A 47-year-old man faces more than 400 charges of indecently dealing with children, recording them, and sexually assaulting them across the span of seven years.

WA Police allegedly found 3.8 million videos and images related to child exploitation on multiple devices belonging to the accused.

An investigation into the man has been ongoing since July 2021, when information was provided to the WA Joint Child Exploitation Team.

The man’s home and work addresses were searched and multiple computer and storage devices belonging to him were seized, with material on the devices allegedly including recordings of the accused abusing children.

Detectives have identified 24 victims – boys and girls aged between three and 13 – who had been subjected to sexual abuse between 2015 and 2021.

Sex crime division Detective Inspector Hamish McKenzie said the investigation was “one of the most significant child abuse investigations ever conducted in Western Australia, insofar as to how many images were located, and how many victims we will allege had been abused”.

“This investigation involved hundreds and hundreds of hours of examination of child exploitation material, a number of images, of course, are extremely distressing,” he said.

“Our main goal in any investigation of this nature is to identify the victims and remove them from further harm.

“As part of this investigation, investigators have also spoken to the families of the victims and have had to advise them on many occasions that their children had allegedly been abused by the accused person, and in some cases this abuse had been recorded.”