From the desk of U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)Representing West Virginia's 3rd District
Washington, D.C. (HNN) -- Like all parents and grandparents, I was disgusted last week as the details of former Member of Congress Mark Foley's deviant behavior with young pages were made public.
The Republican Leadership had warned one another long ago about the potential danger Foley was to young pages. There is no excuse for keeping silent. These lawmakers endangered the safety of other children. And for this reason, anyone who had prior knowledge of Foley's actions and did not report them should resign.
The Page Board itself has much to answer for as well. These members are charged with the responsibility of protecting our children.
Stay tuned, as there remains much to be uncovered and I will be vigilant in getting to the bottom of this detestable pit. To be completely objective, I believe an independent prosecutor should be brought in to investigate the whole scandal and cover-up.
In the meantime, I will continue my efforts to make the Internet safer. This scandal has highlighted, for the world to see, the dangers of cyberspace. With increasing frequency, cyber criminals are using this learning and business tool to prey on our children. Chat rooms have replaced playgrounds as the new hunting grounds and we have a responsibility to clamp down on those trolling this new frontier. We must protect our children.
Recently, I joined my colleagues in the House in support of H.R. 5319, The Deleting Online Predators Act. The bill passed the House of Representatives 410 to 15.
While parents have the ability to monitor their children's Internet use at home, they do not have the ability to protect them when they leave for school or for the library. We must practice vigilance in this new and somewhat complicated fight to catch online predators and this bill is an example of the kind of legislation we need if we want to close the loopholes.
The Deleting Online Predators Act will empower parents to become involved in monitoring what their children do on the Internet when they are not under their supervision at home. The bill requires schools and libraries that receive Federal universal service funding to prevent the access of children to a chat room or social networking Web site. Schools may disable protection measures in order to allow use by students with adult supervision for educational purposes, or by adults.
The bill also requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create a Web site and issue consumer alerts to inform parents, teachers and school officials about the potential dangers on the Internet, specifically online sexual predators and their ability to contact children through social networking sites and chat rooms.
According to the Justice Department, eighty-seven percent of teens use the Internet on a regular basis, and one in five children between the ages of 10 and 17 received a sexual solicitation or approach online in the last year. Internet predators are perhaps the hardest kind to catch because they operate under a veil of anonymity, in a cyber-world that we are still working to analyze and understand. This bill will go a long way toward helping us rise to this new challenge to protect our children.
I applauded the House's passage of The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, a bill that will protect children and save countless lives by dramatically improving efforts against sex offenders and violent criminals.
Important measures in the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act include the prohibition of the insidious practice engaged in by certain sexually explicit Web sites of hiding innocuous terms in the hypertext markup language so that a search for those terms on the Internet yields links to the sexually explicit web sites.
This legislation is comprehensive in that it establishes a national sex offender registry which will make it easier for local law enforcement to track sex offenders and prevent repeat offenses, authorizes much-needed grants to help local law enforcement agencies and also puts the reigns on a new predator prowling ground-cyberspace.
I also recently supported amendments to the Science-State-Justice-Commerce Appropriation bill that would crack down on adults using the Internet to prey on children and provide services to children who have been victims of domestic and sexual violence.
The amendments I supported include DeGette Amendment, which would increase the funding of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force by $5 million. The ICAC Task Force Program was created to help State and local law enforcement agencies enhance their investigative response to offenders who use the Internet, online communication systems, or other computer technology to sexually exploit children. The program is currently composed of 45 regional Task Force agencies. The West Virginia State Police recently opened an Internet Crimes Against Children unit in West Virginia, the first such unit in the State, which is part of the national program.
We have made some significant steps, but work remains. If a child predator can be found lurking in the Halls of Congress, they can be found anywhere. We have a new battle to fight, and I, for one, will not rest until it is won.