FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 26, 2008
MEDIA CONTACT: Matt Mackowiak
Sen. Hutchison Announces Passage of Legislation to Protect Children from Internet Predators
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Texas’ senior Senator, announced that late Thursday the Senate passed the Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2008, a bill she co-sponsored to protect children from online predators. The bill directs the Attorney General to create and implement an initiative known as National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction.
“Children in schools and households across the country log on to the Internet every day to tap its information resources, to communicate with friends, or for entertainment,” said Sen. Hutchison. But for predators, the Internet is a vast, unregulated space in which they can lure and victimize innocent children.”
“My office has received 11,000 letters urging support for the Combating Child Exploitation Act, and I am so pleased that the Senate unanimously passed the bill today,” said Sen. Hutchison.
The Combating Child Exploitation Act includes the original bill, S. 1738, which Sen. Hutchison co-sponsored and provisions of S. 519, the SAFE Act, which she co-sponsored with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
The bill directs the Attorney General to review the policies and work of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) related to child exploitation crimes. It would require an analysis of present DOJ efforts to coordinate with international, state, local, and tribal officials on child exploitation prevention and interdiction efforts.
It establishes under DOJ a National Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program, coordinating the efforts of state and local officials to address online enticement of children, child exploitation, and child obscenity and pornography. It also directs the Attorney General to establish a National Internet Crimes Against Children Data System to support investigation and prosecution of child exploitation crimes.
Finally, the bill makes significant changes to federal criminal law allowing for expanded prosecution of crimes involving child exploitation, selling or buying of children, material involving sexual exploitation of minors or containing child pornography, and obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children.
Sen. Hutchison has a long legislative record of protecting children. In 2003, Sen. Hutchison sponsored a bill signed into law to create the National AMBER Alert Network. Since its inception, the alert system has safely returned 420 missing or abducted children to their parents. Sen. Hutchison also cosponsored the Internet Safety Act, which was signed into law in 2006 when provisions of the bill were included in the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.
More recently, Sen. Hutchison cosponsored S. 431, the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2007 (KIDS Act), and S. 1965, and the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act.
S. 1738 was thrust into the national spotlight on September 15, 2008, when Oprah Winfrey discussed child exploitation on her daytime talk show and urged support for the bill.
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