WMACA: Devastated over reports of 10m child abuse material
Updated | By Mmangaliso Khumalo
The advocacy manager for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, Luke Lamprecht has expressed shock following the news of a 35-year-old South African male who was arrested in Midrand on Friday after he was found in possession of about 10 million photos and videos of child abuse material.

The police's Serial and Electronic Crime Investigations (SECI) unit found that the suspect was hosting and distributing child abuse material on a global scale for financial gain.
Lamprecht describes the vastness of the confiscated material as devastating.
"Every single image is an image of a sexual assault of a child - it's actually a crime scene," he says. "There are people who are using children to generate this content, and they are sexually abusing them in order to produce the content which people are then paying to consume."
Lamprecht adds that there are quite a few high-profile cases dating back many years around people who collect, sell, or establish businesses out of trading the images of the sexual abuse of children.
"There's just been recent cases in the Western Cape where there's been numerous arrests, those cases are still pending," he says. "It is definitely on the rise as people get more access, to the ability to film them abusing children and to then distribute it and to connect to one another."
Lamprecht says, the recent confiscated material would take decades to work through. Along with that, he is concerned about where these images come from. "That has obviously been going on for a very long period of time. It means there's a very heavily connected network with access to millions of images of the sexual assault of children."
During his arrest, the suspect was found in possession of several cell phones, computers, drugs and a large amount of cash in local and foreign currency.
"A forensic analysis of these devices was conducted on scene by cyber crime experts," said Police spokesperson Amanda van Wyk. "His (the suspect) identity will remain withheld until he has formally pleaded in court."
READ: Midrand child sexual abuse suspect facing fraud charge
-The rise of AI on the Dark Web -
Lamprecht warns that Artificial Intelligence, is paving the way for perpetrators to use photos of children from the internet for to create illegal and explicit content.
"In the more recent cases we have had images of children generated, for example, via deepfake and AI. So, people are even generating images using children's pictures when it's not even the children in the pornography, but it's the children's faces because of the rise of AI," he says.
"It's just an enormous network of people who basically are getting together via a variety of platforms and codes in a way where they are able to connect, and film themselves or other people sexually abusing children and then either selling those or trading those."
Along with this, he cautions that access to the dark web, doesn't appear to be as difficult as it used to be. People who consume this material live throughout the world.
"I've seen cases from children with no money being exploited, to people who are exceptionally wealthy. People from every religious denomination, people from every cultural, linguistic and racial grouping... I would assume that areas with higher levels of technology would have higher levels of this kind of crime. For this kind of abuse, the more technology and the more access they (perpetrators) have, the more prolific it is."
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