more and more cases. In 2021 there were 4046 cases against known suspects, in 2022 there were 8713, said the head of the central and contact point for cybercrime (ZAC) at the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “So the cases have more than doubled.” Even more dramatic is the increase in the procedures against unknown suspects. “We had 346 procedures in 2021; in 2022 we had 2156 procedures – so that has increased more than sixfold. That is clear and we have an obligation to continue the investigation with exactly this intensity,” said Hartmann.
Hartmann explained the enormous increase in procedures with an improved organization of the prosecution authorities – for example the establishment of a task force at the ZAC NRW, which means that many more cases from the so-called dark field could be cleared up. “The investigative mechanisms have become much more effective, both for us and for the police and local prosecutors,” said Hartmann. Despite the expansion in terms of personnel and technology, the German law enforcement authorities receive by far the most information about the perpetrators from the USA.
“That’s because most Internet services are in the hands of US companies,” Hartmann said. “Perpetrators load images from Microsoft, Google or Amazon into a cloud. In the USA, these clouds are regularly filtered for child pornographic images.” As soon as there are suspicious cases, these would be reported by the company to the US authorities. The ZAC NRW has established itself as Germany’s largest cybercrime unit in the judiciary. She is responsible for the conduct of proceedings in prominent investigations in the field of cybercrime.
