Senate Approves Dorgan-Backed Legislation to Fight Child Exploitation

Press Release

SENATE APPROVES DORGAN-BACKED LEGISLATION TO FIGHT CHILD EXPLOITATION

Says that legislation passed today provides much needed resources toward investigating child crimes

Legislation co-sponsored by U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to fight the growing problem of child exploitation passed the Senate last night. Dorgan says the bill, called the Combating Child Exploitation Act (S. 1738), will boost resources to crack down on child predators.

The Department of Justice and the FBI have testified before Congress that child exploitation is growing rapidly. New investigative techniques have allowed law enforcement to identify nearly 500,000 individuals trafficking child pornography over the Internet. Due to the lack of resources at the federal, state and local level, we are investigating only 2 percent of the known offenders. Research shows that if these cases were investigated, the victim of child exploitation could be rescued 30 percent of the time. The bill includes $1 billion to combat child exploitation over the next five years.

"We must do everything in our power to protect our children from Internet predators," said Dorgan. "This legislation addresses two problems that have been impeding the investigation of these crimes: lack of funding and a lack of collaboration between law enforcement agencies. As an early supporter of this bill, I am glad to see it finally pass the Senate and to see this problem be adequately addressed."

The bill requires the attorney general to establish a formula grant program for the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program, funded at $60 million per year for the next five years. This will ensure that local agencies have the additional resources necessary to create robust cyber units with highly trained investigators. This funding is in addition to the $30 million increase in funding for ICAC that Senator Dorgan secured this June in the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill, an increase of $5 million over the previous funding level.

Among the bill's provisions is the creation of a national strategy for child exploitation prevention and interdiction, which will develop a strategy to have the nation's collective resources work together to combat this problem. The legislation also allots $2 million per year to establish increased forensic capacity for child exploitation cases at the Regional Computer Forensic Labs (RCFL).

In 2006, Senator Dorgan was the author of "Dru's Law," which created a national sex offender registry that the public can access through the internet.

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