On the recordMay 7, 2014
Today I will introduce legislation that will help victims of one of the most vicious crimes and one of the most evil crimes in our society: child pornography. When Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act more than 20 years ago--and I had a lot to do with that, and then-Senator Biden deserves an awful lot of the credit for that--the law required that the defendant in a child sexual exploitation case must pay restitution ``for the full amount of the victim's losses.'' Those losses can include lost income as well as expenses for medical services, therapy, rehabilitation, transportation, and childcare. The restitution statute works in a straightforward way for crimes that involve individual defendants who cause specific harm to particular victims. But child pornography is different. Victims not only suffer from the initial abuse, but they continue to suffer as images of that abuse are created, distributed, and possessed. As the Supreme Court recently put it, ``Every viewing of child pornography is a repetition of the victim's abuse.'' In the Internet age, a child pornography victim's abuse never ends, but identifying everyone who contributes to that ongoing abuse can be difficult, if not impossible. A predator who commits and records the abuse might be readily identified. Those who distribute those images, however, are harder to find, and many who obtain and possess them might never be identified at all. They may get lost in the crowd.…
