Terminating Restrictive Enforcement of Youth Settlements Law

Floor Speech

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Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, when Lisa Smith was just 3 years old, she was trafficked--just a sweet little toddler, blond hair, the cutest little thing, not much younger than my daughter is now. When she should have been outside, kicking a soccer ball, playing with dollies, on a playground, with little friends, she was, instead, being abused--and in the most brutal, brutal fashion.

Her predator abused her and mutilated her and took pictures of it and videos and posted them to the internet, to the dark corners of the web, for the sick adulation of other predators.

This went on for months and then for years. And that is where Federal investigators first found Lisa, first noticed her, first saw the images. They could see this beautiful little girl. They could see the sick torture that she was being forced to endure. They could see the pain in her face. But they had no idea where she was.

They had all of the images. They saw all of what she was suffering through. They knew that she was out there. They knew that somebody was posting this over and over and over again. She knew that other predators were looking at it, and they were responding to it, but they didn't know where to find her. They didn't know how to rescue her.

I wish I could say that Lisa's case is unique. I wish I could say that there were no other children like her in America. But the sad fact of the matter is that Lisa's case is increasingly common in the United States of America today.

I want you to take a look at this poster. This is the United States, and these red dots represent the IP addresses of individuals who have shared child rape images in just the last 6 months. There are 338,000 dots on that map. Let me say that again: 338,000 dots of known instances where a predator has shared, posted to the internet, images of child rape, child abuse, child sexual exploitation.

The number of child exploitation reports last year increased to 20.5 million in this country--20 million reports of child exploitation, the vast majority of those tied to online child exploitation.

Interpol estimates that there are 90,000 images that the government has of child rape, child exploitation, child sexual abuse. But what we don't know is who the child is or where she is--90,000 of these images but we don't know where they are. We don't know how to rescue them.

This is the crisis that is increasingly confronting every American family. Every family with children faces the risk that their child-- when they log on, when they post something on the web, when they get a phone--that they will be solicited by a predator, that they will be lured into a dangerous situation by a predator, that they will themselves be trafficked--children taken from their homes, children lured away and kidnapped, children forced into sex slavery all across this country.

We know they are out there. We can see the images, but we don't know how to find them. And the internet has made this a crisis all across the country. It has made it a pressing crisis for every family in America.

The truth is, while child abuse is, sadly, a longstanding phenomenon, child predation and child trafficking now are fed and nourished and nurtured by social media, by companies that know that these images are being posted and don't do anything about it, by the purveyors of online platforms that allow their entire platform to be taken over and essentially run as a child trafficking ring.

The internet has made it much, much worse. It has made it a crisis. It has brought this problem to the doorstep of every family in this country.

And the question that I want to ask today is: What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do for the tens of thousands of children, like Lisa, who are out there, who are in need, who are being abused, who are being brutalized? Even as we stand here on this floor, for those children who need rescue, what will we do for them today?

Because the time has come to do something. The time for merely standing by and sitting back and hoping for the best has passed. There are too many children whose lives are being destroyed, even as we speak.

We have terrific Federal investigators whose job is, whose work is to identify and find these children. At the Department of Homeland Security, there is an entire unit called the cyber crimes unit that contains and includes forensic investigators who analyze the sorts of images that were posted here, that you see reflected on this map, who analyze them and try to find where the children are.

Here is the only problem with that. There are only seven of them. That is right. There are seven forensic analysts, seven experts who can analyze these images--90,000 images, at least, that the Government knows of, with these lost children; 20 million reports of sexual exploitation; and yet only seven analysts who are able to identify and rescue these children.

If you look at this map again, there is a sea of red dots. If you look closely, there are also blue dots, but you would be hard-pressed to find them. The blue dots represent the number of active investigations of child sexual abuse, of child online predation. They are completely lost in the sea of red.

Our children are increasingly lost to predators, to traffickers, to abusers. And, yet, our government is not doing nearly enough about it.

The investigators are there. They are capable. They are ready. They need help.

What can they do? What could the Department of Homeland Security, what could law enforcement do if they had the resources, if they had the support that they needed?

Well, I will give you a sense of it. They could do what they did for Lisa. What happened was Lisa's predator posted images of her online, and an investigator in the cyber crimes unit at Homeland saw the pictures and started drilling down on them.

He started analyzing every frame, every second of the videos, every little detail of the photos, everything he could get his hands on. And he started noticing a few telling signs, a few clues that maybe Lisa was somewhere in the southern part of the United States.

And then, one day, he was able to make out a playground and able to drill down, to zoom in on the playground equipment with enough specificity that he could begin to run it across other images of playgrounds in cities across the South. And, sure enough, in time, he was able to isolate which playground this was in the particular city in the South.

And after that, Homeland sent a team of investigators to start walking blocks--that is right; get out on the streets and walk them--to start walking up and down to see where exactly is that playground. Would Lisa come back to it? Where else might she be? Are there other children in the region who might know, to interview, to talk, to see?

And here is what happened. They found her. They found her. As it turns out, she had never left home. You see, her predator--her abuser-- was her father, who from the time that she was an infant serially raped and brutalized her and posted all those images.

And, you know, he thought he was really clever about it. He took a lot of careful steps to keep his identity a secret. But these investigators, these great law enforcement, these cops--that is really what they are at Homeland Security--they were better. Oh, they are good. They are very good. They found her. They got him. They rescued her.

There are tens of thousands of other children just like Lisa. It is time to rescue them. We can do it. We can help them today. We can send more investigators into the streets. We can put more cops onto the beat. We can stand up a program to train State and local and Federal law enforcement agents together, to combine their efforts, to work together to bring home children like Lisa. We can do it. The time has come to do it.

And I am here to say we will do it because in the Homeland funding bill that this body will take up in short order, there is the largest investment in anti-child trafficking in the history of this body. This bill contains funding and directives for 200 new agents and investigators to go after child traffickers--from 7 to 200--200 new cops who can analyze those images, who can go after the traffickers, and who can go rescue children like Lisa.

It also contains new funds for programs to bring together State and local and Federal law enforcement to coordinate their efforts and to deploy them together into the field to rescue our children.

It was an incredible privilege to work on this legislation and to get it into this bill. And I particularly want to thank my dear friend and a terrific advocate for children across this country, Tim Tebow.

Yes, you heard me right: the Heisman Trophy winner and NFL quarterback, who I think will be known, when it is all said and done, for something other than sports. I think what Tim will be best known for is his love and compassion for the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable.

Tim has been working on this for years. He has been to Homeland. He has seen the cyber crimes unit. And, together, he and I worked on this legislation to create these 200 new investigators--200 new cops--to get out there and go rescue kids--new programs for State and local law enforcement. And with his support and the support of my colleagues, it is now in this legislation.

I hope, in 48 hours' time or less, we will be able to say we have voted to send these rescuers out onto the streets; we have voted to save these children.

The time is now. This is a moral challenge for this body to stand and protect the most vulnerable among us, our children--to stand and protect those who need it most, to say that we will no longer sit back and make excuses, but we will act to save. We will act to rescue. We will act to help the weak. We will act to save these children.

Let's do it. Let's do it now.

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