House searches were conducted at 13 addresses in search of evidence on suspicion of production, distribution, showing and possession of child pornography. The main goal of the probe was to identify the children victims of sexual abuse and was part of an ongoing investigation opened in 2015.

Speaking to the press, Anton Toni Klančnik of the General Police Administration said no victims were found today who would be under direct threat, so the police are urging people to report any suspected abuse of children.

This year alone, 25 children victims of online abuse have been found, mostly children aged 10-17 and mostly girls, but the police are unable to identify many other victims.

Perpetrators have easy access to children's rooms through different web applications and chatrooms, where children are tricked into believing they are talking to peers and are persuaded into stripping or performing sexual activities in front of a webcam, Klančnik explained.

Along with online abuse, the investigation has also found four cases since 2015 in which offenders met with children they found on the internet and sexually abused them, and later shared pictures or videos on the internet.

While 17 were made suspects today as a result of the raids, over 30 suspects have been identified as part of the broader investigation.

None of the 17 have been detained as the house searches will now be followed by forensic investigation into the items that were seized.

The penalty for production, distribution, showing and possession of illegal pornographic material is up to eight years in prison.

Today's search activities were conducted by 79 crime investigators and police officers from the police administrations of Celje, Maribor, Novo mesto, Koper, Murska Sobota, Kranj and Ljubljana.

According to Klančnik, the investigation into child pornography started from a single report from almost two years ago of a girl being asked on a date by a stranger.

In its ten years of operation, the web child pornography reporting platform Spletno oko has received 5118 anonymous reports, of which 1397 have been assessed as actual sexual abuse of children and forwarded to the police.

The hotline's coordinator Andrej Motl told the STA the number of reports is falling, but rather than to an actual decline in this type of activities he attributes this to a change in legislation from a few years ago that makes watching child pornography illegal, so people are afraid to report it.

According to Motl, most reports are made by Slovenians but most of the victims on the material reported are not Slovenian children.