The International Justice Mission aid group's seven-year study reports that the Philippines is the largest known source of online sexual abuse of children. In a society where poverty is rampant, the report points that in most cases, parents and relatives were responsible for facilitating the abuse. In many cases, the victims had been abused for years, and among the reported cases, the youngest was less than a year old.

Fluency in English along with high speed connectivity are opined as reasons as to why the Philippines become a 'global hot-spot' for child pornography.

Based on the data collected from law enforcement, the report indicates that the proportion of Philippine Internet addresses used to host child pornography had tripled in the three years leading to 2017.

UNICEF had reported that the Philippines is one of the top global sources of child sex abuse materials, with 600 000 'sexualised' photos of Filipino children bartered and traded in 2018 alone.