Amy and Vicky Child Pornography Victim Restitution Improvement Acqt of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, the bill before us proves the axiom that big things come in small packages. This bill, the Amy and Vicky Child Pornography Victim Restitution Improvement Act, may only be several pages long, but it is a very big bill.

In 1994, by enacting the Violence Against Women Act, Congress required that defendants who commit certain crimes pay restitution to their victims. I had a lot to do with that bill. These are crimes--such as the sexual exploitation of children--that have a particularly devastating impact on victims, and they need help to put their lives back together.

Last year, in a case titled ``Paroline v. United States,'' the Supreme Court concluded that the restitution statute cannot provide the restitution that Congress promised for child pornography victims. The only way to fix this problem is to amend the restitution statute in a way that accounts for the insidious and evil nature of child pornography itself.

The Supreme Court held in Paroline that under the statute as currently written, a victim can seek restitution only for losses that are directly related to an individual defendant's distribution or possession of specific images of her abuse. That is not only virtually impossible to prove, but it pretends that defendants and images are isolated and self-contained. The truth is that in the Internet age, defendants are part of a growing, shifting, and constantly active group of individuals who keep the victimization going.

As the Supreme Court put it in Paroline last year, each viewing of child pornography is a repetition of the child's abuse. Everyone who drives the trafficking in those images repeats that abuse and contributes to a victim's losses. Some of them will be caught and prosecuted, while others will hide in the shadows and seek safety in numbers.

The harsh reality for a victim is that the Internet has multiplied the number of individuals who harm her and, at the same time, made it harder to identify them so she can seek restitution--or should I say, she really can't seek restitution.

The bill before us today addresses this cruel catch-22. This bill is named for Amy and Vicky, the victims in two of the most widely viewed child pornography series in the world.

When I reintroduced this bill on January 28, I also shared the story of Andy, a young man in Utah who is the victim in another widely distributed child pornography series.

He is the named victim in more than 700 cases but has been granted restitution under Paroline in only one-quarter of the cases in which he has sought it and actually received restitution in just two of those cases.

This bill provides judges with options for calculating a victim's total losses and imposing restitution in different kinds of cases. That is not always easy for the very reason that I just described. A judge must impose restitution in an individual case for losses that flow from ongoing harm. But that is the diabolical nature of child pornography, and we must equip the criminal justice system to address it.

This bill helps victims in another important way. Today a victim must chase every single defendant to seek restitution, only to be told that she must seek the impossible and, therefore, receive next to nothing. In addition to providing a way for judges to require meaningful restitution in individual cases, this bill allows defendants who harm the same victim to seek contribution from each other to spread that restitution cost.

Let me put it as simply as I can. The current statute maximizes a victim's burden and minimizes her restitution. This bill minimizes a victim's burden and maximizes her restitution.

Both Amy and Vicky personally endorse this bill. National victim advocacy groups also support it, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Crime Victim Law Institute, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

Last October I received a letter endorsing this bill signed by the attorneys general of 43 States--22 Republicans and 21 Democrats. This has, in fact, been a truly bipartisan effort.

The senior Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, has been my partner from the start in developing this legislation and has been a champion for crime victims for many years. It is important to have him on this bill. He is one of the great leaders in the Senate today, and we intend to do more together in the future.

The cosponsors include 22 Republicans and 17 Democrats. Big things really do come in small packages.

I have been contacted by advocates working with dozens of countries around the world to tackle the problem of child pornography and exploitation. They emphasize the need for meaningful restitution and say that this legislation can be an example for other countries to follow.

Congress in 1994 required full restitution for child victims of sexual exploitation. The Supreme Court last year confirmed that the restitution statute cannot keep that promise to victims of child pornography.

Enacting this legislation shows Congress at its best, stepping up and taking the action necessary to address this problem. Amy, Vicky, and Andy are counting on us.

This is an extremely important bill. It means that victims of child pornography--usually videos that are shipped all around the world and seen by, maybe, millions--have the chance of being able to get true restitution under this bill. Before that, they would have to go and sue everyone who was involved, and there is no way they could find that out, no way they could really do that, no way they could really get restitution and justify the attorneys' fees, and no way they could really vindicate themselves and show these people, these horrible people who do these things to children, that they are not going to get away with it anymore.

This bill eliminates all of that. This bill makes it possible for the victims of pornography and childhood exploitation to be able to recover and to get restitution for the very poor treatment they have undergone.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Source