Transcripts For CSPAN3 Child Advocates And Investigators Testify On Crimes Against Children 20170317

Comey will brief members of the House Intelligence Committee to answer questions about russias influence in the 2016 president ial election. Well have live coverage monday morning at 10 00 eastern on cspan 3. Back in the house judiciary committee, prosecutors of crimes against children testified on the federal policy that helps and hurts their efforts. A warning that some of the testimony is graphic in nature and may not be sitabe suitable younger viewers. The committee will come to order. The subskmity of Homeland Security and investigations. We welcome everyone to todays hearing on combatting crimes against children. And i will recognize myself for an Opening Statement and then i will recognize the gentleman from michigan and the chairman of the full committee if hes able to make it and we will begin our questioning. So i want to thank each of you for being here today. Todays hearing address is one of the most difficult to contemplate. The societys most vulnerable, which would be our children. Public safety is the preeminent function and protecting those who cannot fully protect themselves is most important. Today begins our exploitation of women and to evaluate the effectiveness of these laws and Work Together across every perverbial aisle and make sure our laws are effective as possible. Strengthen where feed needed. Want to thank our witnesses for being here today and more importantly for every day other than today. While youre living out your commitment and dedication to preventing Child Exploitation and abuse. No longer is it simply physical proximity that puts our children in danger. The internet have created an alternative world where they can exploit our children through just a few strokes on the keyboard. Not only are they finding vulnerable victims, theyre finding others that share their depravities, leading to even more egregious and criminal behavior. The images being produced on the internet today target even younger children including infants with ever more graphic images. Congress has enacted a number of lieus from exploitation. In 1984 they established the National Center for preventing child abduction and Sexual Exploitation. Find missing children and to assist victims and their families. Its played a Critical Role in not only contributing to Public Awareness on the internet but also in assisting Law Enforcement by facilitating the reporting of these creams so they can be rescued. Tragically more often than not, redistributed time and time again, the victim can be revictimized hundreds of times over. This permanent depiction of abuse can effect them the remainder of their lives. There is no statute of limitations on your own personal suffering. This National Center for missing and exploited children, were able to use certain technology so we can assure theyre fully able to seek justice. In 1998, Congress Passed the crimes against children and Violent Offender act. 2006 the adam walsh act was signed into law. Under this federal statute came the national registry. Which requires each state to require public posting data on the internet and created a Justice Department for Registration Requirements. 1998 the department of justice established the task force to investigate internet crimes against children. This has been incredibly successful. In 2015 alone, they conducted more than 54,000 investigations and 61,000 forensic exams. These efforts resulting in the arrest of more than 8500 suspects. In the wake of evolving technologies and new ways to commit crimes, congress has passed law to combat child pornography and we passed the child victims act paid for by defendants to achieve the Financial Support needed for recovery. Remarkable progress has been made in preventing crimes as well as prosecuting these offenses. But there is more to do. Predators will continue to do everything to remain undeticketed and it is our fundamental and constitutional duty to track down these predators. Children are the most vulnerable and innocent of victims. They are completely dependent on us. They mare thet greatest protections our law allows, the most severe form of punishment the law alloallows. This includes everything from preventing the crimes from occurring, strengthening the prosecution and pretrial methodologies. So children are interviewed as few times as possible by trained p professionals who know hoato talk to and listen to children and assuring victims of access to fully aid them in the recovery process. So with that i would thank our witnesses again and would recognize the gentleman from michigan. Thank you, mr. Chairman. May i read the three sentences of congresswoman jackson lee who is another committee . Yes, sir. Thank you. What was what is said in her behalf. Our Ranking Member congresswoman Sheila Jackson lee is also a member of the House Budget Committee which is currently the d baiting the health care bill. She will not be able to attend this hearing today but she expresses her passion for combatting crimes against children which is a major problem in her district and the city of houston. In the form of human trafficking. As Ranking Member of the subcommittee and founder and chair of the childrens caucus, she pledges her support to Work Together to create a legal system that protects all our children and punishes the perpetrators of crimes against children. And now on my own behalf i want to mention that todays hearings, mr. Chairman and members by this subcommittee will discuss the disturbing issue of the criminal victimization of children. With all of our efforts to fight the various forms of Child Exploitation it continues to be a threat to our young people. However, we develop strategies to both prevent and respond to these crimes. And to assist in the many children who were victims. I trust we will learn about the strat aeegies that are working how we can do better. In april of last year the department of justice reported to us that the main threats in this area in the next five years will be child pornography, sex extortion, child sex trafficking, sex offender registry violations, and child sex tourism. Response to these crimes involve an intricate network of federal, state, local Law Enforcement and prosecutorial agencies and private nonprofit organizations and advocates supported a direct federal funding authorizations funding and grant programs. All working together to keep our youngest constituents safe from harm. Today we will hear from individuals representing some of the entities involved in this necessary mission and their roles illustrate the ways we can do more and do better. Were proud to have these four witnesses with us. First we in Congress Must recognize that while we can enact federal legislation, state and local Law Enforcement are on the front lines and we must support their partnerships with federal agencies. The internet crimes against Children Task force program funded through the Justice Departments office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention provides training and regularly conducts undercover online investigative operations. Since Congress Mandated creation of this program, 3,500 federal, state and local Law Enforcement and prosecutorial agencies have joined to form 61 coordinated Regional Task forces. These task forces are especially important now because were seeing nan crease in crimes perpetratored against children on the internet. Professor Patrick Beaver from the louden county Virginia Sheriffs Office will speak to us today about his successes that his office have enjoyed working with the Northern Virginia internet crimes against Children Task force to conduct an operation targeting internet predators last year. Next we must provide special eased assistance to families, victims and Law Enforcement to help prevent child abductions. Recover missing children. Identify and assist victims of child pornography. And child sex trafficking. That is the mission of the National Center for missing and exploited children. Well hear from their representative today about what their experiencing in providing this assistance. As a former local and federal prosecutor, she will also help us about the challenges a at the state and local levels and fighting these crimes and enforcing our laws. All of this will help us consider legislation to amend and reauthorize important statutes such as the adam walsh act and the trafficking victims protection act. Clearly we must do more to prevent and investigate these crimes. And especially assist their many victims. When we do apprehend and convict defenders, we must recognize that most of them will be released back into society at some point. The sex offender registration and notification act is intended to establish a nation wide system of monitoring and trafficking sex offenders. Particularly after their release from prison. Currently there are over 850,000 registered sex offenders in this country. If were going to have such a system, we must insure that it is used in an appropriate circumstances and in the most effective manner. However, only 17 states are insubstantialal compliance with its requirements. States, policy makers, researchers and advocates continue to object to the requirements established by sorna for many reasons. One of the most pervasive criticisms of sorna is the inclusion of juveniles on registries. Miss Nicole Pitman is here today to discuss the real impact of juvenile registration on the juveniles, their families, and the overall effectiveness of sorna. I thank the chairman for holding this hearing on this important topic. We all wish the child explo exploitation could be eradicated but the problem persists. With what we learned today i hope we can Work Together to come closer to achieving your goal. I thank the chair. Chair, thanks the gentleman from michigan and recognizes the gentleman from california. Mr. Goodlat. Except im from virginia. What did i say . California. Whatever i said. I meant virginia. Mr. Chairman, not with standing that, i am very pleased youre holding this hearing and i thank you for the opportunity to say a few words about it. Its a very important hearing on combatting crimes against children. Progress has been made in preventing and prosecuting Child Exploitation crimes but theres still work to be done. Bureau of justice and statistics reported that 67 of Sexual Assault were juveniles under the age of 18. 34 of all victims were under age 12. These statistics are unacceptable and especially frightening in light of the fact that most child sexual abuse goes unreported. It is for this reason we must remain vigilant in protecting the most vulnerable and innocent victims of crime, our children. As a father and grandfather i can think of no more Important Role for Law Enforcement. Congress has taken important steps to keep victims from children in the first place. This includes the passage of the adam walsh protection and safety act, a comprehensive set of National Guidelines for state sexual registries. These are crucial to make sure theyre not evading state and federal Law Enforcement and not having unsurprised interactions with children. I appreciate the quirk of the united marshals and the center for missing and exploited children in this effort. People who pose a very real risk to our children. U. S. Martiashall were tasked wi this mission in the original adam waulg act in 2006 and have worked at apprehending visitors. But so Important Information can be easily shared between jurisdictions. I thank congressman for his introduction of the adam walsh reacts aration act, necessary to keep the good accomplished by this act and improve the system to be more just. Sex offenders will go to Great Lengths to get close to children to gain their trust and take advantage of their naivety. That is why its important that organizations that serve children and which are meant to provide children with mentors can be sure their volunteers and employees do not have a history of predatory behavior. I commend them for introducing the child act. We have a distinguished panel of witnesses here today to discuss this difficult subject. People who have dedicated their careers to protecting children and familiar with the pervasive nature of these crimes and ending them. I look forward to hearing from our panel in the problems being encountered in preventing and investigating these crimes and what congress and the states can do to further combat them. Congress has passed a number of bills to combat the cries of Child Exploitation in the United States. We must keep up with this ever evolving criminal behavior. I tlank all of you for being here today and i yield pack. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman from the commonwealth of virginia j ask forgiveness again for putting him anywhere but the commonwealth of virginia. If you would please rise and lift your right hands. Do you swear the testimony youre about to give before this committee the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Let the record indicate that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. I will introduce you as a group and then recognize you individually. I would tell you up front all members have access to your Opening Statements. All members either have or will read your Opening Statements so the extent you can sums are it within the five minute time period taeso members can get to their questions. The Vice President of the exploited Children Division at the National Center for missing and exploited children. And miss francy, former ausa and Child Exploitation prevention and introduction. Our third witness is bieber of the louden county sheriffs office. Hes a member of the internet crimes against Children Task force and our fourth witness is ms. Nicole pitman, the Vice President and director on youth registration reform at impact justice. Mr. Shannon, youre recognized for five minutes. Im the Vice President of the exploited Child Division at the national senter for missing and exploited children. Ive been with them for 17 years and served in my role as Vice President since 2015. It was created in 1984 as a private nonprofit organization. Our mission is to help reunite families with missing children, help reduce Child Exploitation. Our founders are walsh. Its funded by both the private and public sectors which inallows us to engage in the problem of missing and exploited children. It has multiple programs to help families that serve them and on cases of sexually exploited children. More specifically it has two core programs to facilitate child sexual abuse content and identify victims. The cyber tip line. They launched the cyber tip line in 1998 to give a way of reporting cases of exploitation. Federal law now requires Electronic Service providers to report that they become aware of on their systems on the tip line. Cyber tip line reports are reviewed by the staff that look over the content and then make the reports available for Law Enforcement for potential review by Law Enforcement. Triage 24 7 to make sure any children in imminent danger are given first priority. We have received more than 18 million reports. The number continue to increase exponentially year after year and we average more than 250,000 reports per week. In the first two months of 2017 we received more than 2 million reports into the cyber tip line. That can bow attributed to the Technology Companies who voluntarily choose to proactively find videos on their platform using hash values referred to as digital finger prints. Even though our focus is on domestic crimes, many come into the u. S. Base companies. As a result, it has grown into a globally recognized Clearing House for these issues and makes repourts iveilable to more than 100 National Police forces around the world. As our nations Clearing House, they also provide Key Opportunities to discover emerging trends in Sexual Exploitation. While we do not see any slow down, the crime of exploitation continues to evolve including Significant Growth in sex torgz and the online intiesment of children for sexual acts. Despite these increasing trends, theres great work being done to respond and prevent these crimes. They continue to partner with key leaders including nongovernmental organizations such as inhope, the internet industry and Law Enforcement. I would like to commend the internet crimes against Children Task force. They handthal bulk of cyber tip line reports and work tirere tireressly. Were addressing their ongoing needs through neck neck programs such as team hope and our advocacy division. We want to continue to work with you to make sure victims can find recovery and support systems they need, including irk withing with the committee to find a path forward to provide child pornography victims with restitution. We continue to look for ways to best educate our children, families and the public on how to prevent these crimes and how to respond when they do. This provides us with data and research on new and emerging trends which leads to Technical Assistance and other services. We also provide congress, outside organizations and the public with Technical Assistance to provide safer environments for our children. For example, the child protections imp provement act and the adam walsh act. Aim to provide mechanisms to insure the safety of our children as they go bout our daily lives. I want to thank the committee for your ongoing work. And i want to thank this committee for having this hearing today. We look forward to continue to working with you on these Critical Issues and look forward to any questions you may have. Ms. Haakes. Thank you, chairman and Ranking Member. Id like to thank you for inviting me to appear before the s subcommittee. Child abuse, Child Exploitation, child sex trafficking, child porn ograp pornography, they all sound clinical for what happens to children vilktmized by sex offenders. It is offen the forcible raipe f little boys and girls, theyre captured on film, still and video. The images themselves incapsulate the crime scene and are the permanent evidence of the crime, the humiliation, the pain and offen the guilt and shame of the child victim. The first trial of my career was of just such a victim. Of just such a criminal. A father spent the first 10 years of his precious daughter s life sexually assaulting her, even when she was in diapers. An adorable little red haired girl we met after she waited years for someone to prosecute her case and save her from her father. Looking into her eyes i promised her justice. Making my First Closing arguments to a jury i trembled. So anxious that i had done everything right for k. W. So anxious that they accept my righteous arguments and convict this depraved man. Terrified really that they would not convict him and that k. W. Would have to go back to him and endure his assaults. The jury convicted him and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. There are so many children who will never get the justice k. W. Did. Child sexual abuse is under reported by as much as 90 . So many children so much abuse, so much pain. And so many afraid. I used to think the hardest thing i would ever have to do was look in the eyes of a child and listen to her story about being abused. I was wrong. The hardest thing i ever had to do was watch their abuse. Sometimes still photos, sometimes video, sometimes with sound, all heart wrenching and even now impossible to forget. I remember all their faces. Sometimes they had a frozen smile. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they screamed. These images included infants and toddlers, also very helpl s helpless. Most of them i would never learn their names, where they lived or who was hurting them. The struggle to cope knowing how many are out there, even now, will always be with me. No one who has seen these images is untouched by them. I would like to give my heart felt salute to those analysts, officers, detectives, agents, and prosecutors who today search for these offenders, rescue these children and endure these images. As the First National coordinator for Child Exploitation at the department of justice i learned about how budgets impact the ability of Law Enforcement to protect children. When last i sat here testifying, i was limited by the rules of d. O. J. About what i could or couldnt say. I was asked if this needed more resources. My answer dictated by doj was we support the president s budget. I now have no such constrants. And i can tell you today as i would have liked to then. The answer is a resounding yes. It was yes then. It is yes now. And will always likely be yes. If you all could talk to a child like k. W. If you all were forced every day to watch the images and hear the sounds of children being victimized or being raped, you too would say a resounding yes. Its a sad fact that theyre drowning in these cases. Theyre complicated, heart rending and frustrating. And while doj may not be able to ask for help, i would ask on behalf of all the children whose faces i cannot forget, like the little girl who when rescued by a u. S. Postal inspector said i knew you would come. I begged for your help with my eyes when he hurt me and taped it. I knew you would see and come for me. So many others beg us for help with their eyes and we arent coming. So many millions and millions of the images of children being sexually assaulted are shared around the world and the good guys are losing. You should see the childrens faces and hear their voice said, then maybe you would hear the same urgency of Mission Shared by officers and prosecutors the world over. What Higher Mission is there . We sld to look into eyes of k. W. And explain to her why we havent done everything we could to see that her father never hurt her again. I know this committee and congress in general is constantly asked for resources for many worthy issues. Nelson mandela said there can be no keener revelation of the societys soul than the way in which it treats its children pch were living in a society which has lost its soul. We can, we must do better. Thank you. Thank you, ms. Haakes. Good afternoon and thank you very much for having me here today. Coming before you today is an honor to really describe what we see through the eyes as a detective, investigator, or special agent. In the complications that we have in our investigations and the successes we have in our investigations. With the louden county sheriffs office, special victims unit, with that im task would the internet crimes against Children Task force bp we hunt down Child Predators, rescue vikctims, get them services and allow them to go back to a normal lifestyle they deserve. Even this morning before coming here we did a search warrant at 3 30 or 4 30 in the morning. We will continue staying busy fighting the exploitation of chil children. What i want to cover today is some of the issues that weve encountered in investigating these crimes and the Legal Process that hinders us from finding the bad guy. Hinders us from finding a child victim whos identity could be stuck in the cloud, encrypted. Ill go into details regards to that. A child is solicited online through social media to produce child pornography. Exploited by an unknown suspect and has sent several videos to the suspect. The victim has received threats to keep producing child pornography or he or she will send the videos and pictures to family and friends. This is a common report. We get sometimes two, three times a week. The Northern Virginia d. C. Area. Someone who is trapped in their own home boy the exploitation of this Child Predator through the safety of their home. Their home, they could be sitting at the dinner table. Suspect sends them a message, you need to go to the bathroom and produce child pornography now or i will send this, this, and this. The 11yearold, 10yearold or younger are trapped by this. Theyre unable to reach out to their family because of these threats. And they could live with this for hours, days, months or years and by the time we get to the victim, there could be hundreds of videos or images submitted. When we submit Legal Process to whatever company that they use, you pick any of them, we run into hurdles and i want to get into some of those hurtles that we come across. When submitting Legal Process to companies in the United States we received emails back stating we will notify the user of this account, the Child Predator. Think about that. We will notify the Child Predator. Yes, that is a customer of theirs. But also that young victim was a customer of theirs. Okay. We fight with them sometimes weeks at a time to just get them not to disclose to the predator. While certain laws and states are better than others that allow for nondisclosure, sometimes the companies do not accept those. And then again we get another email back saying we will notify them, give them 10 days to challenge it and have the ability to for them to challenge it and it comes back to us and its a ping pong back and forth. Meanwhile that suspect is exploiting other children. And is continuing with that process. At times they notify the suspect of our legal action. That alone you dont know how many victims we could have saved by just having the ip address to identify the suspect, to with hold from notifying them for 90 days and we dont have that. Another issue we encounter is Legal Process if they donot notify is our legal return. Our legal return at times theyll say well, we can give you the content we store on our servers in the United States but we will not give you the content we store outside of the United States. So you get one piece of the pie in your investigation, which may just be nonsense metta data that exists in our servers in the United States but maybe in the server in a different country that this u. S. Based company has no longer follows our Legal Process. I would also say there are other companies that are outside the United States that we send Legal Process to turn around this is a true thing that we encounter on a day to day basis. I know that i speak for each agent, detective, investigator who works these cases and in human decency how we can executed that search warrant. To them. In closing, i thank you very much for having us here today. Thank you, detective. I promise you i will get into that in the q a. So hold on to that. Missbitman. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important issue. My name is nicole pittman. I run the center on Justice Reform at impact justice. Were all here because we deeply care about children and we want to prevent them from being harmed. Over the past 20 Years Congress has enacted a series of wellintentioned legislation designed to combat crimes against children. But we must ask the question, what happens when these laws unintentionally harm the very children we seek to protect . Qu who are the children caught in the crosshairs of policies created to combat crimes against children . Id like to share a story about bobby. Bobbys from texas. He was 11 years old. Lived in an area with a lost kids. They were playing a game. And a 13yearold was in charge and said lets play this game, im going to turn off the lights, everybody take your clothes off and try to get dressed as quickly as possible. Bobby was the class clown. Decided to not put any clothes on. The lights went on, bobby was naked. Everyone laughed. Bobby put his clothes on. They ate pizza. The night was good. When a little girl, the 6yearold girl that was there, was picked up by her mother. She said, i saw bobbys penis. The mother reacted in a very common sense way and the case went to the police. A couple days later she found out what happened but they said we can proceed without the victim. Bobby was adjudicated in Juvenile Court of indecent exposure, which is a registerable defense and he went to juvenile detention from the age of 11 to 18 where he received juvenile sex offender treatment. When he got out he was a registered sex offender where you cant live anywhere near children and cant live with children under 18. He couldnt find a place to live. Thats a felony conviction servable by two years in prison. Bobby went to prison for two years. This happened two more times. Three felony convictions for failure to register. Bobby couldnt get a job when he got out. At some point he was so desperate to try to make a living he was convicted eventually of receipt of stolen goods. I went down to that hearing and the judge said because you are a career sex offender i am maxing you out to 15 years in the state penitentiary. Bobbys story is not unique. This is happening to many of our kids. Its estimated that about 200,000 kids have been placed on registries in the 20 years weve been registering kids, not just by the adam walsh account act of course but in the 20 years. Were talking children 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, many on for life. Kids end up on the registry for many things. Playing doctor, streaking, having sex with teenage classmates, sexting. Im working with a young man now whos 14 thats on the registry in minnesota for sending a picture of his own genitals to a classmate. Hes the victim as well as the perpetrator of this sexting. So i went around the country and interviewed 500 people on registries, raised on registries, all adjudicated in Juvenile Court, not criminal court. One of the things i found out is 100 of those kids, 100 of the 500 kids, were victims in the Child Welfare system before they went on the registry. So were putting children that are victims on our registries. And the registry doesnt work. There have been 20 years of research from one of the people sitting here, dr. Els beths letourneau of john hopkins saying research definitively shows registration does not work for children. It doesnt make us safer. Kids do not reoffend. The recidivism rate for children who commit sex offenses is 2. 75 . The harm is great. We see with bobby unemployment, vigilante attacks, homelessness, stigmatization. Sadly, 1 in 5 attempt suicide. And weve heard that most of the crimes do happen in the home. So what we know is a child on the registry is a family on the registry and also a victim on the registry. A victim sibling on the registry. We know what does work. Treatment works. Children respond very well to treatment. We have people who have been working on this issue. Patty pettierling who doesnt believe children should be on registries. Stacy rumina p of stop Child Predators is now working with us to say remove children from the adam walsh act. In fact, states from the time the adam walsh act was passed in 2006, states were moving toward getting kids off the registry but now the mandate has to leave them on. It makes states have to move in the opposite direction. So what are our Lessons Learned . We learned that since the adam walsh act was passed these registries are full of children who have been victims themselves. Weve learned that treatment works. We know that a child on the registry faces lots of stigma. Thanks to research from our Street Institute we know it costs 3 billion to register children. This could be spent on upstream solutions such as interventions that actually stop or prevent harm from happening in the first place. So how do we fix this . We can look at it with the antitrafficking community is doing. Theyve learned that laws intended to protect victims unintentionally harm them. The same thing is happening with adam walsh act. Advocates, survivors, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree it was a mick, its time indeed to fix it. I urge you to exclude children adjudicated delinquent in Juvenile Court from the adam walsh act. Thank you. Thank you, miss pittman. The chair will now recognize the gentleman from texas, mr. Gohmert. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you all for your work as well as being here today. Mr. Shehan, you had mentioned that you received so many tips you have to triage them. What methods do you use to triage whats most important . Thank you. Its an excellent question. We have a ranking system and its based on the information thats received. We have a hotline thats there 24 7 that reviews all of these leads that come through. And in some cases you may have a company that is aware of an imminent situation and theyre going to escalate that report and bring it to our attention, but oftentimes its a parent or someone whos calling in and giving those key indicators that you have a child thats about to go and meet with someone and theres imminent danger for that child. We escalate those reports. Those are our highest priority. Its the type of case that were going to wake up detective beaver or some of the other icacs in the middle of the night so they can address that situation. But every time that case comes through, every report, its reviewed and its triaged based on that eminent rix to the child if their lifes believed to be in danger. When youre provided with child pornography, do you have any way of assessing, giving a rough percentage about how often youre able to identify the children . Yes. Thats a key component to both the cyber tip line and our Victim Identification Program. We have worked with Technology Partners such as microsoft to develop tools like photo dna that allows for robust image matching technologies. And the idea is to weed out known images. Our Victim Identification Program is there specifically for that purpose of keeping track of which children have been identified so they can in turn focus on those new victims and help Law Enforcement ensure that that victim can be rescued from that harmful situation. Miss exit, grateful for your work. When you see girls who are used in sex trafficking and they are victims themselves, do you end up seeing them prosecuted themselves very often . How often . If they are. Mr. Gohmert, thats a great question. And a lot of states are struggling with that very issue when it comes specifically to child sex trafficking. Something called safe harbor laws are making their way around the country where states are adopting not prosecuting children who are being forcibly prostituted. I certainly support those laws. I would like to say if you dont mind, i would like to Say Something miss pittman said earlier about all of the 500 former children that she spoke to who grew up on the registry have been victimized or in some way prior to that. And i just wanted to say on the victims behalf the very majority of victims never become offenders. And i want us to be very careful that we dont accuse victims of child sexual abuse as having some greater percentage chance of becoming victimizers. Because they have no greater chance of becoming victimizers than the average person in the population. I just wanted to clear that up. I know i think was it california somewhere in california i think one of the cities there, maybe san francisco, had taken away the illegality of someone under a certain age engaging in Sexual Activity, which i understand the motivation, to try to keep from making victims victims further. But on the other hand, from my experience as a judge and as a prosecutor, there are times when thats what gets the child out of the situation theyre in, and if its illegal it seems like that would be more motivation for pimps or whoever is doing the sex trafficking to get more and more kids because gee, its not illegal for them to do it. Detective beaver, you have observation about whether it should be illegal or not for children to engage in inappropriate Sexual Activity . In regards to that, we find sometimes the only way to get them the services that they need is through the court. We seek voluntary them to voluntarily go and have treatment and to be able to be reentered into society and not have to be in that world. But unfortunately, sometimes the only way to do it is through forced services through the courts. But i would argue that there should be a multilayered not just a one charge fits all for those situations and a better look at what violation there is that fits their situation. Thank you. My times expired. But it seems like it may be more appropriate to make sure prosecutors and judges are educated about the role they can play rather than making that kind of activity legal. I yield back. The gentleman yields back. The chair will now recognize the gentleman from michigan, mr. Conyers. I wanted to thank our witnesses today. This is a very important and sensitive subject. I wanted to ask miss pittman first, you testified that the states are still grappling with the question of juveniles and the sex offender registration and notification act compliance. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and why this situation exists . Absolutely. In 2006 the adam walsh act was the First Federal law as we know to include juveniles adjudicated delinquent. That was an amendment that happened at the very last minute. So in terms of the interplay of how we put kids on the registry in states by guidance by adam walsh act theres problems. So for example, its supposed to be anything more serious than aggravated sexual abuse. However, certain statutes, south dakota, for instance, does not have a consensual statutory exception, so that a 14yearold with a 13yearold, you cant consent to sex under the age of 14. A 14yearold and 13yearold is adjudicated of forcible rape. So that is a rain in south dakota. So if we said hey, we want to get only were only going to keep serious children offenders on the registry we would exclude all of those kids where its a consensual sex offense. The problem is the adam walsh act really has extra punishments when the child is under the age of 14 but theyre not looking at who the perpetrator is. So that translation is just coming out disproportionately against children. The other thing is as i mentioned that states were moving in the direction 2005, 2006, we just had roper v. Simmons where we found out kids are different, got rid of the Death Penalty for juveniles, and at that time states were looking at the research and saying we dont think we need to be putting kids on registries. But then the mandate came down saying that they had to. So states really cant even follow what they want to do with their own Public Safety because of that mandate. Whats your view of how this could be corrected . In terms of how it could be corrected, juveniles were actually included in the act in five words, basically saying for purposes of registration a conviction includes a juvenile adjudication. Thats never happened in any law where were redefining what a juvenile adjudication is. What i think is that we should take juveniles out, those five words, or those out of the adam walsh act and allow states to do what they need to do but also use that 3 billion were using for registering just children touse for prevention, intervention and treatment services. There are ten states that have absolutely never registered children and in fact their incidences of child on child sexual harm are lower and in some states the recidivism is lower. Registration has no effect on stopping child on child sexual harm. We need to be putting things on the front end to stop it from happening. Ms. Hakes, aside from prosecuting people who prey on children, can you discuss the importance of a holistic approach, variety of disciplines to the problem of child sexual abuse . Yes, sir, thank you very much. We will never investigate and prosecute our way out of child sex abuse. Theres far too much of it to begin with. The National Childrens alliance noted that in 2015 alone 300,000 children were seen by Child Advocacy centers around the country. And if you do the math, which i was told there wouldnt be in this hearing, but if you do the math and extrapolate thats one year. If child sexual abuse is underreported 75 to 90 youre talking about anywhere between 1 and 3 million children a year may be being abused. And were only seeing 300,000 of them through Child Advocacy centers. So one part of the holistic approach i think, sir, is Child Advocacy centers. These centers are the way to have a child friendly as much as is possible, experience for children going through the court system. This is what happens after theres been a crime committed. These Child Advocacy centers help children sometimes with medical exams. They help children with therapy and treatment. All in a childfriendly atmosphere by people who are specially trained. Many of these Child Advocacy centers including some of those in my own home state of georgia, im on the board of the Child Advocacy centers of georgia, many of these Child Advocacy centers simply dont have the funds to have medical personnel, sometimes even therapeutic personnel at the Child Advocacy center. A child has to go to a detectives office, to a police station, to a hospital for an invasive medical exam. These things all contribute to the recantation rates of children whove been sexually abused, who once they start experiencing the criminal Justice System they recant. These Child Advocacy centers are critical to helping children through the process because children are not just little adults. And then on the prevention side, prevention is so important. Children are their own first best defense against being abused and they need to be educated about it. Good touch bad touch just isnt working. Weve been doing that in schools for, what, a couple of decades in its not working. Mr. Shehan said child pornography reports arent decreasing. So child sexual abuse is not decreasing. What arent we doing . Were not arming children with knowledge. Were not Arming Teachers and parents and coaches and the clergy with knowledge to look for the predator next door, the predator in the next house, the predator in the next classroom. Without these kind of as you noted holistic approaches were never going to prevent child abuse and all the cases will fall to detective beaver to try to locate the children, to ncmec to try to identify them and to prosecutors to try to prosecute the cases and its never going to be enough. Thank you so much. The gentleman yields back. The chair will now recognize the gentle lady from alabama, miss roby. Well, first i want to thank you, mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. This is a very tough subject matter, but a most necessary conversation. And to all of you that are here today, as mama i will tell you it means a lot for you to share your experiences and your stories and as a new member of this committee im really just honored to be part of this legislative body to have an opportunity to fight on behalf of the victims and do what we can to give you the tools that you need to further prevent these horrific acts against our nations children. I was struck a bit by your testimony, miss pittman. As i understand it, the numbers i have in front of me, and i was very surprised to learn that 200 of the roughly 900,000 individuals on the sex offender registries are children. And youve made a very strong recommendation that in proposing that all children be eliminated. I did watch the faces of the other folks on the panel as you were giving your testimony, and i wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that. I think that there has to be some middle ground on this issue. And i think its incumbent upon us on this committee to hear from the others on the panel with your expertise as well to have an opportunity to respond to that. So i dont care what order. That would be most helpful. Thank you, congresswoman. I appreciate that. Theres no question that it is a troubling topic when you think about children abusing children. But in my practice as a prosecutor i have handled cases of children abusing children. I had one case that was a gang rape case of an 11yearold girl by 20 men and boys starting at age 11 and ranging all the way up to age 30. This little girl was mentally disabled and was trapped in a closet for eight hours while these 20 men and boys took turns sexually assaulting her. The one that was under 12 was treated as a juvenile. That was a sex offense. He attacked her in a dark closet while they videotaped it. Theres no question that that child understood what he was doing was wrong. And i will fight to my dying breath to say that the public deserves to be protected from him. And that is the purpose of a registry. It is not punitive. It may have punitive consequences, as sex offenses should. But the purpose of it is public protection. And you, who are a mother, would you or would you not like to know that the man living next door five, eight, or ten years ago trapped an 11yearold mentally disabled girl in a closet and sexually assaulted her . Or do you think its okay not to know and your kids might play in his back yard on his trampoline . We have trampolines in the south. This is why there is leeway given on the registries. The adam walsh requires registration for serious offenses for children over 14. States deserve to make some of their own decisions on this. The district attorneys are in the best position to assess whether that 11yearold boy i prosecuted should be convicted of a registerable offense. But i will always defend the right of the public to know that they are forced to live next door to a sex offender, and that is the function of the registries. Thank you. Well said, francey. Ill be brief because i know your time is tight. No registry is perfect and i think critical voices are important to encourage a review and to help make improvements along the way. I saw some comments and testimony by director harlow of the United States Marshal Service last year where he, based on some of these criticisms and quite high numbers, these 200,000 statistics, he had the u. S. Marshals dive into the registry, a bit of this data, and according to their review last year it was around 2,000 juveniles are on the registry. And theyre for very serious offenses. They must be at least 14 years at the time. What i would consider worst of the worst. So in many ways i would encourage this committee to reach out to the United States Marshal Service, the smart office, and try to get some of that updated information and dig into it a bit more. You may have some updated numbers and its not nearly as high as some may suspect. My time has expired, chairman, but detective, if you want to respond for the record, that would be great. Id love to hear your perspective. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. Quickly, i will ive dealt with these sips for years, working special victims cases where you have a situation where you have to go to the prosecutor and say we are charging this child, this juvenile, for this horrible act that they committed against another juvenile, or sometimes against an adult. We weigh heavily on our prosecutors to be educated in assisting us with kind of an mdt approach, a multidisciplinary approach, to what is best for the child, what is the best for the public and the safety of the public. And we weigh each case heavily on these mdt meetings. But i would say that we have encountered juvenile sex offenders who in my career are some of the scariest people ive ever met and in my written statement i placed that in there. The gentle lady from alabama leads back. The chair will recognize the gentle lady from california ms. Bass. What was the scariest thing . Im sorry. Yes. Im happy its a case that i worked over multiple years involving a juvenile and by scariest is what the potential of that individual could have done in separate occasions, could have killed four juvenile victims. This was a 16yearold male who attacks two juvenile females on the way to school one day on a bike trail behind his house that he sees people walk on every day, attacks them. They fought back. Luckily, another student who walked by as well, they fought back, clawed him in the neck, and he ran away. Interviewing him postmiranda, after giving him his miranda rights, he stated that he had every intent to take them back to his home, or at least one, to molest them, and then push them in front of a bus to continue on got you. Further down, we encountered them again after he got off the registry. At the age of 19 he was released from djj, which is our juvenile justice. Within a year he attacked younger children, while he was on the registry, while he was gps monitored, while he was allowed to work inside of a restaurant. Okay. I did want to ask you thank you. And i also want to thank all of the panelists for the work that you do. I wanted to ask you, detective beaver, a couple of questions because you were making reference in your testimony to companies. You talked about them notifying essentially the predator. And i wanted to know and you also talked about some barriers. And i wanted you to elaborate about that. I dont want to run out of my time because i would like miss pittman to respond as well. Quickly going over the barriers, we do have companies that several companies that will use verbiage as the following. Yahoo will respond to us to they will notify users about governmental requests for their information except when prohibited by law. I submit to you that several states lack those laws in order to protect the children in the Legal Process in trying to get the legal returns. They say that this is a policy within their own agency or their own company, and they for certain circumstances are able to waive that. So we write back, we say we are looking this is a Child Exploitation case, outlined in my affidavit is some of the worst things you will ever read about the exploitation of a child, the rape of a child, and we get the response, this generic response back that, well, you need to submit to us a nondisclosure order or show that the child is in imminent danger. In your written testimony do you elaborate on the barriers that are there . Because it sounded like you were making reference to some recommendations for the committee as to how we could respond to the barriers. Thats correct. A unified approach, maybe even more of a round table to address these issues with the companies and any type of legislation that would enable Law Enforcement with the proper legal authority. With a search warrantor subpoena that we have to establish probable cause in front of the a judge or magistrate to get that Legal Paperwork to them. Miss pittman, you mentioned i think you said ten states that do not allow children on the registry. And i was just wondering if and you said they hadnt had any problems. I was just wondersing how you would respond to detective beaver in the cases that he mentioned as well as miss hakes. Thank you, yes. Ten states have never registered, some because theres a constitutional issue but others because they believe they have the secret of what is how to montreal children. So number one, that children get treatment in juvenile Justice System. The second thing, though, we have is when we have a 16 or 15yearold in new york, could be 14, they can be certified to adult court. The kids that im talking about are children adjudicated delinquent in the juvenile Justice System where you cant bring cameras in. Theyre not you cant use their real names. Theres a confidentiality. They dont have the same due process. This is kids in family court is the only the only children im talking about. We do have certification laws. The other thing is the federal adam walsh act, when i say remov removal, removing the mandate to put children on the registry so states can figure this out themselves. Because at one i believe the adam walsh act is to have a very good purpose and the purpose is to have a comprehensive system and not have the leaky patchwork of different states. But the way they have to change, the smart office has to change their laws in order to get juveniles, maryland a child can get off the registry in five years during compliance. South carolina a child is on the registry for life on the public website and has gps monitoring. Its moving us away from the intent of the adam walsh act because of the inclusion of children. So im really just talking about the mandate. The last thing the 200,000. I really have tried to work with the smart office. And mr. Lou debaca we hay conversation a few months ago about this. One is there is no key to decide who the juvenile is, juvenile adjudication. It goes as a conviction. You have to manually search to figure out what people went on as juveniles in Juvenile Court. So the 2000, im really interested in finding that out too because in the state of california there are 3,000 kids, juveniles. The state of texas there are 9,000. This is all since 1994. So right there and then were already over 2,000. Those were just some of the points. Thank you, mr. Chair. And by the way, in regard to california, what the California Law says is that a child under age cannot be considered as a prostitute. That she would be a victim. For my colleague over there. The gentle lady from california yields. The chair will now recognize the gentleman from louisiana, mr. Johnson. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank each of you. I will be praying that you have gods favor and wisdom in doing your important work. Its hard to listen to. And your written testimonies were something i wish everybody would be aware of but i wouldnt recommend reading for everyone. You know . Look, ms. Hakes, in your written testimony you mentioned further resources are needed to recognize the signs of a sex offender conspiring to act. And i wonder if youd laebtd here on what those resources where they would go or how we would enhance training i guess of Law Enforcement to recognize that. Thank you, mr. Johnson. What i was referring to was the kind of training lots of Law Enforcement gives. Im sure detective beaver has done this himself. I train schools, charity organizations, Law Enforcement all around the world on something called grooming. And that is where you can recognize, there are recognizable methods of grooming children to ensure the conspiracy of silence and the cooperation of their own abuse. There are signs of child victimization that can be recognized and that are known around the world to professionals like those sitting at the table, that you can train teachers, parents, children most importantly, children, whether that is in schools, whether that is in churches, whether that is Law Enforcement going to visit them at the girl scouts or boy scouts or soccer, whatever their activities are. Those people should all be receiving that kind of sophisticated training that allows them to observe the signs that an offender is grooming a child. Now, for children who are being abused at home, which as ms. Pittman noted earlier there are the vast majority of children who are sexually abused are sexually abused by someone in their circle of trust and oftentimes someone at home. There arent necessarily any grooming signs. But there may very well be signs of child victimization that can be recognized by teachers, coaches, counselors, and others. And they should be trained on those so they can hopefully intervene before that child is victimized for a long period of time. Thank you for that. Detective beaver, one complaint i hear from sheriffs back in louisiana is the issue with processing and then instructing sex offenders on what their Registration Requirements are. And i wonder in your experience if you would have any ideas on how to make that process maybe more streamlined or make it more clear to those who are registered, what their requirements are. I can speak to the commonwealth of virginia for the Virginia State police is in charge of the sex offender registry in keeping checks on the sex offender registry. I would say that they meet with them constantly and through my experience they lay out every bit of what is needed from them. Im not sure if they hand them literature as far as what needs to be done but i would recommend if that does not exist that a stepbystep process and where they fit on the sex offender registry and what their responsibilities are as now a citizen back in society. Yeah, maybe every state differs. In louisiana i think at least in the jurisdictions we checked on, they actually hand the sex offender a copy of the federal law, which most wouldnt understand, you know, what that is. The idea would be to enhance compliance. And so if theres a way to streamline that somehow or put it in the vernacular, common parlance so, they know exactly whats required, then when were holding them accountable it helps. I know the state troopers often have a round table with the he sits down with the sex offenders in that respective jurisdiction and they have a round table is my understanding of what takes place. And its that in face approach, that explaining to them where not to go, not what to do, and really i think literature breaking it down more than just a federal code would help. Thank you. Appreciate that. Mr. Shehan, ive got maybe just 50 seconds or so. Does your Organization Currently communicate any information or update the state and local agencies that oversee absconded offenders of your specific efforts in apprehending noncompliant sex offenders . So in 2006 after the adam walsh act was enacted, we at the center created a sex Offender Tracking team. That group of analysts specifically works with local, state, tribal and federal Law Enforcement, primarily United States Marshal Service to assist as they investigate noncompliant registered sex offenders. Since that time we have helped in more than 75,000 investigations. Wow. Thank you, all. I yield. Gentleman from louisiana yields back. The chair will now recognize the other gentleman from louisiana, mr. Richmond. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Let me pick up and ms. Pittman, nicole, let me just say its nice to see you. We went to law School Together in louisiana at tulane. And ms. Hakes, i heard your testimony, mr. Shehan and the detective, in louisiana we incarcerate more people per capita than anywhere in the world. Not the United States, the world. And many of us on both sides of the aisle believe that weve gotten past the point of diminishing returns in terms of incarceration. Every dollar we spend on incarceration makes the country less safe. It is money and resources that could go into making sure that people who should be on the registry are on the registry and to keep our neighborhoods safe. So i guess as i reconcile the miller v alabama case where juveniles cant be sentenced to mandatory life term without the possibility of parole at some point, how do we reconcile one just criminal Justice Reform in terms of mass incarceration and are we utilizing effectively alternatives to incarceration like drug courts and others with the need to have resources to go after predators . And then the last question would be is there middle ground on juveniles being forced to be on the registry in terms of looking at the severity of the case. Because oftentimes when we do mandatory minimums or we do blanket cases, then you get unintended consequences and i think if we look at ms. Pittmans testimony in the first case, i would have to argue thats an unintended consequence that most people didnt want. Ms. Hakes, i would start with you, then ms. Pittman then mr. Shehan. Thank youh mr. Richmond. I have to say respectfully, i think were going off on again, drawing on my southern roots, what my fellow southerners in the room will recognize, on a bit of a sny snipe hunt when it comes to this juvenile registration issue. First, with respect to the factual scenario that ms. Pittman laid out, i dont know that particular case. The one in texas. It sounds odd to me. Im a former baby prosecutor. Im a former district attorney. And i can assure you that if a child had taken off his clothes as a joke in a room full of other children who had just done the same thing i would not be prosecuting that case. There would be no juvenile adjudication or prosecution. Thats what prosecutorial discretion is all about. Well, ms. Hakes, let me just stop you there because im a defense lawyer and im also africanamerican. Ive been in court many times where prosecutorial discretion extends to the more affluent kid and it doesnt to the other. And i know were all shaped by our life experiences. So i wont impugn to you any bias. But i have to see the world the way that i see it. And in my defense practice and in my life i have seen where kids are treated differently based on social factors of income. Some kids get pushed to diversion. Some kids get tried. Sought question is still the same. And im not picking a fight. But the question is can you see a case where there should be some middle ground . Lets assume this kid was prosecuted. Could you see a sense where we could find middle ground . Yes, sir. The adam walsh act does not require that child to be registered, bottom line. It doesnt require it. He was under 14 when this supposed offense occurred. With respect to your earlier question about mass incarceration and as far as being colorblind and bias, i have a bias. I am absolutely positively 100 biased against sex offenders. And i will always err on the side of incarcerating someone who victimizes a child. I dont think we have a sex offender overincarceration problem. We can talk about other kinds of cases. But i dont think we have an overconviction, overincarceration problem for sex offenders. And im not talking about sex offenders. Lets be clear, im not talking about sex offenders. Yes, sir. Typically talking about drug crimes. I agree with you completely. There are things that need to be talked about. This committee should be having discussions as you are today about the best policy with respect no juveniles on the registry. But we are at epidemic proportions of child pornography and child sexual abuse. Were not at epidemic proportions of children being registered on the sex offender registry. So while i certainly respect your question, i understand what youre saying and i cant solve the problems that youve asked me about today, but what i can say is that the bigger problems are about broadly child sexual abuse and whether or not people like detective beaver and mr. Shehan have the resources that they need tord to rescue these children and prosecute the offenders. And i say the answer is no. And i yield back. But mr. Chairman, and weve worked on this, i think a lot of those resources that they need are going to prisons to house lowlevel drug offenders that we could use that money better. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. I thank the gentleman from louisiana. The chair will now recognize the gentleman from the great state of texas, judge powe. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for what you do. Im a former prosecutor, left the d. A. s office in houston as the capital prosecutor. Spent 22 years on the bench in houston trying only felony cases. Saw about 25,000 people coming through the courthouse or the palace of perjury, as i like to refer to it. I want to specifically first of all thank mr. Shehan for what you do with ncmec. Its a wonderful organization, and it has done a lot of good things for our country. Im glad that the child or the adam walsh child safety act passed. Its coming up for renewal again. I added in that legislation section 113, the registration requirement that if you leave one state youve got to register in the next. And while a lot is going on in this building today and theres a lot of hearings going on, what were talking about are the greatest resource we have. Were not talking about roads and bridges and taxes, were talking about children. And myself and jim costa, from california, were chairs of the victims rights caucus that promotes victims rights. A lot of it has to do with this lady right here. Thank you. Jessica lunsford. Jessica lunsford in 2005 and that was a rash of kidnappings, Sexual Assaults and murders of children throughout the country. She lived in florida. She lived with her dad, mark lunsford, who ive gotten to know very well. He worked for the city. He drove a truck. She is asleep in her house, in the middle of the night. An intruder comes in and kidnaps her and takes her to his house. And as you talked about other cases, ms. Hakes, he put her in a closet and he took her out from time to time when he wanted to abuse her. And it was over a period of days. He did a lot of bad things to Jessica Lunsford. When he learned that the police was after him, he told her what he was going to do to her. And thats what he did. He tied her up with an extension cord and he put her in trash bags and he buried her alive. She was 9 when that happened to her. I guess she would be 21 now. Because of her, and what happened to her, and who the perpetrator was, because he lived in georgia and he moved to florida. And he was a sex offender registered in georgia. Child sex offender, imagine that. Crossed state lines. Nobody knew who he was. Didnt register. And thus Jessica Lunsford ended up being another victim of somebody who preyed on kids. Im glad we added to the adam walsh child safety act the requirement that if youre a sex offender and youre registered, you change states, youve got to register again or its another federal offense. I believe that has been effective. But we dont talk about Jessica Lunsford anymore. Times moved on. I just point this out because what the committee is doing, made up of a lot of trial lawyers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, we have an obligation to get it right with children. And i say especially victims of who have been killed or sexually assaulted, you know. Just because theyre kids and thats who the predators pick. And i think we build prisons. We can talk about drug offenders and thieves and all that kind of stuff. But we build prisons for people who hurt kids. That why we build prisons. To keep them away from the rest of us and from other kids. I just wanted to thank you for what you all do in look out for, you know, all kids. Even juvenile offenders who are kids. Because we have a i think we have an epidemic on our hands now. And now because of trafficking, something we didnt even talk about in 2006 when this bill was passed, that we have more of an issue of making sure we protect our most valuable resource. Thank you all for what you do to make life better for kids. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I yield back. Thank you, judge poe. Our chair will now recognize mr. Lu. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank the witnesses for their work that you do. When i was active duty in the air force, i worked on sex offender cases as a prosecutor, and in the California State Legislature i authored and coauthored a number of bills on sex offenders. This is a very important issue to me. In my experience i do have the sense that sometimes it may take a long time for a victim of a sex offense to come forward including children who are victims of sex offenses. I want to ask the panel is that true and if it is why does that happen . Thank you so much, mr. Lieu. It is true. And if you look for example at the clergy or Catholic Church abuse cases we have some good statistics on that. And there have been as many as 10,000 victims who have come forward in those cases, but those many of those victims came forward after ten years and 20 years and 30 years and even 40 years. And even now theres a percentage of them we know about because the priests have confessed to a certain nuv children that theyve abused but those same children who are now adults have not come forward. And i think its a very complicated issue, why children dont tell. It is often a grooms process when youre talking about things like clergy abuse or abuse by a coach or a teacher. That is, the child is sort of bombarded with a constellation of behaviors designed to secure the childs trust, then secure the child for Sexual Activity, and then secure the childs conspiracy of silence in the end, by showing them love and giving them gifts. Its almost the same way that sex traffickers gain their victims trust, bring them into what they consider potentially to be a family, give them gifts, a roof over their head, clothing, and then slowly force them to engage in sex against their will. The same is true for child victims. I think also because most of the abuse happens in the family. Children are very well aware that theyre going to blow up their family when they disclose abuse. They understand fundamentally someone may be in trouble, someone may be going to jail, and theyre unwilling to do it. I found in my practice, im sure detective beaver can talk about this, that oftentimes the reason children do come forward is because a younger sibling is now going to be targeted by the offender in the family and so they feel compelled, they wouldnt have done it just for themselves but now they feel compelled to rescue a sibling. Its very complicated. Thank you. So let me ask you, would you support extending the statute of limitations in the adam walsh act . Should we do that . I do. Many states no longer have statutes of limitation for child sexual abuse, and i certainly support all of those efforts because i do think it is an incredibly complex problem. I tell people, i think i was telling someone at dinner last night, that as a prosecutor, as a federal prosecutor or a state prosecutor i never tried a single child case where i did not have one person on the jury panel stand up and say, i cant sit on this case because im a victim. Some of those people said that was the first time they had ever disclosed that abuse. And one man i remember in particular was 65 years old and hed never told anyone. So yes, i support those. Thank you. Earlier today you had said that we should provide more resources to crack down on sex offenders. Are you aware that the president s Budget Proposal has a nearly 4 cut to department of justice . I did read that. I think that budget came out this morning and i did read that on the news. I have to say im no longer with the department of justice, and so i dont have to support, defend, or say i oppose the president s budget. Thank you. So mr. Shehan, first of all, thank you for your work. My friend sam salokian is on your board, tells me about the great things you that all do. And having myself worked on this issue as well, it does seem to me that the scale of this problem is monumental. You talk about 250,000 reports through your cyber tip line. Ill let you answer my time is soon up. So ill let you answer this last question. We have a lot of laws cracking down on sex offenders, and there is still all this offending going on. What sorts of things do we need to do differently to try to mitigate this problem . When you look at the issue of Child Sexual Exploitation on the internet, its fast. Theres tremendous work thats being done by the Technology Companies to proactively identify, remove and report. Its fantastic. And from a Public Safety standard thats very, very good. However, the internet is vast. And to kind of go back to the resources piece, Law Enforcement are overwhelmed. In many ways they have to go to the dark corners of the internet to try to investigate these cases. So while the likes of google and facebook and microsoft can actively patrol their own network, youve got places like tor and the darknet where there are highly sophisticated individuals trading child sexual abuse images and you need highly trained Law Enforcement who can go into those areas and rescue those children. What were finding are brand new content in those types of forums as well as dedicated boards toward children who are preverbal and being sexually abused so they cant even identify their offenders. Theyre heading in that type direction. You have peer to peer where theres file sharing. From a technological standpoint you need to have highly trained investigators that can respond to these types of cases. Thank you. I yield back. Gentleman yields back. The chair will now recognize the gentleman from texas, the former u. S. Attorney, mr. Radcliff. Thank you, mr. Chairman. This is an incredibly important topic, one that i realize is difficult to talk about sometimes. I can tell you that from my time as a federal prosecutor it is the Child Exploitation images that i have been forced to view from an incamera evidentiary standpoint that i will remember always as the most disturbing and difficult part of my job. Under president george w. Bush the prosecution of Child Exploitation crimes became one of our core priorities at the Justice Department. And under attorney general John Ashcroft the project Safe Childhood Initiative was created and it was in that context that i had my first interaction with ncmec and was witnessed to truly amazing work that is being done there. To that point, mr. Sheehan, as of a few years ago the most prolific child pornography image series in the country, at least at that time, was known as the jan feb series. And by prolific i mean the most widely shared, the most widely collected, the most widely trade add mong Child Predators. Hundreds of thousands of times Child Predators around not just the country but around the world shared the most graphic images of the sexual molestation, abuse, rape, and torture of a 6yearold girl at knifepoint in a cage. Images so disturbing and so grotesque that as long as i live i fear i will never be able to get those images out of my mind. But the story of the jan feb series victim also serves as an incredible testament to the importance of the issues were discussing today and the work thats been done at places like ncmec and by icac detectives and by prosecutors. You see, it was a Police Detective working in an icac as part of the icac task force who in analyzing those disturbing images saw in the background a school logo and working with the good folks at ncmec they were able to identify the school and then the child and then the childs biological father, who was in fact the Child Predator who was raping and sodomizing his own 6yearold daughter, unbeknownst to the rest of the family. Because of the good work at ncmec and with the icac, not only is that Child Predator currently serving a sentence of more than 200 years in a federal prison but i had the opportunity to seek restitution under usc 2252 and 2252a on behalf of that child victim. Again, with the support mr. Shehan of the young lady sipting behind you, the general counsel for ncmec, yo tasuris and we were successful in doing so. Amid all the unhappy stories today im happy to tell you the victim of the most prolific child pornography image series in the United States has been able to live a remarkably ordinary life extraordinary only in the sense of what shes been able to achieve based on whats happened to her. Inasmuch as she will shortly be graduating with honors from one of the finest universities in the southeastern United States. Now, i offer that as my continued thanks to ncmec and to icac detectives and former prosecutors, but i also offer that as an example to my clae s colleagues on this committee about what were talking about. This is not just law and policy, this is law and policy that is incredibly important and when done right works well. Everything from the cyber tip line, the cvip. The adam walsh act. All of those things are necessary and are needed. And so i appreciate you all being here today. I am curious, mr. Shehan, to talk a little bit about to follow up on mr. Lieus question about the Technology Companies. Does ncmec have any partnerships with those Technology Companies to utilize innovative techniques to combat Current Trends in online Sexual Exploitation . Thank you. Yes. Absolutely. We couldnt do our job without partnerships with Technology Companies like google, microsoft, intel, palentier. For example, in our child Victim Identification Program, since 2002 that team has reviewed more than 200 million images and videos of child sexual abuse at the request of Law Enforcement. We are using robust image hashing technologies through photo dna to quickly weed out the images that are known and have already been identified by Law Enforcement as known victims and focusing on those new children. Palentier is helping us make sure were not missing the needle in the haystack. Were talking about this needle and this haystack, were talking about children and childrens lives. We want to make sure that anything that comes through our system we can alert Law Enforcement quickly so they can act upon those who are most vulnerable. So the Technology Companies, they are probably the shining star of our Publicprivate Partnership and enable us to do so much more and they are in it for the right reasons. So absolutely. Terrific. If the chairman will indulge me, im sure someones asked this but i had to go to another meeting and another committee hearing. But one of the things in your report really jumped out at me, the cyber tip line, despite the good work being done. I know its been incredibly effective, but those numbers have jumped at an alarming rate. 8 million 4 million a jump of 4 million reports in a single year i think. 700 increase over a twoyear period. How is ncmec dealing with that challenge . Were certainly struggling in some perspectives. Yes, weve gone from 1. 1 million to the following year 4. 4. The year after that 8. 2 million. The same 25 to 30 analysts are processing those reports on a daily basis. So we have invested in technology. You cant hire an army of staff to review those types of reports. Were using technology to help us work smarter, not harder along those lines. Its also a testament to how the Internet Companies have embraced technology to proactively find, remove and report this content. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to provide them with child sexual abuse values from publicly available images or from reports theyve sent to us before so they can find this type of content and keep it out of the public view. I appreciate the chairmans indulgence. I would like to ask questions of all of you but let me just commend you all and thank you for the work that weve done and hopefully will continue to do in this important space. With that ill yield back. Thank the gentleman from texas. Ill recognize myself last. Miss hakes, theres a special bond among prosecutors in congress frankly on both sides of the aisle. There is a really small chance that our previous jobs will enable us to go to heaven. So we are united in that. But johnny and judge poe put their finger on it. More than anything else, were united in our inability to get the images out of our heads. And johnnys got them and judge poe has them, and you have them. And any of us who did child pornography or child sex abuse cases. And its not just the physical imagery of the abuse. Its trying to qualify a kid to testify. I hear the word children used. We refer to them as juveniles, not children. Theres no Childrens Court in South Carolina. Theres a Juvenile Court. If youre a child and you dont know the difference between right and wrong, youre not going to be prosecuted. But youre also not going to be able to testify. So trying to get a 4 or 5 or 6yearold kid qualified to testify in his or her own abuse case, thats the image that im sure you still as well as a defense attorney positioning himself or herself so that child has to look at the perpetrator while he or she is telling what happened to them. So i go last because i want to encourage my colleagues to come. And they were great today in their participation. By also want to kind of close up any loose ends. When i hear the term children, there is no Childrens Court in South Carolina. Theres a Juvenile Court. And it is for those under the age of 16. And there is a judge. So not only do you have to have a conviction, you have to have a judge exercise his or her discretion to put that person on a registry. And you put your finger on it. A registry is a notification document. The public is hereby notified that this happened. Mr. Sheehan, if there is an 8yearold, as ms. Pittman says there is, if there is an 8yearold thats on the sex offender registry for life, that 8yearold needs a new lawyer, not a new law. They need a new lawyer. Id be curious if the marshals found any 8yearolds that are on the sex offender registry for life, and i would love a list of all 8yearolds who are on the sex offender registry for life. Because they need a new lawyer or else its the most egregious fact pattern an 8yearold has ever committed. Detective beaver, i said you and i would come back to this. This is what i want you to do for me. We wont do it today, and ive got to get the permission of the chairman of the full committee whos already not happy with me because i had him in california and not virginia. But if we can work through that, this is what i want you to do for me. I want you to give me a list of the providers that are giving you a hard time. Well have another hearing. We may let them come and publicly explain why they are having a hard time complying with Law Enforcement in Child Exploitation and child abuse cases. My guess is that would be a very tough public explanation for them. So give me the names of the providers that youre having a hard time dealing with. And i may not can make them do it but i can make them come and explain why theyre doing it. And my guess is they wont want to do that. Their customers, 99. 9 of their customers would expect them to work with you. Not to thwart you. In my remaining time, ms. Hakes, i want you you mentioned the Child Advocacy centers. Not only are they indispensable in the prosecution of Child Exploitation and child sex abuse cases, at least in South Carolina an Alarming Number of them are not even funded at the state level. So would you agree with me that having someone particularly trained in prepping witnesses for trial is an indispensable aspect to your success as a prosecutor . Yes, mr. Chairman. Absolutely, 100 . Indispensable. All right. So we have the victim component where they are entitled to certain rights as the victim. You have the indispensability of their the necessity of their testimony at trial, all of which is a Law Enforcement function, all of which is a state function. So why are the state and the counties not funding what is primarily a state crime . Because theyre cheap and kids dont vote. Unfortunately. I truly believe that. Youve got like i said, there are 795ish certified by the National Childrens alliance, Child Advocacy centers around the country. And the vast majority of them have to seek private funding to keep the doors open. Theres no excuse for it. I dont understand the lawmakers in the states. The federal government gives some money to the National Childrens alliance, and they in turn dole a very small amount of money out to these centers. But theyre seeing hundreds of thousands of kids every year and i guarantee thats one of the reasons why kids who are incapable of testifying dont get up on the witness stand. So even though you have a number of cases brought, they never lead to a conviction because children need Advocacy Centers and a childfriendly process to go through this very difficult system and they dont have it. And you would agree with me that these are among the very toughest cases of all to prosecute. So youre either going to have a child as your star witness or youre going to have a pediatrician, preferably highly trained in being able to detect indications of abuse, but i never once had dna in an incest case or child sex abuse cases. Its a witness and its an expert and its maybe a forensic therapist. Oftentimes all of them come out of the Childrens Advocacy Center and very little money is dedicated to that at the state and local level. And i find it astonishing. Im out of time. I tell you what i would benefit from, based on your experience as a prosecutor. If there are investigatory procedural or evidentiary things you that think congress should look at for which we have jurisdiction that would level the Playing Field for child victims. And im thinking about everything from the legality of allowing a child to testify behind a veil where they dont get stared at by the perpetrator and 12 adults theyve never met before. Any of that that you have in your experience that has leveled the Playing Field for victims, i would greatly appreciate your sharing it with me. And i know my friends on both sides would as well. Yes, sir. Thank you. Ill recognize mr. Conyers if he has any closing remarks. No, sir. Well, i want to thank the witnesses especially for coming. Theres not a more important topic that we will deal with. So thank you for your expertise. Thank you all four of you for the way you that spend the other 364 days out of the year. And if you have suggestions on what we can do to help or make it better, no matter whether its the registry for juveniles or investigating, prosecution, hotline, you name it, let us know. And with that we are adjourned. [ room noise ] it wasnt boring, thats for sure. [ room noise ] captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac