Josh Hawley: “I rise today to urge the Senate to take action to crack down on child pornography offenders and to protect our children.…”

“I rise today to urge the Senate to take action to crack down on child pornography offenders and to protect our children. This is a growing crisis, and it is one that is near to the heart of every parent in America. I can attest to that as a father of three small children myself. I have got a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 16-month-old baby at home. But I can also attest to it as a former prosecutor. As the attorney general for the State of Missouri, one of the first things I did was establish a statewide anti-human trafficking initiative and task force because what I saw as attorney general of my State was that human trafficking, including, unfortunately, child sex trafficking, is an exploding epidemic. In my State and around our country, children are exploited, children are trafficked. And those who work in this area and those who prosecute in this area--law enforcement who work day in and day out--will tell you that the explosion of child pornography is helping to drive this exploding epidemic of child sexual exploitation and child sex trafficking. The problem is that child porn itself is exploding. A New York Times investigative reporter found that in 2018, there were 45 million images of children being sexually exploited available on the internet--45 million. Just a few years before, it had been 3 million and in 2018, 45.…”