Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2517) to amend the Missing Children's Assistance Act to authorize appropriations; and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I request 5 legislative days during which Members may insert material relevant to H.R. 2517 into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mrs. McCARTHY of New York asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, today I rise with my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson), the sponsor of H.R. 2517, the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act, and urge my colleagues to support the reauthorization of the Missing Children's Assistance Act.

I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Lampson, for his continued leadership on this issue. Mr. Lampson is founder of the Missing Children's Caucus and has worked tirelessly to support the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. His passion for protecting our Nation's children inspires others to get involved and work to create safe places for our young people, including on the Internet.

This bipartisan reauthorization continues the work of the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Child Protection Division's missing and exploited children's programs, including funding for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Furthermore, this legislation continues the authorization for National Incidence Studies, known as ``NISMART.'' According to CRS, the first NISMART study ``provided the first nationally representative, comprehensive data on the incidence of missing children.'' The second NISMART study resolved some methodological challenges of the first study, and included runaway or throwaway children as well.

These studies have helped law enforcement, Federal agencies, and nonprofits in their work to prevent children from going missing or to help children get home. Missing children are some of our most vulnerable young people, and this work is critical in protecting this population.

This legislation works to help protect not only children who go missing, but it also works to protect our children who are sexually exploited, a horrendous thought for any of us to consider, and yet it is part of our reality.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children serves not only as a national clearinghouse and resource center on missing children but also serves that same purpose for exploited children. Among multiple programs, NCMEC operates as a CyberTipline for tips and leads on child sexual exploitation.

The CyberTipline allows for citizens and electronic communication providers to report incidents of various types of child exploitation, including online enticement of children for sexual acts, child prostitution, and child pornography. This reauthorization expands the reach of the CyberTipline to include categories of exploitation that connect with new technologies or activities.

I want to share a success story from the Child Victim Identification Program at NCMEC. This program reviews child pornography to gain clues that will lead to the identification of a child.

In this particular case in 2005, those reviewing these horrendous images also found images of a young boy partially clothed, including a photo of him in his Boy Scout uniform. They were able to read the patches on his uniform and discovered he was in the Nassau County Boy Scout Council, which I represent here in this Congress. The program has set procedure which led them to contacting law enforcement, who identified this child and later arrested a suspect.

From this story, there are two points I want to make. First, this program does wonderful, and yet very difficult, work to protect and save children who are being exploited. Secondly, these crimes happen everywhere.

Since its inception in 1984, NCMEC has received 173 reports of missing children in Nassau County, New York, and 4,319 for New York State. Of those 4,319 children who went missing, 4,146 were recovered.

H.R. 2517 strengthens the ability of the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and its programs, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to work to eradicate child pornography, guide efforts for online safety for children and unite families. These programs also support the work of law enforcement, including training law enforcement on multiple issues around missing, runaway, throwaway and sexually exploited children.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals, the United States Postal Inspectors, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement all have detainees at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Until all children are safe from predators in our society, this work must continue and we must reauthorize the Missing Children's Assistance Act.

Before I close, I want to thank the staff who worked on this reauthorization: Abby Shannon in Mr. Lampson's office, Deborah Kookbeck, Ruth Friedman, Denise Forte of the majority staff of the Committee on Education and Labor, and Kirsten Duncan and Susan Ross on the minority staff of the Committee on Education and Labor.

H.R. 2517 is bipartisan effort and I urge my colleagues to support the passage of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) who has been certainly at the forefront on trying to protect our children. I thank him for his work.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I have the right to close.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to thank Mr. Lampson again for his leadership on this important reauthorization which works to keep our Nation's children safe. And I want to also thank my ranking member of the Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities, Mr. Platts, for his continued dedication to our work on the subcommittee.

I chair the Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities for the Committee on Education and Labor, and each member of this subcommittee is committed to helping the children of this Nation.

Our jurisdiction has led us to dealing with some of the most upsetting and challenging issues around the welfare of our Nation's children. And this reauthorization is no exception.

None of us would like to even think about any children in our lives, whether it's our own children, our grandchildren, our nieces or our nephews, any child in our lives going through missing or being sexually exploited. This is why this reauthorization is so critical and why this reauthorization is a bipartisan endeavor.

Through cooperation with the municipal Federal agencies, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children takes in an average of 258 calls per day to national hotlines. It has received 5,422 tips through the CyberTipline, and has worked with countless families and organizations to raise awareness and bring children to safety. This work would not have been possible without our work here today in reauthorizing the Missing Children's Assistance Act through H.R. 2517 sponsored by my colleague from Texas, Mr. Lampson.

I urge each Member to support this reauthorization. We, as a Nation, can do better to protect our children. And with that, I hope all of my colleagues will certainly vote for this.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank Chairwoman McCarthy for the good work that she has done and for allowing me the time to participate in this legislation and to bring it to the floor of the House of Representatives. It is critically important.

My colleagues, I rise today to ask you all to join me in voting for H.R. 2517, the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007. This bill amends the Missing Children's Assistance Act to reauthorize the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Department of Justice's missing and exploited children's program from 2008 to 2013.

Each year, thousands of children are abducted or removed from the control of a parent having legal custody without that parent's consent, under circumstances which immediately place the child in grave danger.

Recent video surfaced in Nevada, for example, of a young girl being molested time and time again. Our attention has also been captured by the mystery surrounding Baby Grace, another child who was murdered and put in a plastic box and dumped in Galveston, Texas, near my district. These gruesome acts remind us that we must do everything in our power to catch these creeps and protect our children.

Many missing children are at great risk of both physical harm and sexual exploitation, and in many cases parents and local law enforcement officials have neither the resources nor the expertise to mount expanded search efforts. Abducted children are frequently moved from one locality to another, requiring the cooperation and coordination of local, State, and Federal law enforcement efforts. Growing numbers of children are the victims of child sexual exploitation increasingly involving new technology to access the Internet. Sex offenders pose a threat to children that increases as more offenders are released into the Nation's communities each year.

On May 24, I, along with my cochairs of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, introduced H.R. 2517. Since its establishment in 1984, the National Center has assisted law enforcement with more than 137,600 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 120,300 children. The National Center's congressionally mandated CyberTipline, a reporting mechanism for child sexual exploitation, has handled more than 540,000 phone calls and leads.

We are fortunate that this Nation has a national resource center and clearinghouse such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which works in partnership with the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Secret Service, and many other agencies in the effort to find missing children and prevent child victimization. The National Center operates a national and increasingly worldwide network and serves as a model for many other nations which are creating similar nonprofits.

The National Center provides activities and services concerning missing children, including those abducted to or from the United States; exploited children; training and technical assistance; families of missing children; and partnerships with State clearinghouses, the private sector, as well as children's organizations. It is a primary component of the Department of Justice's missing and exploited children's program and employs over 300 people at its Alexandria, Virginia headquarters and its regional offices in California, Florida, Kansas, New York, and South Carolina. These regional offices provide case management and technical support in their geographic areas. And the Austin, Texas office is scheduled to open in the very near future.

I would at this time like to recognize those staffers who have worked so diligently in bringing this legislation to fruition: Committee on Education and Labor staffers Denise Forte, Deborah Koolbeck, and Ruth Friedman; Congresswoman Judy Biggert's staffperson Brian Colgan; and my staffers, Dan Easley and Abby Shannon. I would also like to extend a thank you to my very strong Republican colleague and fellow caucus cochair, Judy Biggert, for championing this legislation and so much other similar legislation on her side of the aisle and for being such a tremendous benefit to America's children. I want to especially thank Chairwoman McCarthy. She herself is the victim of family violence. She lost her husband in a violent crime. And Chairman Miller for moving this legislation out of committee, and for their commitment and leadership to provide safety and security to America's children on playgrounds and on the Internet. And Mr. Ernie Allen, the president and CEO of the National Center; and Robbie Callaway, the president and CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs. And John and Reve Walsh, who have been with me all day today working on this legislation. They cofounded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and they have been fighting the good fight since the tragic abduction and murder of their son Adam in July of 1981. Their courage and their strength, which has done so much to help millions of children throughout the world, is extraordinary. Speaking on behalf of other parents and grandparents, we owe them our gratitude, and we thank you.

Again, I strongly urge my colleagues to support this much-needed legislation. It is time that we all step up to protect our children by authorizing resources for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children so children are safer on and off the Internet, where they are free to learn and grow. Thank you all. I look forward to the support for this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2517, the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007, introduced by my good friend and colleague Congressman Lampson. I would like to thank him for his ongoing commitment to the extremely important issue of protecting our children, and I would also like to thank Chairman Miller for his leadership in guiding this legislation through the Committee on the Education and Labor. I am extremely proud to join over 90 of my colleagues in cosponsoring this crucial, bipartisan legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the Protecting our Children Comes First Act of 2007 reauthorizes the Missing Children's Assistance Act through FY 2013, and it will increase federal resources for protecting and assisting missing children and their families. This legislation will provide the resources to ensure that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children can continue its important work to combat child abduction and exploitation.

As Chair of the Congressional Children's Caucus, I have been an outspoken advocate for the protection of our children against all predators, be it disease, natural disasters, or sexual deviants. While we may not be able to avoid natural disasters, there is nothing but a lack of political will and Congressional action that prevents us from protecting our children from known sexual predators. I am appalled that while the Department of Justice knows

the location of hundreds of thousands of sexual predators that prey on our Nation's children within the U.S. at this very moment, the Department of Justice has consistently refused to take action or ask Congress for help despite the fact that law enforcement is investigating less than 2 percent of this criminal activity. I applaud this important piece of legislation for the accountability it will create by building the largest law enforcement army ever created for the protection of children.

While the child exploitation industry is global in scale, the majority of both supply and demand is based right here, within the United States. Due to the lack of attention to this issue by the Department of Justice, it is hard to quantify the number of child pornography traffickers that are involved in this gross violation of our children's rights; the best estimates are that this practice involves 485,000 perpetrators in the United States alone. A 2005 Justice Department study found that:

80 percent of child pornography possessors have images and videos depicting sexual penetration.

Twenty percent of child pornography possessors have images of bondage, sadistic abuse, and torture.

Eighty-three percent of child pornography possessors have images of children aged 6-12.

Nineteen percent of child pornography possessors have images of infants or toddlers.

Only 1 percent of child pornography possessors restricted their ``collecting'' to images of nude children.

Law enforcement reports of websites providing live ``pay-per-view'' rape of very young children.

Mr. Speaker, we must act now to protect our children from these atrocities and this legislation is an important first step in doing so. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's' (NCMEC) mission is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation; help find missing children; and assist victims of child abduction and sexual exploitation, their families, and the professionals who serve them. Established in 1984, NCMEC is a nonprofit organization that provides crucial services nationwide for families and professionals in the prevention of abducted, endangered, and sexually exploited children.

Mr. Speaker, as technology continues to evolve, there are continuously a new range of tools available to NCMEC to employ in its important work. In recent years, the Center's workload has expanded exponentially, largely due to the growth of the Internet. Ernie Allen, president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, stated that it anticipates in excess of 110,000 reports through the CyberTipline, which the public may use to report Internet- related child sexual exploitation, and provides technical assistance to individuals and law-enforcement agencies in the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and treatment of cases involving missing and exploited children, among other tasks. This is an increase of around 3,500 from last year.

Mr. Speaker, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has proven a crucial tool in combating the exploitation and abduction of our Nation's children. It is vital that we continue to ensure that it continues to receive the funding that it needs to carry out its mission. This Congress has taken a firm stance on supporting legislation that protects our children, as can be seen by the passage of numerous pieces of legislation that binds our government to take meaningful action towards the protection of our children. I was a proud cosponsor of the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2007, introduced by my distinguished colleague from Florida, Representative Wasserman-Schultz, which passed the House 415-2 last month. Our children are this Nation's most valuable asset and this legislation ensures that we will invest all the necessary resources to provide them the protection they deserve.

This legislation is imperative to ensuring the protecting our Nation's children by providing funding to those agencies with our children's best interest at heart. As the Chair of the Congressional Children's Caucus, a Representative of the people of the United States, and a mother of two, I am proud to support this legislation and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2517, the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007, which will amend the Missing Children's Assistance Act to authorize appropriations and for other purposes, and I want to commend both the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), the chairwoman, for their leadership on this issue at the committee level and with the sponsorship of the legislation. And also on my side of the aisle, I commend the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert) who will be speaking shortly for her leadership on this very important issue.

Every year, thousands of children are abducted or go missing. In 1984, Congress recognized the need for greater coordination of local, State, and Federal efforts to recover these children, and established the Missing and Exploited Children's Program under the Missing Children's Assistance Act. This act addresses the needs of missing, abducted, and sexually exploited children. The program was created to coordinate and support various Federal missing children's programs through the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP, and includes the authorization for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The National Center is a not-for-profit corporation mandated by Congress which works in partnership with the Department of Justice. The center is funded in part by Congress and in part by the private sector and serves as the national resource center and clearinghouse for information on missing and exploited children. The National Center carries out many of the objectives of the Missing Children's Assistance Act in collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The National Center provides assistance to families and law enforcement agencies in locating and recovering missing and exploited children, both nationally and internationally. While the National Center receives leads on abducted, runaway, and sexually exploited youth and disseminates this information to various investigative law enforcement units, the center

itself does not conduct the investigation of these cases.

The National Center's Federal funding supports specific operational functions mandated by Congress, including a national 24-hour toll-free hot line; a distribution system for missing child photos; a system of case management and technical assistance to law enforcement and families; training programs for Federal, State and local law enforcement; and programs designed to help stop the sexual exploitation of children.

Today, more missing children come home safely than ever before; however, there is still important work to be done. Hundreds of children still do not make it home each year, and many more continue to be victimized by acts of violence. In fact, children are the most victimized segment of our society and crimes committed against children of all ages are the most underreported of any victim category.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has worked with law enforcement on more than 133,000 missing child cases, and has played a role in reuniting more than 115,000 children with their families. With a 96.2 percent recovery rate, up from 62 percent in 1990, the National Center has analyzed more than 500,000 reports of crimes against children on the Internet and referred them to law enforcement, resulting in hundreds of arrests and successful prosecutions.

Today, law enforcement is responding more swiftly and effectively to reports of missing children. There is a national network in place, and parents are more alert, more aware, and talking to their children about their safety. With the changes made through this legislation, the Missing Children's Assistance Act and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children will continue their important efforts focused on protecting our vulnerable missing children.

Again, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) for his sponsorship of this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentlelady from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert), who as has been referenced has been a true champion for protecting our Nation's children.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers. I will just urge a ``yes'' vote and again commend the Members and staff who have worked diligently on bringing this legislation to the floor, and look forward to its passage.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, tomorrow, the country will commemorate Missing Children's Day. Ceremonies at the Department of Justice and elsewhere will remember our commitment to work together in locating and recovering missing children. I am proud that today, Congress has also realized its obligation to our Nation's children by passing the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007, which takes important steps toward this goal.

For more than 5 months, one Senator has prevented this important legislation from becoming law. This is regrettable. The authorization for National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC, and all that it does to help children and families expires at the end of this fiscal year. This is a bill that passed the House by a vote of 408 to 3. There were 95 cosponsors in the House, both Democrats and Republicans. I introduced a Senate companion bill with Senator Hatch, Senator Landrieu, and Senator Shelby last summer. The Senator Judiciary Committee considered and reported our Senate bill, S. 1829, last December. We have been trying to pass it in the Senate ever since. I am glad the objecting Senator has reconsidered his hold on this legislation. The National Center will now have the security of being able to plan and to maintain their services and staff for the future.

It pains us all to see photo after photo of missing children from all around our country. As a father and grandfather, I can imagine that an abducted child is any parent's worst nightmare. Unfortunately, it is a nightmare that happens all too often. Indeed, the Justice Department estimates that 2,200 children are reported missing each day. There are approximately 114,600 attempted stranger abductions every year, with 3,000 to 5,000 of those attempts succeeding. These families need the assistance of the American people and a helping hand from Congress.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children spearheads national efforts to locate and recover missing children and raises public awareness about ways to prevent child abduction, molestation, and sexual exploitation. Further, NCMEC works to make our children safer by acting as a national voice and advocate for those too young to vote or speak up for their own rights.

The national center's professionals have busy, stressful and important jobs. They have worked on more than 127,700 cases of missing and exploited children since the national center's 1984 founding, helping to recover more than 110,200 children. The national center reports that it raised its recovery rate from 64 percent in the 1990s to 96 percent today. It has set up three nationwide tip lines: a toll free, 24-hour telephone hotline to take reports about missing children and clues that might lead to their recovery; a national child pornography tipline to handle calls from individuals reporting the sexual exploitation of children through the production and distribution of pornography; and a cybertipline to process online leads from individuals reporting the sexual exploitation of children. The national center has taken the lead in circulating millions of photographs of missing children, and it serves as a vital resource for the 17,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation who are one the frontlines in the search for missing children and in the pursuit of adequate child protection.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children manages to do all of this good work with an annual DOJ grant, which is set to expire after fiscal year 2008. It is important to act now to extend its authorization so that it can continue to help keep children safe and families intact around our Nation. We should continue to do everything we can to protect our children and I thank my friends on both sides of the aisle for joining me in this effort.