PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD CONFERENCE

CLOSING SPEECH
PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD CONFERENCE
WASHINGTON, D.C.

December 6, 2006

Ernie Allen, President and Chief Executive Officer
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children


On Monday you heard from Attorney General Gonzales, who sent a loud, clear message that even in this time of national concern about terrorism and so many other problems, the protection of children is a top priority. He told us that America’s children are “under siege every day,” and that that we have to do more to target those predators who “hide in the shadows of the Internet.”

In what I believe is a clear profile in courage, General Gonzales has taken this message across the country, speaking in tough, vivid, often graphic terms, describing the atrocities being committed against children so that people really understand. His goal is to spur the nation to act, and clearly, those of you who are here today are the frontline of that effort.

These are issues and problems that good people do not want to think about and regarding which there is an overwhelming sense of denial. For example, I submit that most Americans still do not understand a fundamental fact: that kids are the single most victimized segment of our population. They are the victims of violent and personal crime at a rate twice as great as the rest of the population. They are the primary victims of the nation’s sex offenders. And the challenge is growing.

Here is what we know:

Leading scholars and researchers tell us that on the most conservative basis, 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized in some way before they reach adulthood, and just 1 in 3 will tell anybody about it.

As of December 1, 2006, there are 593,000 convicted, registered sex offenders in the US. At least 100,000 of them are noncompliant with legal requirements, many of them actually missing.

According to Justice Department data, 2/3 of the victims of reported sexual assault are kids. One out of every three victims is under age 12.

A study by the National Center for Victims of Crime estimated that 61% of rape victims are less than 18, 29% less than 11.

It is daunting but it is not hopeless. We are making progress. The federal government is doing more on these issues today than at any time in the nation’s history. We have an Attorney General who is committed and cares. With the enactment of the PROTECT Act in 2003 and the Adam Walsh Act in 2006, there is new law, new prosecutorial tools and significant new federal penalties. We have more investigative resources than ever before: 47 Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, an expanding Innocent Images National Initiative at the FBI, a CyberCrimes Center at ICE, dedicated investigators at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a new effort headed by the U.S. Marshal’s Service and mandated by the Adam Walsh Act to track down America’s noncompliant sex offenders, new specialized units within state and local law enforcement across the country, and much more. There are many exciting, effective new programs to educate parents and kids and to prevent child victimization via the Internet, and there is a greater commitment to collaboration and cooperation than ever before.

Yet, as the Attorney General told us Monday, we are not doing enough. There are more offenders than any of us thought possible. There is a lack of consistency and uniformity of law among the states. There is a lack of awareness about the nature and severity of this problem among policy makers and the general public.

How can we impact problems which are so large and complex? Let me briefly focus my comments on two key areas:

(1) Online Enticement of Children – According to our recent study, one in seven youth aged 10 to 17 who are regular Internet users are sexually solicited online. That translates to millions of kids, and it suggests that there are thousands of offenders whom we have not yet identified and brought to justice.

The Attorney General told us on Monday that we must use whatever law is most effective, whatever law generates the largest number of convictions and the longest sentences.

Under federal law, online enticement is a felony punishable by a minimum prison term of 10 years and a maximum of life imprisonment. However, while all 50 states consider the online enticement of a child for sexual activity a crime, the penalties vary widely from state to state and may range from a simple fine to life in prison.

In 34 states, adults who entice children for sex via the Internet may spend less than a year in jail.

Fifteen states permit misdemeanor penalties in some cases, particularly if the victim is 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old. This is a huge problem because these laws fail to protect those who are the most likely to be solicited online: teenagers.

Nineteen states classify online enticement as a felony, but grant judges statutory discretion to sentence offenders to less than a year.
In fifteen states, judges have statutory discretion to sentence offenders to simply pay a fine in lieu of serving time in prison.

We believe that these disparities create loopholes for criminals. They allow sexual predators to find states with the most lenient laws and to carry out their illicit activities from those locations. Further, inconsistent laws have little deterrent effect, because they send mixed messages.

To better protect children from online predators, we urge states to use the federal law as the model and make the sexual enticement of children a felony in all cases—even when the victims are older teens, and follow federal sentencing guidelines.

We also recommend that laws stipulate that offenders must be prosecuted, even in cases involving law enforcement enticement stings. In too many instances we still hear, “it wasn’t really a child.” The offender didn’t know that. These law enforcement officers are often the buffer between the offenders and real children.

We need a unified front against online predators. To be effective, state online enticement laws must be tough and consistent and penalties must include prison time that recognizes the severity of the crime.

(2) Child Pornography – In 1982 the Supreme Court of the United States said that child pornography is not protected speech, it is child abuse. Law enforcement responded and child pornography disappeared from the mails and the shelves of adult book stores. Ten years ago, we felt that the battle was nearly won. Yet, with the advent of the Internet, this problem has exploded. We have been stunned with the sheer number of people who are accessing and distributing this insidious content. It far exceeds what we thought possible.

A 2001 survey conducted by ECPAT International and the Bangkok Post estimated that there were 100,000 child pornography web sites.

In 2003, the National Criminal Intelligence Service in the United Kingdom estimated that child pornography web sites had doubled worldwide.

Economic research organizations tell us that today commercial child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry.

In one case that I cite frequently, at the time of their arrest, two husband and wife child pornography entrepreneurs had 70,000 customers, paying $30 per month and using their credit cards to access graphic images of young children being sexually assaulted. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said it best:

if people were purchasing heroin or cocaine and using their credit cards, we would be outraged and would do something about it. This is worse.

It is clear that the sexual exploitation of children is no longer the exclusive province of fixated pedophiles, trading images with each other, it is now big business, a profit center for organized crime, extremist groups and various entrepreneurs. Children have become a commodity.

In a recent article, the Russian publication Pravda cited five reasons for this phenomenon:

Children are plentiful and easily accessed;
Child pornography is easy and inexpensive to produce;
There is a huge consumer market for it;
It is enormously profitable; and
There is virtually no risk, far less than traditional commodities like drugs, guns, and tobacco.
Our challenge is to increase the risk and eliminate the profitability.

Yet, to do that, it is our task to make sure that policy makers and the public understand the problem. One official said to me, “isn’t child pornography really just adult pornography, 20-year-olds in pigtails made to look like they are 15?” Well, not exactly. We know that younger and younger children are being used and victimized, and that images are becoming more graphic and more violent. Of the offenders identified to date, 39% had images of children younger than six years old, 19% had images of children younger than 3.

We have set a goal: to eradicate commercial child pornography by 2008. We have created a Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Bank of America, Citibank, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Google and many others – 27 companies working together to follow the money, stop the payments, shut down the sites, block the images, and eliminate this insidious problem.

In most of the world, child pornography is not even a crime. In 95 of the 186 member nations of Interpol, there are no laws at all on this subject. Recently, I met with a group of Russian legislators to urge them to enact tough legislation in this area. A Russian Senator said to me, “we will help, but you need to do something about the demand. The people who are buying this stuff are Americans.”

She is right, and we need to do something about it. We need to arrest and prosecute those who are consuming it. We need to identify the children being used in its production and get them help. And we need to use every possible tool to keep this content from ever reaching the consumer.

We are trying to do that. For example, we are working with Internet Service Providers to block access to identified illegal content, again only after law enforcement has made its decision to investigate or not investigate.

Arrest and prosecution are always the first priority, but as in the war against drugs, it is not going to be possible to prosecute everybody. In those cases, we need to use every tool imaginable.

On Monday, the Attorney General laid out his vision:

Get the pedophiles and sexual predators off the streets;
Increase the penalties and keep them behind bars; and
Engage in what he called “old-fashioned communication.” He said, “we must speak and speak again and speak more loudly.”
This is a challenge we can and must accept, and this is a cause that we can win. So, in conclusion, let me challenge you to do more.

When the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children was created in 1984, it was officially opened on June 13, 1984 in a ceremony at the White House, hosted by the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. President Reagan officially opened the Center with an old, corny poem by Helen Kromer, but I submit that it is as relevant and applicable today as it was 22 years ago.

One man awake can awaken another
The second can awaken his next door brother
The three awake can rouse the town
Turning the whole place upside down
And the many awake make such a fuss
They finally awaken the rest of us.

Congratulations on the extraordinary work you have already done, but it is time to do more. Help us wake up America.


Project Safe Childhood



Very good Information and satistics and very sad.................



CLOSING SPEECH
PROJECT SAFE CHILDHOOD CONFERENCE




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