A key government agency in the United Kingdom has reported that child sex abuse on the internet has increased with a dramatic and unbelievable pace over the past five years.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said Monday that more than 82,000 child sex abuse images had been referred to the body last year, an increase of 700 percent from 2012.

The NCA said a recent week-long crackdown on online child sex offenders in Britain saw more than 130 suspects, including an ex-police officer, a children’s entertainer, and five teachers, arrested. It added that 165 children were saved from harm in the same period.

Rob Jones, a director at the NCA, said more and more people across the UK were using the dark web on the internet and technologies like end-to-end encryption to evade detection while harming children.

“We are seeing an increase in the number of sophisticated offenders using the dark web to groom and harm children on the mainstream internet,” said Jones.

The police and government have said that at least 80,000 people in Britain are estimated to pose a sexual threat to children online.

The new data has stoked fears about the growing sexual exploitation and enslavement of children via technology both in the United Kingdom and around the world.

David Westlake, head of the anti-slavery charity International Justice Mission, said very young children were becoming victims of a “deeply disturbing global crime.”

“These latest figures from the NCA should be a wake-up call in highlighting how serious the problem of online sexual exploitation of children is,” said Westlake.