CASES of online sexual exploitation of children in the country has increased in the past few years, the Department of Justice said.

DoJ spokesperson Mico Clavano said there has been a consistent and sharp rise in the number of IP addresses for Child Sexual Exploitation linked to the Philippines — from 2,326 in 2014 to 4,872 in 2017.

“The Philippines also received more than eight times as many referrals as any other country identified by the global law enforcement case data,” the agency said.

Citing a report from the Anti-Money Laundering Council, the DoJ also said there was a 130% increase in suspicious transaction reports that may involve online sexual abuse or exploitation of children from 2019 to 2020.

The 19,013 STRs related to OSEC in 2019 more than doubled to 47,937 in 2020.

The Justice department said that a significant month-to-month increase in cases was also reported in 2019.

The DoJ’s Office of Cybercrime reported a more than three-fold increase in Cyber Tipline Reports from 426,961 in 2019 to 1,297,474 in 2020.

The department said this number increased seven-fold in 2021 to 3,084,566. For the first semester of 2022, at least 1,044,420 CTRs were received.

A report from the Philippine Internet Crimes Against Children Center showed there was an increase in actual Anti-OSEC operations and OSEC victims rescued from 2019 to 2021.

The DoJ said that the Cyber-TIP Monitoring assisted in the investigation of six operations that resulted in the apprehension of five persons and the rescue of 60 possible OSEC victims.