Australia's E-safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant shared that child abusers have created and shared an online grooming manual describing ways to manipulate and exploit children online during COVID-19. With more children spending time online, investigators are seeing a significant increase on the Dark Web of predators searching on   how to abuse children. Grant said 'The handbook advises predators to get their kicks online rather than trying to meet children face-to-face because of restrictions and heightened vigilance of law enforcement on the streets 

According to commission reports, Australia has witnessed a significant rise in sexual child abuse reports to the eSafety Office, reaching an 27% increase in March and 37% increase in April 2020.The Australian Federal Police, which runs the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, has seen a 123%  increase in cases of children being targeted through social networking, image and  video-sharing apps, as well as instant messaging between October 2019 and March 2020, compared with the same period of 2019.