House Bills Would Raise Penalties for Internet Sex Crimes

Alicia Kozakiewicz, 19, mesmerized committee members as she told of her “cyber-relationship” with a man who eventually abducted her at 13, took her to Virginia and “enslaved” her. The Internet allows shy kids like her to “instantly transform themselves,” said Kozakiewicz, now a college sophomore. She met “Christine,” supposedly a red-headed girl her own age but actually a “middle-aged pervert,” Scott Tyree, she testified. Tyree abducted the girl, chained her in his basement, beat and raped her and posted photos of her online, she said. Tyree, who pleaded guilty to related charges in 2003, is serving nearly 35 years in prison. Kozakiewicz urged support of HR-1738 and a bill sponsored by Reps. Debbie Schultz, D-Fla., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, that would deepen Justice Department involvement in fighting crimes against children online, because, she said, the “boogie man lived” on her computer.

The Schultz-Barton bill, the Protect Our Children Act, HR-3845, would “reorder priorities” at Justice, where 240 agents work full-time on child protection issues, compared with 2,000 assigned to white-collar crime, Schultz said. “We need a national campaign with the full weight” of ISPs, Congress, parents and others, she said. The bill would create a special counsel at Justice to “plan and coordinate” efforts against child exploitation, she said.

The Child Pornography Elimination Act, HR-3148, sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo. would bar knowingly accessing child porn, impose mandatory penalties for its possession, increase civil penalties on ISPs that don’t report child porn to police and provide mandatory restitution for victims for therapy, medical care, attorney’s fees and other losses determined by the court. The bill would increase the penalty for sexual exploitation and possession of child porn to two to 10 years in prison minimum. The bill would triple fines, levied by the FCC, on ISPs that knowingly fail to report such violations, to $150,000 for the first offense and $300,000 each for subsequent offenses.

A measure proposed by Reps. Chris Carney, D-Pa., and Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, the Responsible and Effective Solutions for Children Using and Entering Online Services Act, would set up a national “reporting standard” for reporting child porn to police and “enhance” service provider immunity. It would let the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children engage in international collaborations.

Flint Waters, special agent, Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, graphically described online images and video of sexual acts performed on children as young as 4 months. He said authorities tracking P2P file sharers of child porn found 4,500 places across the U.S. where people were trading such images in August. “Our lowest estimate is that there are 350,000 people trading,” he said. “We are overwhelmed, we are underfunded and are drowning… we don’t have the resources we need to save these children.”

Grier Weeks, a board member of nonprofit Protect, agreed that police lack funds and expertise. “There is a crushing market demand” for child porn, he said. “Only a token of these cases are ever investigated. There’s a “critical lack of forensic resources at every level… how is this possible? How can we have a flourishing criminal marketplace in children?”

Online companies do “extraordinary work” to protect kids online, said AOL Chief Counsel John Ryan. It “makes good business sense and it’s the right thing to do,” he said. But “criminals persist, so industry and government must fulfill unique roles,” said Yahoo Assistant General Counsel Elizabeth Banker. She said Yahoo supports provisions in bills discussed at the hearing that would give ISPs and search engines immunity for handing over child pornography images to NCMEC and that would standardize what abuse reports to the Center include.