HALIFAX -- Nova Scotia is doubling its complement of Crown prosecutors who work on Internet child exploitation cases to deal with what appears to be an increase in such crimes, says the province's justice minister.
Diana Whalen said Friday that the two new hirings to be completed by the fall will mean the province's independent prosecution service will have four attorneys dedicated to sex-related cybercrime cases.
Whalen said the move would fulfil a recommendation stemming from a review of the Rehtaeh Parsons case released last fall, which said there should be more Crown attorneys devoted to cybercrime.
She said initial statistics for this year appear to indicate incidences involving various forms of online child exploitation are on the rise.
"We looked at numbers from the Halifax Regional Police and their numbers have literally doubled in the last number of years."
Whalen said Halifax police investigated 73 cases in 2013 and are handling 51 cases so far this year.
The minister said that's likely due to a number of factors including increased use of the Internet by perpetrators and more reporting of their activities by members of the public.
With technical innovations constantly providing new avenues for child porn perpetrators to operate, Whalen said it's important to bolster legal resources.
"This is a problem worldwide," said Whalen. "We are definitely doing our very best to not only keep up, but stay ahead in order to prosecute properly."
Justice officials said the plan would see prosecutors eventually rotated through the child exploitation unit because of the psychological toll working on the cases can exact.
"It's not something you want to do for months or years on end," said Whalen. "So it's important that we have more people with the expertise and they can share the workload."
Funding for the new positions comes through an increase of $192,000 for the Public Prosecution Service in the latest budget.
Currently there are 88 frontline Crown prosecutors working in Nova Scotia.
