The following press release comes from Del. Moran's (D-Alexandria) office. Also note that companion legislation (SB37) was introduced in the Senate by Senator Creigh Deeds (D-Bath).
By the way, back in 2006, Bob McDonnell pushed some of the toughest anti child-exploitation penalities in the country, including a 25-year mandatory minimum. The thing is, though, you can't stop there, you have to actually FUND law enforcement in a way that makes them able to catch these criminals. Del. Moran and Sen. Deeds are trying to do that. The bottom line is that you can't be "tough on crime" at the same time you're cheap on crime (e.g., Bob McDonnell's approach). That's simply not serious.
"Alicia's Law" Will Combat Child Exploitation OnlineDelegate Brian Moran (D-Alexandria) was joined by Alicia and Mary Kozakiewicz, Bedford Sheriff Mike Brown and the National Association to Protect Children to announce "Alicia's Law" (HB1189) named after Alicia Kozakiewicz - the 13 year old girl who was abducted by an internet predator, held hostage, and tortured in his Virginia basement. "Alicia's Law" will create a strong statewide network of highly trained law enforcement to track down and arrest child sex predators. Delegate Beverley Sherwood (R-Winchester) is chief co-patron of the initiative.
"Child Sex predators not only invade our homes and our lives, they trample on our most important and basic virtue - the innocence of our children. We can and must take aggressive steps to crack down on these predators," said Delegate Moran. "As the father of two young children, I know parents no longer only worry about an intruder breaking into their home, or a prowler on the street, they have to worry about the predator who logs into their home every night." Approximately one in five children who use the Internet regularly received a sexual solicitation online in the last year.
"Alicia's Law" takes a bold step forward in addressing the growing problem of child exploitation. The Department of Justice and the FBI have testified before Congress that child exploitation is growing rapidly. New investigative techniques have allowed law enforcement to identify nearly 500,000 individuals trafficking child pornography over the Internet nationwide. Due to the lack of resources at the Federal, state and local level, we are investigating only 2% of the known offenders. Research shows that if we were to investigate these cases we could rescue a victim of child exploitation thirty percent of the
time."Thousands of sexual predators are hiding in plain sight in Virginia. This bill will give law enforcement the ability to go get them," said Grier Weeks, Executive Director of the National Association to Protect Children. "Brian Moran's legislation will protect more Virginia children than any other single thing we could do. Finding and stopping these predators is in our power, and it's real child abuse prevention."
"Alicia's Law" would increase law enforcement capacity to crack down on internet child sex predators by:
* Investing in expanding regional Internet Crimes against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program to ensure we have one cyber unit in each county dedicated to these cases. The ICAC officers are on the front lines of tracking cyber predators and this provides them desperately needed resources to expand staff and facilities and build the infrastructure needed to indict these known offenders.
* The bill creates 3 regional computer forensic labs dedicated to crimes against children. The computer forensic backlog is the single greatest bottleneck for law enforcement. Officers report that sometimes they wait months to have a hard drive analyzed. The time lost results in more children being put at risk.
* Lastly, "Alicia's Law" authorizes a grant program in the Department of Criminal Justice services for additional localities that take on the effort to track and catch online predators.
Companion legislation (SB37) was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Deeds (D-Bath). "At the same time when the Internet has given children access to the world - it has also given the world access to our kids." said Sen. Creigh Deeds. "We need to give law enforcement the funds they desperately need to rescue child victims like Alicia and to pull the plug on Internet predators."
Senate chief co-patron Steve Newman (R-Lynchburg) echoed by saying "The National Association to Protect Children is one of the premier organizations working to protect children from exploitation. One does not need to look very far to see that there is a growing need for this program in Virginia. I commend the current Virginia task forces for doing such excellent jobs thus far, especially within my own district in Bedford County. It is essential to have a bipartisan effort that will continue to eliminate Internet crimes against children. We cannot do enough to support this program and its mission to end what is a classic example of modern day sexual slavery."
Alicia Kozakiewicz, who survived, and transcended, her own experience as a child victim of an Internet predator said the following recently in her testimony before Congress: "Please support the children, save us from pedophiles; the pornographers, the monsters. The boogie man is real and he lives on the net. He lived on my computer and he lives in yours. While you are sitting here, he's at home with your children. ICAC task forces all over this country are poised to capture him, to put him in that prison cell with the man who hurt me. They can do it, they want to do it, don't you?"