National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

Floor Speech

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Mrs. WAGNER. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment to the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which addresses the shocking rise in child sexual abuse and exploitation in the United States and around the world.

Last year, there were over 32 million reports of online child sexual abuse material, an 89 percent increase since 2019.

The Pentagon's Combating Trafficking in Persons Office coordinates vital programs to prevent human trafficking, bring perpetrators to justice, and to protect victims.

My amendment will direct this office to analyze ways that the Department can better combat child sexual abuse and to recommend educational programs for servicemembers to identify and report exploitation, both online and offline, to law enforcement.

I thank the chair and the ranking member for their hard work on this legislation, and I urge all my colleagues to support this commonsense bipartisan amendment.

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