Political Quotes

“this week, we are taking a big step forward in the fight to end online child exploitation. The bipartisan REPORT Act, which you and I led, has been signed into law, and now law enforcement and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children-- or NCMEC, as we call it--will have the resources that they need to better protect vulnerable children and track down these predators and pedophiles. This legislation has been urgently needed. And, Mr. President, I thank you for your leadership on this issue. Here is a frightening statistic: In America, a child is bought or sold for sexual exploitation once every 2 minutes. In this country, in 2024, a child is bought or sold for sex once every 2 minutes. This abuse increasingly happens in the virtual space, where predators distribute child sexual abuse material; they recruit minors into sex trafficking rings; and they extort children into sharing explicit images of themselves. Just last year, NCMEC received 36.2 million reports of online child sexual exploitation, a 23-percent increase over 2021. NCMEC, whose CyberTipline serves as our country's centralized reporting system for online child abuse, does incredible work to track down these crimes and report them to law enforcement. But, tragically, so many more acts of online sexual abuse against children are going unreported.…”