Online child exploitation reports surge more than 1,000% as NC agencies struggle to keep up

In North Carolina, reports of online exploitation of children increased by 1,115% since 2019, according to data from the State Bureau of Investigation.

WRAL Investigates reached out to some of the largest law enforcement agencies in the WRAL viewing area. Agencies are trying to keep up with the caseload. However, many reported minimal staff or funding increases.

“We keep our doors locked at night to keep strangers out of our house, but we leave our internet wide open for our kids to chat with whoever they want,” said Kevin Roughton, the commander of the NC Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Taskforce with the SBI.

“It's no different than catfishing on dating websites,” said Sergeant Mitchell Ham with the Holly Springs Police Department. “Grown adults will go on Roblox saying they're an 8-year-old kid.”

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline was created in 1998 to receive reports of suspected child sexual exploitation from the public and electronic service providers (ESPs). The SBI shared the latest data for North Carolina with WRAL Investigates.

The first three months of 2026 yielded 12,169 CyberTips – some of the highest CyberTip numbers ever received by the SBI.

The average number of CyberTips jumped from 411 in 2019 to 4,382 in 2025. That average number is expected to be even higher this year.

“Wherever the kids are is where the predators are going to be,” Roughton said.

WRAL Investigates asked Ham why he believes this spike in online exploitation is happening.

“The children and accessibility to technology,” he replied. “Even the young kid at 5 years old is on a tablet, and everybody has their cellphone out, and everybody's on the internet. It’s just the society we live in now.”

In 2025, WRAL covered two incidents that led to statewide Amber Alerts in one week.

Both victims were 15 years old – one from Siler City; the other from Harnett County.

All four suspects face several charges, including human trafficking.

“Before a child can ever be trafficked, they're exploited,” Roughton said. “If we can get them in the early stages of this online exploitation, many times, we can intervene before the actual trafficking occurs.”

Roughton said he noticed the suspects in these cases don’t seem to fit a specific description.

“Ten or 15 years ago, we had a more stereotypical offender that we were going after. It was a little bit of an older person. It was predominantly male, etc.,” he said. “Now we're seeing that has really broadened to where it crosses decades of ages. It crosses races. It crosses socioeconomic statuses, education statuses.”

Roughton and Ham tell WRAL Investigates that predators tend to lure victims from one platform to another. Grooming on video gaming platforms has become a growing concern for parents and law enforcement.

Bloomberg compiled data on arrests in 2024 tied to grooming that started on Roblox, for example. The platform has faced several lawsuits for that issue.

“If they move them off-site, then they can start talking to them sexually and grooming them more,” Ham explained. “Most ICAC cases can spiderweb out. They're not just talking to one child; they're talking to as many as they possibly can.”  

“It eats at you, knowing that you can only do so much at one time,” Ham said.

In many cases, he said agencies like the Holly Springs Police Department receive additional tips aside from those coming in through CyberTips.

“There's no department in the nation or in the country in the world that has seen an 1,100% increase in manpower or resources to fight this,” Roughton told WRAL Investigates.

Some agencies have increased manpower to address online exploitation of children, like Orange and Franklin counties, as well as the Chapel Hill Police Department.

However, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office tells WRAL Investigates that its dedicated deputies also have other investigations on their caseload.

The SBI has 18 sworn investigators dedicated to internet crimes against children. These investigators are supported by five intelligence analysts. That’s 10 more dedicated staff members than the agency had a decade ago. 

Due to a lack of funding, though, Roughton said the two of those analyst positions are currently frozen.

The agencies we heard back from say they do not have money specifically dedicated to ICAC investigations. The same is true at the state level.

The SBI receives a federal ICAC grant that it uses in support of the entire NC ICAC Task Force (about 230 agencies across the state). North Carolina received about $450,000 in 2016 to just over $800,000 in 2025, according to the SBI. 

“Although that is almost double, we are comparing to a 1100+% increase in workload, and an enormous increase in actual costs of hardware, software and tools, most of which require annual subscriptions,” Roughton said in an email. “The ICAC funding is no longer close to covering those costs, and we are regularly seeking other funding sources to cover these needs.”

Aside from manpower, technology is another challenge for law enforcement, especially smaller agencies with smaller budgets.

“Unfortunately, a lot of this licensing per year, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars just in licensing for the software every year,” Ham said. “A lot of agencies just don't have that money.”

There are apps and software to help investigators analyze and sift through information.

“The free software you can get is good, but it's not as powerful and strong as the ones you pay for, unfortunately,” Ham said.

“We're not going to be able to…arrest our way out of this problem. So, what I see as part of our goal is educating parents, educating teens,” Roughton said.

Joseph Lengel, an ICAC analyst at the Holly Springs Police Department, said parents should be curious and intentional when it comes to their children’s internet activity. 

He said parents should:

• Monitor their children’s phones
• Understand how the apps work
• Inquire/know who your children are talking to on the internet
• Look out for signs for isolation while using devices
• Try to stay abreast of the lingo your child and other children use

“[There are] so many new apps that just come out constantly,” he said. 

Those apps will sometimes include encrypted messaging.

“There are apps out there that are end-to-end [encrypted], which [means] you can't necessarily go to the companies; they don't store [messages] on servers. You usually have to have one of the devices to get into the chat to see what is going on. That can make things increasingly difficult for us,” he explained.

Ham said some parents will buy their children phones with parental controls and alerts. However, he said parents still need to be aware.

“When you allow your child to download Roblox, all of a sudden, all of those barriers or safeguards you put on your phone are gone when they're within the game,” he explained. “That's because the phone can only protect what you're doing on the phone but not within the app itself.”

Both Lengel and Roughton tell WRAL News the most important part is to be involved.