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Online sexual abuse has become a worsening problem in Canada, with a frightening growth in sexually violent images of very young children on illegal pay-for view websites, the RCMP say.

RCMP Supt. Earla Kim McColl, who runs Canada's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre (NCECC), said the volume of new images is alarming, and so is the violent trend in the content.

"Probably 80 per cent of the images involve some kind of penetration -- oral, anal or vaginal -- and a significant number, about 20 per cent, also involving torture and bondage," she said.

Even more disturbing, the parties responsible are usually related to the victim.

"It's almost always somebody within the family," Internet safety expert Paul Gillespie told Canada AM Monday.

With the Internet service providers claiming they can't police such vast amounts of information, Gillespie stresses that it is up to parents to be vigilant.

"It boils down to the parents using good common sense...and using their best instincts," Gillespie said.

He also suggests having an age-appropriate discussion about internet safety when the children are old enough to understand.

Internet child pornography has turned into a $2.6-billion industry with 20,000 new child porn websites every month. At any given time, there are 50,000 pedophiles online around the world. Most of them access websites based in Third World countries where laws are more lax.

Canadian pedophiles, however, are contributing to the problem.

"There are rising numbers every year of new Canadians we find are using these sites," David Janes, an RCMP database analyst, told CTV News.

McColl put the number of Canadian men paying for online child pornography in the hundreds.

Since the NCECC was set up in 2002, the Mounties have rescued 100 children from predators.