In addition to the over 700 cases which led to proceedings starting, last year saw a similar number of reports and tip-offs which were not followed by court proceedings, after a PPA investigation.

Speaking to ETV news show "Aktuaalne kaamera" (AK) Wednesday, Rain Vosman, head of the PPA's southern prefecture criminal office, said: "Fortunately, people are reporting [these crimes] a lot. I would venture to say that in the case of about half of the reports that reach us, people have been more active and, fortunately, these have not concerned substantive crimes or misdemeanors."

"It may be the case that in the course of [PPA] procedures, we arrive at that truth, and that in fact the information we have received is not correct, with all the amassed evidence showing that no crime has been committed," Vosman went on.

"Then the matter is closed," he told AK.

In some other cases, however, the picture is not so cut and dried, Vosman said.

"A case can be even worse when we can see, with our inner conviction, most likely something criminal has taken place, but we cannot prove that. There are such cases, from time to time," Vosman went on.

District Prosecutor Jane Pajus told AK: "For this reason, we should be bold enough to report every potential crime as soon as it has taken place, since the faster and more immediate the reporting, the better the evidence that can be collected."

Conversely, it is commonly known that a large proportion of rape victims, unfortunately, do not report the crime, although the signs are of a trend towards an increasing willingness to go to the police.

Over the past decade, the number of registered sexual crimes has almost doubled, again, mostly due to greater reporting.

Leana Loide, head of the analysis department at the Ministry of Justice, said: "Most likely, this rise is the result of greater debate in society concerning sexual crimes."

"There has been plenty of discussion about what constitutes rape, how to recognize that it has occurred, and that it is not something to be ashamed of. I think we are starting to get the message home more and more that the victim is not to be blamed," Loide told AK.

Close to 90 percent of the registered sexual crimes involved a minor victim, about half of which did not involve physical contact, mainly meaning they occurred online.

"More than ever before, we are having to deal with crimes which are committed on the Internet," Vosman said.

This mostly involved the storage and dissemination of child sexual abuse material including in the form of photos and video footage, but also, for instance, a perpetrator exposing their genitalia to a minor victim via a social media or chat room platform, Vosman said.

In the case of child sexual abuse material which the perpetrator possesses in photographic or video format, Vosman added that "the most frightening aspect to these cases is that, in actuality, the video has already been created somewhere else."

Last year's statistics showed that with regard to sexual crimes involving a victim who was a minor, the victim's average age was 12, and the youngest victim was one year old.

In 39 percent of the cases, the offender was a close family member or other relative, while in 45 percent of cases, the crime was committed by a non-related acquaintance, such as a friend of the victim's parents, or an instructor at a sports or hobbies group, or even an individual which the victim only came into contact with incidentally, for instance, a taxi driver.

Jane Pajus argued that one means of improving the likelihood of child sex crimes being reported is to educate children, starting at kindergarten age, of their self-awareness, so they can become consciously aware that their body is theirs and theirs alone, and that it is not permissible for anyone to violate that.

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