COVID-19-themed forums have appeared online with members in the thousands sharing videos and discussing their tendencies toward the abuse of children during lockdown, according to the Australian Federal Police.

Police data suggests the amount of child abuse material shared on the dark net between February and March doubled from this time last year.

Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation is the country's international hub for intelligence sharing on child exploitation matters and supports investigative agencies, including ACT Policing.

Operations commander Jamie Strauss said offenders were using coronavirus to find potential victims, as children and young people spent an increasing amount of time online with limited adult supervision.

Commander Strauss said a higher number of reports to the centre showed more parents were aware perpetrators had made unwanted contact with their children in recent weeks.

He said a 123 per cent increase in reports of contact translated to a leap from 776 reports a month in October 2019 to 1731 per month in March 2020.

"In some instances, we are seeing children groomed, and then blackmailed to produce more and more extreme material with the fear that if they don't do it, it will be shared," Mr Strauss said.

"In other matters, parents, carers, or adults with access to children are being groomed online, or willingly engaging in the sexual exploitation of children and sharing of imagery."

The Australian Federal Police announced recently that following a two-year effort with the United States Homeland Security Investigations, 16 people had been charged in Australia with 738 child exploitation offences in April.

This week, nine men in three states were charged and 14 children were rescued in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia, following a national investigation into the production and sharing of child abuse material.

A 26-year-old man was charged with two counts of raping a child under the age of 10 years and a 21-year-old man was charged with six counts of raping a child under the age of 10 years in the NSW towns of Kendall and Old Bar.

Child exploitation centre commissioner Lesa Gale said police believed they had uncovered one of the biggest domestic child exploitation networks in recent time.

In Canberra, a joint agency for child exploitation was established in November 2019, to nationally target criminals who abuse children.

In the 18 months since it was established, the ACT agency has charged 11 people with 28 child exploitation offences.

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In 2020 alone, eight people were charged with a range of child exploitation offences.

Detective acting inspector Robert Rose said like all agencies involved with protecting children, ACT Policing has been concerned about "spikes" in the volume of child exploitation material accessed during COVID-19.

Inspector Rose said research showed one in four young people in Australia had been contacted by someone they didn't know online.

He said if parents came across images that had been sent to their children online it was important they contacted ACT police before attempting to remove anything from the device.

"Parents should continue to be vigilant and think about what their children are doing when they are quiet in their rooms or in the house," inspector Rose said.