WASHINGTON (BP)–President Bush has called on parents and the federal government to increase their efforts to protect children from pornography and sexual predators on the Internet.
After a White House meeting with law enforcement officials who specialize in combating online predators, Bush urged the Senate to pass a new ban on “virtual” child pornography and announced increased initiatives in protecting children.
“Anyone who targets a child for harm will be a primary target of law enforcement,” Bush said after the Oct. 23 meeting. “That’s our commitment. Anyone who takes the life or innocence of a child will be punished to the full extent of the law.”
Bush called on the Senate to follow the lead of the House of Representatives and adopt the Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act. The House approved the bill with a 413-8 vote in June.
The measure bans computer-generated images of children in sexually explicit acts online. It is designed to overcome the Supreme Court’s objections to a 1996 law that also prohibited “virtual” child porn. In April, the high court struck down portions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act as “overbroad and unconstitutional.”
The president announced he would seek to increase funding for the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces from $6.5 million to $12.5 million in the next fiscal year. Such an increase would expand the task force network from 30 states to at least 40 states, according to the White House. Since 1998, the task forces have trained more than 1,500 prosecutors and 1,900 investigators in the fight against child sexual exploitation, the White House reported.
Bush also will increase the budget for the FBI’s Innocent Images initiative in order to expand the number of undercover operations from 24 to about 30 in the next financial year. Prosecutions through Innocent Images, which investigates sexual predators, have increased by 52 percent the last two fiscal years, according to the White House.
The president’s budget for 2003 also calls for an increase for the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section to $4.9 million, marking a rise of 44 percent in two years.
Bush said the “chief responsibility to protect America’s children” rests with their parents and offered some practical suggestions. He encouraged parents to keep computers at a central site, check on their children’s Internet use, advise them not to give out information, such as passwords, and warn them not to meet with someone they communicated with via the Internet.
The White House reported the following information in a fact sheet on online pornography and predators:
— 75 percent of children from ages 14 to 17 use the Internet.
— 20 percent of children between 10 and 17 received an online sexual solicitation during the last year.
— One in 33 children was asked to meet an online solicitor or received a phone call or regular gifts or mail.
When the Supreme Court struck down the ban on “virtual” child porn and images promoted as children, an outcry went up from pro-family groups and porn opponents. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called it “a dark day for the court and an even darker day for the nation’s children. This egregious and dangerous decision is one more sad illustration of the extent to which we have become a society that champions the so-called rights and privileges of adults over the protection and welfare of children.”
Among those meeting with Bush about child exploitation were Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, FBI Director Robert Mueller, U.S. Customs Service Commissioner Robert Bonner and representatives of Innocent Images, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces, the Postal Inspection Service, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and federal and state attorneys.
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