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Learn More What is “child pornography”? While some might imagine that child pornography is mostly photos of naked children or underage teens, nothing could be farther from the truth. The vast majority of child pornography consists of graphic crime scene photos and movies, showing the rape, torture and abuse of young children. Trafficking in these images has become a multi-billion dollar global market. This market is largely a cottage industry, but it includes file-sharing, commercial websites and even live, on-demand child rape. Why focus on child pornography or child exploitation? For two reasons: First, the exploding demand for child pornography can only be met one way: through the sexual display and rape of more children. With less than two percent of known child pornography trafficking being investigated, this criminal market is flourishing. Without intervention, criminals will continue to supply the “product” for this lucrative market. Second, an aggressive war against child pornography is the key to preventing sexual assaults against hundreds of thousands of children. For the first time in history, child sexual predators are hiding in plain sight, us the power to stop them and rescue their victims. Using existing technology, law enforcement can now observe and locate hundreds of thousands of criminals in the U.S. who are trafficking in images and movies of child rape and torture. Experience shows that 30-50% of these criminals have sexually assaulted children. Stopping them now will therefore save hundreds of thousands of children from sexual assault and exploitation. Are you saying law enforcement knows where these criminals are actually located? Yes. Every day, law enforcement monitors thousands of individuals within the U.S. as they go online and traffic in images and movies of child sexual abuse. Leading child exploitation investigators estimate over 500,000 individuals within the U.S. alone have been identified. These cyber crimes investigators can actually watch crimes as they are committed in real time, plotting their location down to the local level and logging the transactions for future investigation. These criminals are then just one subpoena away from identification. Yet, less than two percent of all these leads are ever investigated, due to lack of resources. And you are saying we know where the actual victims are? Conservative estimates indicate that 30-55% of those arrested for possession of child pornography have actually sexually assaulted or attempted to assault children, typically having multiple victims. That means that aggressive investigation of child exploitation crimes would predictably lead to the identification of hundreds of thousands of child sexual abuse victims. There has never been an opportunity to interdict this many crimes against children and prevent sexual abuse on such a scale. In a tight budget year, is it realistic to expect big spending increases to combat child exploitation? Yes. Current federal spending to combat child exploitation is so negligible that even modest increases will dramatically help law enforcement protect children. Last year, Congress appropriated $10 million for the FBI’s entire Innocent Images child exploitation program, less than HUD spent for one apartment complex in Connecticut. If and when the news media shines a light publicly on the fact that the U.S. government now has knowledge of hundreds of thousands of active perpetrators and the means to stop them and rescue their child victims, it will have to take action. What efforts are being made to help these children in Washington? In Washington, two bills have been introduced to authorize major increases in law enforcement resources to combat child exploitation. House Bill 3845 (Wasserman-Shultz, Barton) passed the House in October 415-2. Senate Bill 1738 (Biden-Boxer) is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee. These bills would hire thousands of new federal agents (FBI, ICE and U.S. Postal Inspection Service), fund new state-local task forces and build desperately-needed forensic labs.
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