A Call to Action

Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2008

I was stunned to read recently that, in the past two years alone, 300,000 to 500,000 computers have sent images of child pornography in the United States—and that's only on the computers that are trackable.

A new bill (S. 1738) was recently introduced on the Senate floor, which, if passed will help to combat the burgeoning market in child pornography. The fight against child pornography is crippled by a lack of funds, coordination and manpower. The sponsors of this bill hope that, if passed, it will help to alleviate some of these issues and allow law enforcement to step up their efforts to fight this truly heinous crime.

What follows are excerpts from the sponsoring senator’s speech introducing this bill:

The bottom line is that the Internet has facilitated an exploding, multi-billion dollar market for child pornography, with 20,000 new images posted every week. This is a market that can only be supplied by the continued sexual assault and exploitation of more children and the research shows that victims are getting younger and they are being exposed to more sadistic abuse.

The FBI and the Department of Justice have testified before Congress that there are hundreds of thousands of people trafficking child pornography in this country and millions around the world.

There are many Federal, State and local investigators and prosecutors out there working tirelessly, but need to do much more. We have new investigative techniques that will allow us to identify many of the people who are trafficking child pornography and we can go pick them up. A very conservative estimate is that there are more than 400,000 people who we know who are trafficking child pornography on the Internet in the U.S. right now. We can, with minimal effort, take these people down. But, due to lack of resources we are investigating less than 2 percent of these cases.

We also know that when law enforcement agents do investigate these cases, there is a local abused child in 30 percent off the cases. Research shows that at least 55 percent of child pornography possessors have previously sexually assaulted children or attempted to do so. So, by picking up these known offenders, we are saving children. It is important to note that every time one of these images or videos is shared, the child is victimized again and again.

This legislation will establish a Special Counsel in the Deputy Attorney General's Office to coordinate all activities related to preventing child exploitation. We will also congressionally require that there be at least one Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in each State. This program is poised to become the backbone for our investigative efforts here in the U.S. by forming a network of highly trained investigators to focus exclusively on combating child exploitation. Under this bill, we will triple the funding for the ICAC program to help with hiring, training, and investigative resources to form this Nation-wide network.

In addition, we will authorize over 250 new Federal agents to focus exclusively on this problem, including 125 new FBI agents, which will double the number of agents under the Innocent Images Program at the FBI, 95 new agents for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, ICE, and 31 new postal inspectors.

As we all know, just because Congress passes a bill it doesn’t necessarily get funded or followed up on. Having said that, I believe the passage of this bill is a start and I would ask you to contact your congressional representatives and urge them to pass Senate Bill 1738 without delay.

You can find your representative’s contact information by going to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. All of their information, including their e-mail addresses are listed on this website.