German authorities said that three men have been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing almost two dozen children in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The police further explained that the men have been abusing at least 23 children between the age of 4 and 13, over a period of 10 years.
Much of the abuse involved producing pornographic material from these young victims at a campsite where one of the alleged perpetrators permanently lived.
At the site, the investigators obtained 14 terabytes of data space that include 13,000 files containing child pornography.
As the authorities dig deeper into the case, they are concerned there may be more victims.
The three suspects aged 33, 48 and 56, are considered the head of the group, have been arrested over suspicions of this activity, stated the police and prosecutors during a press conference in the city of Detmold.
According to the police, the 48-year-old man is considered the main suspect.
He met the 33-year-old in relevant chatrooms on the dark web in 2008. The two then arranged their nasty activity at a campsite near the border with Lower Saxony, where one of them lived.
The third suspect was said to be a client who commissioned the abuse.
The abuse continued for at least ten years, with children from North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony assaulted.
According to investigator Achim Tietz, the scope of the crimes only became apparent as investigators looked further into the case. But in the seized material investigators analyzed, not all of them were created by the suspects as some of the files had already been flagged by police.
What this mean, the police feared that the victims can be more than the 23 affected children, as the list could grow.
"We still have a lot of work ahead of us," said the head of the investigation, Gunnar Weiss.
The prosecutor is also investigating youth welfare offices to check whether the police might "made mistakes."
