Photos and moving images of sexually abused children are spreading over the Internet. In the first half of 2011, the police unearthed 649 child-porn cases, an increase of 9.1 percent from a year before and either arrested or sent papers to the prosecution on 455 people (a 9.4 percent increase).
The number of victimized children was 310 (a 14.4 percent increase). All the figures are record numbers since statistics started being taken in 2000.
The Internet was used in 359 of the cases. The NPA has ordered prefectural police headquarters across the nation to make efforts to discover groups of child-porn collectors.