Australian authorities have charged a 27-year-old man with 596 child abuse offences after discovering 23,000 sexually explicit images of children on his computer, Queensland Police said on Thursday.
Queensland Police Chief Superintendent Denzil Clark revealed that detectives had identified 459 victims, aged between seven and 15, living both in Australia and abroad. The images and videos “meticulously” documented the man’s alleged crimes, which allegedly took place between 2018 and 2025.
Clark explained that the suspect targeted children through popular social media and gaming platforms, using multiple fake online profiles of both males and females to groom, coerce, and threaten minors into producing sexual content.
“It is extremely concerning and disturbingly offensive,” Clark said. “We are seeing an increasing prevalence of children being groomed, coerced, or threatened into taking and sending sexual images of themselves, often through apps, games, and social media sites. The trauma that this causes a child is significant.”
The accused faces over 200 counts of producing child abuse material and 87 counts of sexual activity with a child over the internet, among other charges.
Australia has recently banned under-16s from several major social media platforms, citing a rising number of cases in which adult predators exploit online access to find young victims.
