SAVE Act of 2014

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his incredible, principled work in so many areas, and I want to note his hard work on combating mandatory sentences. I feel that he is right in many ways. But because this crime is so out of control, I am strongly supporting my colleague and cochair, Representative Wagner's bill.

We cochair the caucus on antitrafficking in the women's caucus, and this bill is designed to stop the advertising of children for exploitation in sex trafficking. And we have tried over and over to stop it.

I will now place in the Record a letter that Marsha Blackburn and I wrote addressing the online promotion of human trafficking, meetings, and letters. It went nowhere.

Congress of the United States

Washington, DC., April 3, 2012.

Larry Page,

Chief Executive Officer, Google, Inc., Mountain View, CA.

Dear Mr. Page: As Members of Congress committed to

combating all forms of human trafficking, we write to you

with concerns about reports of Google's advertising

practices. Recently, dozens of human rights groups called on

the National Association of Attorneys General to investigate

Google's advertising practices that these groups believe

contribute to the problem of human trafficking in America and

globally.

Whatever Google is doing or is not doing to prevent these

sorts of advertisements from appearing on their properties,

Google has not satisfied a significant number of human

rights organizations who have a specialized understanding of

how these ads contribute to the human trafficking of women

and girls. We are particularly concerned that these human

rights groups may have identified yet another area where

Google profits from illicit activities such as Google's

advertising of controlled substances for which your company

paid a $500,000,000 forfeiture to the United States last

year.

Accordingly, we request that you provide us with answers to

the following initial questions we have regarding these

developments:

1. Apart from Google's donations to large human rights

organizations, what is your company doing internally to

ensure that sexually exploitative advertisements do not

appear?

2. What is Google's stated internal policy regarding

exploitative advertising? What evidence do you have that

those policies are being complied with by both Google's

internal and external advertising sales teams?

3. What steps does Google take to instruct its advertising

sales managers, consultants, and other employees regarding

the evaluation of advertisers of such exploitative marketing?

4. If Google were to determine that it profits from such

advertising, what steps would you take to ensure those

profits were publicly disclosed and then disgorged? Would

that process require restating Google's earnings for past

securities filings?

Online markets provide traffickers with the ability to

reach untold customers across all political jurisdictions. As

a global leader and innovator in internet technologies,

Google is in a unique position to do its part to fight human

exploitation and trafficking, and we would encourage the

company to proactively address these concerns.

We look forward to your reply and to engaging with Google

cooperatively to stop human trafficking in America and around

the world.

Sincerely,

Marsha Blackburn,

Member of Congress.

Carolyn Maloney,

Member of Congress.

I will now place in the Record a letter that Congressman Nadler and I wrote to Web sites of the media trying to stop them from promoting our children as sex objects. They are still doing it.

Maloney and Nadler Call On Village Voice Media To Shut Down Website

Frequented by Sex Traffickers--May 7, 2012

New York, NY.--U.S. Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (D-

NY) and Jerrold L. Nadler (D-NY) today sent a letter to

Village Voice Media, LLC expressing concerns about the

frequency with which that company's Backpage.com website is

used to advertise minors and trafficked persons and urging it

to shut down its notorious ``adult services'' section.

In a statement accompanying the release of the joint

letter, whose full text is included below, Congresswoman

Maloney said: ``Law enforcement authorities and anti-

trafficking advocates agree that the adult services section

of Village Voice's Backpage.com is the single busiest online

marketplace for the sexual trafficking of minors and

trafficking victims anywhere in the United States. It is high

time the Voice lived up to its reputation as a beacon of

progressivism, and shut down this cesspool.'' Rep. Maloney

serves as Co-Chair of the bipartisan Congressional Human

Trafficking Caucus, which works to educate people about the

reality of the trade in human lives and toward its

eradication.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler said, ``The Village Voice must

ensure that it is not in any way assisting in the horrific

business of sex trafficking. Clearly Backpage.com has not

done enough to prevent human trafficking on its site. They

should shut down their adult services page immediately,

before it is used by criminals to further promote human

trafficking.''

Background:

The sexual trafficking of minors, which is illegal under

federal and New York State law, is on the rise in the United

States and around the world, with most knowledgeable

estimates of the number of domestic under-age trafficking

victims in the tens of thousands. The U.S. Department of

Justice estimates the average age at which minors begin to be

exploited by sex traffickers is between the ages of 12 and 14

for girls and between the ages of 11 and 13 for boys.

The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act

of 2008 established criminal penalties for those found guilty

of acting with ``reckless disregard'' for the sexual

exploitation of minors. In New York City alone, the District

Attorneys of Kings, Queens and Manhattan have all pressed

charges against alleged traffickers who used Backpage.com to

market sex to potential johns.

Nineteen United States Senators and 51 Attorneys General

have joined the growing chorus of calls from non-profit

advocates and organizations urging Village Voice Media to

remove the adult services section from Backpage.com. On April

25, 2012, S. Res. 439 was introduced expressing the sense of

the Senate that Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC should

eliminate the ``adult entertainment'' section of the

classified advertising website Backpage.com. A New York City

Council hearing on human trafficking held last month included

pointed questioning from several Council Members to

representatives of Backpage.com, as well as testimony from

local district attorneys about the use of the website by a

large proportion of the traffickers they have prosecuted.

Text of Letter from Representatives Maloney and Nadler to

Village Voice Media, LLC.

I don't know how to do it unless we have a concrete law. And this law is not without precedent. Congress has passed laws to criminalize the advertising of illegal goods. They have passed laws to criminalize the advertising of child pornography, of weapons of mass destruction, and of narcotics. Surely, we can pass a law that criminalizes selling children as sex objects. We have tried meetings, we have tried letters, we have tried sanctions, and we have tried press. We have tried everything. I don't know how we stop it unless we pass a law that says it is illegal.

I want to tell a story. I first got involved in combating sex trafficking because a company in my district called Big Apple Tours was advertising online, publishing pamphlets of going to Thailand, to the Philippines or upstate New York with pictures of children. You can have as many as you want. I wrote a letter complaining. This is how brazen they were. They took my letter and put it on the Internet along with their advertising and made fun of it. Why is she complaining about the parties we are having?

So it has been out of control, and this is a step towards bringing it into control. The attorney general of New York went after them and took down their site. It no longer is up. But it shows how brazen these exploiters are. And it is big business. It is the third most profitable form of organized crime in our Nation preceded only by the selling of narcotics and the selling of illegal guns. But the selling of the human body can happen again and again until the person is sick and dies. You sell a gun once, and you sell a drug once. You can sell a young child over and over again.

We really have to do everything we can to stop it. This act adds advertising to the types of conduct that constitutes sex trafficking. It is common sense that if they are advertising the selling of a young child, it is sex trafficking. And we can stop it. This is something we can do that will literally save lives.

The FBI ranks this type of rape as preceded only by murder in terms of the destruction of what it does to an individual, and often the inability of that individual to live a normal life afterwards. It is a horrific crime, the 21st century form of slavery. I can't think of anything more abusive. And it is what is happening now in Nigeria to those young women.

It is happening right here in our backyard. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the women's caucus have heard testimony of foster children--of American children--that have been captured, tricked, and drugged. We heard a story on the floor today of a constituent's child, a child in his neighborhood, that was exploited.

By passing this bill, we can stop this advertising. We can cut off this form of exploitation and this abuse. I think that it is an important bill, and I am supporting it with reservation on the mandatory sentencing, which I hope will be cut out in the Senate, but it is important that we take steps to prevent it.

If we pass laws to stop the advertising of child pornography, we can certainly pass a law that stops the selling of a child in sex abuse.

I could go on all day. My time is expired. I thank the gentleman for his leadership. I know that many others want to speak on this important issue.

I congratulate Congresswoman Wagner on her persistence on this bill, and I am proud to support her.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4573) to protect children from exploitation, especially sex trafficking in tourism, by providing advance notice of intended travel by registered child sex offenders outside the United States to the government of the country of destination, requesting foreign governments to notify the United States when a known child sex offender is seeking to enter the United States, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material for the Record.

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

International Megan's Law, to prevent demand for child sex trafficking, will bolster law enforcement efforts to combat a crime that is worldwide. It affects hundreds of thousands of young children every year. In particular, this bill addresses an issue of child sex tourism, by which adults travel overseas.

They do this to exploit children in countries that are currently struggling to deal with this influx of child predators, and part of that influx is of Americans who are child predators.

Many children victimized by this appalling crime have also been trafficked--trafficked into prostitution--recruited or transferred or sold in order to be used sexually for someone's profit.

This bill helps fight back. This bill takes care of a problem that exists at present, as there are multiple U.S. agencies seeking to combat child trafficking, but not with any coordination, and they are not doing it in time to prevent those who try to travel overseas. We could be much more effective.

This bill officially recognizes an Angel Watch Center within the Department of Homeland Security's Child Exploitation Investigations Center. Operation Angel Watch originated as a partnership with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and it currently collects and analyzes the foreign travel date of convicted child sex offenders to determine whether the notification to U.S. officials or foreign governments is warranted.

Last year alone, Angel Watch sent 1,700 leads to 100 countries as part of this effort to proactively and strategically alert international law enforcement. Angel Watch's work is time-sensitive. Travel data is sometimes not made available within the 24 hours before a flight, while other helpful information collected by the Department of Justice is, in fact, not even shared with Angel Watch or is not shared soon enough.

This bill solidifies the Angel Watch Center as an important part of the U.S. response to child sex tourism, and importantly, it improves the timeliness of the information the center receives by requiring the Justice Department to share its travel records promptly. This will allow Angel Watch to better detect and to report the travel of child predators.

I want to thank the bill's author, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), for his persistent leadership and dedication to this issue. I would also like to recognize the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, as well as the ranking member, Mr. Eliot Engel from New York, for his assistance on this important measure.

Madam Speaker, I want to say something briefly about other bills that I have been involved with in today's antitrafficking package. One is H.R. 3530, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, introduced by Judge Poe, our colleague from Texas.

I want to thank the Committee on the Judiciary for consulting with the Foreign Affairs Committee to ensure that the bill makes progress both at home and also abroad.

On the Human Trafficking Congressional Advisory Committee that I established last year in southern California, I hear directly from advocates and from law enforcement and from survivors, themselves, about the insufficient resources that law enforcement has as a tool available to rescue victims and available to prosecute traffickers here in the U.S.

By ensuring a victims center allocation of resources, enhancing deterrents, and prioritizing the protection of trafficking and child pornography victims, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act represents important progress in this struggle.

I also strongly support H.R. 4225, the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation, or SAVE Act, introduced by the gentlelady from Missouri, Representative Wagner.

In 2013, revenue from U.S. online prostitution advertising totaled an estimated $45 million. As underscored by arrests in 22 States, those ads, such as on backpage.com, sometimes involve the marketing of children, of underage girls. This legislation will help stop this exploitation.

In March, more than 40 of us here in Congress wrote to urge Attorney General Eric Holder to take immediate action to end backpage.com's facilitation of the buying and selling of people, including of children. To date, we have not received a response. This legislation would produce that effect.

All five of the bills being considered today represent important steps towards abolishing the injustice of human trafficking, towards protecting vulnerable individuals, and towards restoring the dignity of those who have survived such exploitation. They deserve our strong support.

Madam Speaker, I submit for the Record an exchange of letters between me and Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee regarding this bill of which I am proud to be a cosponsor, and I would ask all Members here to support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives,

Committee on the Judiciary,

Washington, DC, May 13, 2014.

Hon. Ed Royce,

Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rayburn House Office

Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Royce: I am writing with respect to H.R.

4573, the ``International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for

Child Sex Trafficking'' which the Committee on Foreign

Affairs ordered reported favorably on May 9, 2014. As a

result of your having consulted with us on provisions in H.R.

4573 that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the

Committee on the Judiciary, I agree to discharge our

Committee from further consideration of this bill so that it

may proceed expeditiously to the House floor for

consideration.

The Judiciary Committee takes this action with our mutual

understanding that by foregoing consideration of H.R. 4573 at

this time, we do not waive any jurisdiction over subject

matter contained in this or similar legislation, and that our

Committee will be appropriately consulted and involved as

this bill

or similar legislation moves forward so that we may address

any remaining issues in our jurisdiction. Our Committee also

reserves the right to seek appointment of an appropriate

number of conferees to any House-Senate conference involving

this or similar legislation, and asks that you support any

such request.

I would appreciate a response to this letter confirming

this understanding with respect to H.R. 4573, and would ask

that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be

included in the Congressional Record during Floor

consideration of H.R. 4573.

Sincerely,

Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. He is also the author of this bill.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner), a member of the Committee on Financial Services and author of the SAVE Act, an important antitrafficking measure that was debated earlier this afternoon.

Madam Speaker, you have heard today about the unconscionable child sex tourism industry which has been operating now for years overseas. There are child victims at home here, too.

Our proactive efforts to help countries identify incoming child predators will also encourage them to alert us when those foreigners convicted of sex offenses against children attempt to enter the United States, just as we are going to control the process on this side.

I thank Mr. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Mr. Eliot Engel of New York, and I encourage Members to support passage of the International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, while I support the bipartisan efforts we are taking today with several bills to enhance our effort to prevent, investigate, and prosecute acts of sex trafficking, I must raise serious concerns about H.R. 4225, the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act of 2014, which I cannot support in its present form.

To be sure, the bill has the laudable goal of prosecuting those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking by advertising certain prohibited sex acts. However, I must object to the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions which this new offense would trigger under existing statutes.

Under the sex trafficking statute, as amended by this bill, a conviction for advertising of sex trafficking would result in a mandatory penalty of 10 or 15 years of imprisonment, depending on the age of the victim and other circumstances of the crime.

While the acts prohibited by the legislation will usually warrant such long sentences, mandatory minimum sentences are the wrong way to determine punishment under this or any other criminal statute.

Regardless of the nature or the circumstances surrounding the offense, the role of the offender in the particular crime or the history or characteristics of the offender, H.R. 4225 will require a judge to impose a 10- or 15-year sentence.

Even if everyone in the case, from the arresting officer, the prosecutor, the judge, even the victim believes that the mandatory minimum would be an unjust sentence for a particular defendant in a case, this bill still requires the sentence to be imposed.

The imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence is particularly troublesome when one considers the possible scope of defendants who could be prosecuted under this bill.

Notably, the prohibition on advertising does not only apply to the sex trafficker who places the ad, but also applies to individuals and entities who facilitate or have a minor role in publishing the ad, such as someone who works for an Internet Web site which is involved.

Those who are employed by a venture that benefits financially from the ad, but whose role in the organization does not place them in the chain of command with respect to acceptance or publishing the illegal ads could therefore be prosecuted under the bill.

Specifically, there may be circumstances in which all of the employees of a communications company, including receptionists or computer maintenance workers, know that the venture publishes such advertising, but chose to look the other way.

They should be held liable under the provisions of this bill, but many of them would certainly not warrant a mandatory sentence, in certain circumstances, of 15 years, not all of them.

During the Judiciary Committee's markup of the bill, I offered an amendment to remove the application of the mandatory minimum provisions of this new bill and, instead, allow a judge to apply an appropriate sentence under the circumstances of the case, up to a statutory maximum of life imprisonment.

Given the complicated nature of the Internet communications networks and other forms of advertising which would be affected by this bill, the role of the judge in evaluating each case is particularly important. While long sentences may be appropriate under the facts of a particular case, Congress cannot know the facts of every case in advance.

Removing mandatory minimums, while still permitting the lengthy statutory maximum penalty of life imprisonment, as my amendment would have done, will provide the appropriate spectrum of sentences for culpability and proportionate punishment.

Mandatory minimum penalties are already a major issue of concern for our criminal justice system, and we should not make matters worse by passing a new one with this bill. Studies of mandatory minimums have concluded that they fail to reduce crime, they waste the taxpayers' money, and they often require judges to impose sentences that simply violate common sense.

Therefore, I am pleased that the Judiciary Committee's bipartisan Over-Criminalization Task Force is working diligently to assess our Federal criminal code and make recommendations for improvements. The penalties, including mandatory minimums, in the Federal code are among the issues the task force will consider. And while these issues are under review, we should not be passing new mandatory minimum sentences. In fact, if we ever expect to eliminate mandatory minimums from the code, we must first stop passing new ones.

Now, mandatory minimums did not get into the code all at once but one at a time, each in a bill that otherwise made good sense. So if we are going to stop increasing the number of mandatory minimums, we must oppose bills that contain them.

So while I strongly support the efforts to do more to combat the serious problem of sex trafficking by taking steps such as strengthening our laws and providing additional resources for law enforcement and victims, I must, unfortunately, oppose this bill in its current form because it creates new mandatory minimums which can be expected to require a judge in the future to impose a sentence that violates common sense.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New Hampshire (Ms. Kuster).

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, mandatory minimums have resulted in bizarre sentences being imposed today. Girlfriends of drug dealers are serving decades behind bars because their sentences were based on the weight of the drugs involved in their boyfriend's drug dealings. Many other people are serving times clearly longer than required because of mandatory minimums.

Under this bill, if a Web site is raided, this bill could require the judge to impose 15-year sentences on each and every employee, from the receptionist to computer maintenance personnel, no discretion, no consideration of an individual's role in the enterprise, everybody gets 15 years.

So if a sentence violates common sense, mandatory minimums require the judge to impose it any way, so if we are ever going to try to address the problems created by mandatory minimums, we have to stop passing bills like this one that can require sentences of at least 10- 15 years, regardless of the facts in an individual case, even when the bill is otherwise worthy.

This is how so many mandatory minimums got into the code to begin with, one by one, each one in an otherwise worthy bill. The only way to begin to put an end to mandatory minimums is to stop passing new ones.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Virginia, Chairman Goodlatte, for his wonderful leadership on this issue and so many others.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4225, the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation, SAVE, Act. But, Madam Speaker, I also rise today in support of all the good work done by my colleagues here in Congress on the issue of human trafficking.

Madam Speaker, as a former United States Ambassador, I was exposed firsthand to the horrors of human trafficking on an international level. I reported on the devastating consequences of human trafficking, where innocent women and children were dragged into the dark abyss of sex slavery. But never in my darkest moments did I ever think that human trafficking was so rampant right here in the United States of America.

Madam Speaker, the faces behind me are photographs of actual victims of sex trafficking. These young women and children were forced into sexual slavery by ruthless traffickers. Madam Speaker, right now there are young women being forced into prostitution in virtually every district across the Nation. In fact, I was shocked to learn that my own hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, has been identified as one of the top 20 areas for sex trafficking in the United States.

Madam Speaker, this problem is hiding, hiding in plain sight. However, there is hope. I take hope from the work done by the law enforcement professionals who are on the front lines every single day, protecting our Nation's children from those who would seek to exploit them; I take hope from those who work in victims' services and their tireless efforts to help survivors recover, heal, and forge new lives out of the horrors of sexual enslavement; but most importantly, I take hope from all the survivors of this hideous crime. Their strength gives us strength; their resolve gives us inspiration; and their steadfast commitment to ending sex trafficking gives us the courage to fight.

Madam Speaker, because of the efforts of many individuals and groups, I am happy to report that Congress has taken notice of this serious problem. Years of work by Representatives Smith, Poe, and Paulsen, and my cochair of the Human Trafficking Task Force, Congresswoman Maloney, among the so many others who have raised awareness of this issue, have laid the foundation for the long overdue action for Congress that they are presently taking.

I am grateful that many of my colleagues have held events in their home districts to raise awareness and education of this crime. Representatives Davis, Hudson, Roskam, Coffman, Huizenga, and Heck, along with so very many others, have all held human trafficking events in their districts to raise awareness and offer solutions to end sexual assault and human trafficking. I applaud these efforts and look forward to continuing this work for years to come.

However, Madam Speaker, there is much work to be done. As legislators, we have an obligation to come together and do something because we can, because we should, and because we must.

Over the last 10 years, prostitution has slowly but persistently migrated to an online marketplace. Classified services, like backpage.com and others, are the vehicles for advertising the victims of the child sex trade to the world. Pimps and traffickers blatantly advertise their victims' sexual services, with provocative photographs and unsubtle messages, complete with per-hour pricing. The traffickers pay Web sites like Backpage to display their messages. These Web sites reportedly reap enormous profits at the expense of the victims of sex trafficking. Revenue from U.S. online prostitution advertising totaled $45 million just in the year 2013. Many of these ads feature children and trafficking victims. This results in thousands of children every year being openly sold for sex on the Internet.

Madam Speaker, government intervention is necessary to end facilitation of sex trafficking by Web sites like Backpage and others who commercially advertise this criminal activity. Companies that base their business models off of the profits made by selling sex with children should not be allowed to operate. The SAVE Act seeks

to criminalize this behavior, thereby dramatically reducing the victimization of vulnerable children and women forced into sexual slavery in the U.S.

The protections included in the SAVE Act apply to two classes of victims: underage children and those who are being forced to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The offense created by the SAVE Act applies to any form of advertisement. Online postings, newspaper classifieds, even billboards would be considered unlawful if the advertiser knew it would lead to sex trafficking.

Madam Speaker, there is well-established precedent for Congress to criminalize the advertising of illegal goods or services, including the advertisement of child pornography, weapons of mass destruction, illegal narcotics, and animal fighting. Surely--surely--advertisements offering sex with children should also be subject to the same restrictions. The penalties are 15 years to life if the victim, the child victim, is younger than 14 years old, 10 years to life if the child victim is 14 to 18 years old.

The advertisement of victims is the key link in the human trafficking chain. Businesses make millions of dollars every month connecting johns with pimps and their victims. This link needs to be broken. Criminalizing the advertisement of trafficking victims will stem the flow of money, resulting in a reduction of both demand and supply.

The victims of sex trafficking are not nameless, faceless children. They are our daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and neighbors. They are the vulnerable youth of our society, the ones who should be protected the most, not exploited for money and greed.

I urge my colleagues to support the SAVE Act because it will provide the tools necessary for law enforcement to combat the sexual exploitation and enslavement of women and children in the United States.

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

First of all, let me begin by thanking our distinguished chairman, Ed Royce, for his leadership on combating human trafficking in general and for his strong support for this legislation today. To him and his staff, I am deeply, deeply grateful.

Then, to Eliot Engel, the ranking member, we work as a team, and he works as a team, and it is one of the most bipartisan committees, probably, in the House.

Thank you for your leadership on this as well and for your kind words a moment ago. I do deeply appreciate it.

Madam Speaker, protecting women and children from violence and predatory behavior is among the highest duties and responsibilities of government.

So today is truly a historic day--a historic day in the struggle to end human trafficking and to protect the weakest and must vulnerable from modern-day slavery.

As prime author of the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as well as reauthorizations of that law in 2003 and 2005, I believe the five bills under consideration by the House today will significantly prevent the horrific crime of human trafficking, protect and assist victims, and prosecute those who exploit and abuse.

Madam Speaker, as we all know, legislative priorities in the U.S. House of Representatives don't happen by default, nor by happenstance. I especially want to single out Majority Leader Eric Cantor for his extraordinary leadership in ensuring that these five bills--and there will be others, I am sure, in their wake--were brought to the floor.

There were multiple referrals to committees and subcommittees. I know that our bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee--we worked very closely with the Judiciary Committee and their staff--as well as Homeland Security, which also was very supportive. It is that kind of coordination and leadership that makes what looks like an easy walk-- and this has not been an easy walk for these bills; it never is--to come to the floor today with all of the differences of opinion.

We are united on the floor of the House of Representatives today in saying in a bipartisan way absolutely ``no'' to this crime of human trafficking.

So thank you Eric Cantor for that leadership. It is deeply, deeply appreciated.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 4573, the International Megan's Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking, is a serious attempt to mitigate child sex tourism by noticing countries of destination concerning the travel plans of convicted pedophiles. And to protect American children, the bill encourages the President of the United States and everyone else, like the Secretary of State, to use bilateral agreements and assistance to establish reciprocal notification so that we will know when a convicted child abuser comes to the United States.

Madam Speaker, in 1994, a young girl in my district, then my hometown of Hamilton Township, was lured into the home of a convicted pedophile who lived across the street from her home. Megan Kanka, 7 years old, was raped and murdered.

No one, including Megan Kanka's parents or any of the other neighbors, knew that their neighbor across the street had been convicted twice and jailed for child sexual assault.

The combination of concern for at-risk children and outrage towards those who abuse them led to enactment of Megan's Law--public sex offender registries--in every State in the country. In 2006, Chairman Sensenbrenner nationalized the whole idea and concept of the registry as part of his historic law, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.

Madam Speaker, it is imperative that we take the lessons learned on how to protect our children from known child sex predators within our borders and expand those to children globally. Child predators thrive on secrecy, a secrecy that allows them to commit heinous crimes against children with impunity and without any meaningful accountability. Megan's Law, with its emphasis on notification, must go global to protect American children and children worldwide.

Let's not forget the prevalence or the size of this abuse. Nobody knows for sure exactly how many, but the International Labor Organization estimates that 1.8 million children are victims of commercial sexual exploitation around the world every year.

Madam Speaker, it is also worth noting that in 2010 the Government Accountability Office issued a report entitled, ``Current Situation Results in Thousands of Passports Issued to Registered Sex Offenders.'' They found that at least 4,500 U.S. passports were issued to registered sex offenders in fiscal year 2008 alone. The GAO emphasized that this number is probably understated due to the limitations of the data that it was able to access and analyze.

Thank you, Chairman Royce.

Meanwhile, the law enforcement and media reports continue to document Americans on the U.S. sex offender registries who were caught sexually abusing children in East Asia and Central and South America and everyplace in the world. It is the same horror movie replayed over and over. We must do more to warn destination countries so that they can, in turn, protect their children from sex tourism. We have the information and technology that is employed to protect children.

Madam Speaker, I ask Members to support this legislation. It is the second time that we have brought this bill to the floor. It is slightly different than it was in 2010. It passed then. It got no action in the United States Senate.

I hope all five of these historic bills are taken up in a very timely fashion by the U.S. Senate because protecting the weakest and the most vulnerable--women, children, and especially the at-risk population-- from this cruelty must be an imperative. And the Senate needs to act, as we are acting.

I would like to thank the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for their support of the legislation.