House Committee Hears Testimony on Internet-based Sex Crimes against Children

On October 17, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to examine legislative proposals on Internet sex crimes, including child pornography and Internet sexual predators.

Chair John Conyers (D-MI) said, “The Internet has become a remarkable means of communication. It has revolutionized commerce and the spread of information. The Internet has also, unfortunately, provided a venue for unscrupulous sexual predators to commit their crimes. Predators use the Internet to infiltrate social networking sites to arrange meetings with minors, where they use brute force to commit sexual offenses or worse…We cannot allow the Internet to be a playground where our children are one mouse click away from sexual predators…One goal of this hearing is to solicit input from all who are concerned about this issue including from my friends across the aisle to make sure that any resulting legislation draws from all the best ideas in strengthening the ability of federal and state law enforcement authorities to investigate and prosecute those who commit these horrible crimes.”

Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) stated in his opening remarks, “A recent study…found that 85 percent of offenders who downloaded child pornography also committed acts of sexual abuse of children. The policy implications of this study are significant because they firmly link child pornography and sexual predators. The challenge is for federal, state, and local law enforcement, legislators, and industry to work together, even more than they have up to now, to save children from these predators and make the Internet safer. The solutions require a combination of approaches. The Adam Walsh Act [P.L. 109-248] that we passed last Congress was an important step in the right direction. We need to…provide law enforcement with the tools they need to protect our children; require the business community to cooperate with law enforcement when necessary; and make sure that the laws we pass are being carried out by the Justice Department, and that judges are appropriately sentencing sex offenders.”

Alicia Kozakiewicz, who at age 13 was abducted and sexually enslaved by a man she met online, testified in support of Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force funding. An ICAC team in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the cooperation of an ICAC team in Virginia, where her abductor lived, rescued her from the basement where she’d been left in chains. “I saw the three most beautiful letters in the alphabet: FBI, in bold yellow on the backs of their jackets,” she said. “And I knew I was safe that my prayers had been answered…The FBI, the ICAC, they are my angels…Support this bill, support the children. Save us from the pedophiles, the pornographers, the monsters. The boogie man is real he lives on the Net.”

Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children, testified, “There are hundreds of thousands of individuals within the United States who are actively engaged in child pornography crimes,” he said, citing a Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation estimate of 350,000 offenders. Mr. Weeks said that most of those arrested for possession of child pornography also have sexually assaulted children, or tried to do so. However, he said, “Only a token number of these crimes will ever be investigated. Law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are overwhelmed and are triaging.” The FBI said it identified and arrested 5,048 child exploitation suspects between FY2001 and mid-2007. In FY2006, ICAC programs nationwide reported about 2,000 arrests. Mr. Weeks called for an increase in funding for programs, such as ICAC task forces, which received $14.5 million in FY2006; and an increase in federal agents, which number about 260 full-time equivalents at the FBI.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Laurence Rothenberg presented the Justice Department’s proposals to Congress, which included establishing a two-year minimum sentence for those who access child pornography; tripling the fines for providers of electronic communications services who knowingly and willingly fail to report child pornography violations; and making the intentional access of child pornography, instead of the saving of such images to a computer disk, a crime.

The committee heard from six representatives who have introduced legislation targeting Internet sex crimes concerning children:

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), sponsor of the Sex Offender Internet Prohibition Act of 2007 (H.R. 3144), which would impose sentences of five to 20 years in prison for registered sex offenders who knowingly access a website with the intent to communicate with a child for sexual purposes. “This bill sends a clear message to sex offenders that if they use these Internet sites to contact children, they will go to jail,” she said. “MySpace.com has identified more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles…We must not only focus on keeping children safe from strangers they meet on the street, but protecting them from strangers they meet online.”
Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), sponsor of the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2007 (KIDS Act of 2007) (H.R. 719), which would require convicted sex offenders to register online identifiers, such as e-mail and instant message addresses. The identifiers “would be made available to social networking sites, which could choose to block sex offenders from using their services,” Rep. Pomeroy said. It also would provide for up to 10 years in prison for those who lie about their online identifiers, and make it a crime for adults to lie about their ages online with the intent to solicit a minor for sex. An identical bill (S. 1374) was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA).
Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX), sponsor of the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007 (SAFE Act of 2007) (H.R. 3791), which would require all “electronic service communications providers and remote computing service providers” to report child pornography, and would impose fines of $150,000 per day per image for the first offense and $300,000 for subsequent offenses. It also would permit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to forward evidence to foreign law enforcement bodies.
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), sponsor of the Child Pornography Elimination Act of 2007 (H.R. 3148), which would prohibit the access to child pornography. “Although current law prohibits the possession, trafficking, or transport of child pornography, a person who uses a computer to knowingly access child pornography intending to view it, and who then views that child pornography, can arguably avoid criminal liability as long as he or she does not download or print the image,” she said. The bill also would impose a prison term of two to 15 years for possession of child pornography and triples the fines for not reporting violations of the law.
Rep. Christopher Carney (D-PA), sponsor of the Responsible and Effective Solutions for Children Entering Online Service Act of 2007 (H.R. 3850), which would allow the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to share information about child pornography with service and technology providers, as well as forward information to foreign law enforcement agencies.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), sponsor of the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2007 (H.R. 3845), which would supplement local law enforcement ICAC task forces with hundreds of new federal agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and create a special counsel in the Justice Department to plan and coordinate child exploitation prosecution efforts.Also testifying were Michael A. Mason, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Response Branch; Flint Waters of the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force; John Ryan, general counsel at AOL; Michelle Collins of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; and Elizabeth Banker, assistant general counsel at Yahoo!.