Pink Eyed Jim’s Blog

Can anyone guess who said this? It’s from July 25, 2006. Hint: He may soon be on the very list of which he is speaking.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.

I remember that tragic day in Hollywood, Florida, when a young Adam Walsh hit the headlines, having been abducted from a mall in our State. Over 2 years ago, his father, John Walsh, and Ernie Allen approached me to discuss what they saw as a growing and dangerous threat to our children, sex offenders. We talked about the fact there were over 500,000 sex offenders listed on various State registries, but because of poor Federal and State laws, we were missing over 150,000 of them. Soon after that meeting, I began work on the Sex Offender Registration Notification Act, which is contained in this bill today.

The Adam Walsh Act is the most comprehensive piece of child protection legislation this Congress has ever considered. The bill creates, among other things, new State and Federal regulations, community notification requirements, as well as new Federal criminal penalties for sex offenders. It also gives law enforcement new resources, including authorizing U.S. Marshals to go after missing sex offenders, 20 new task forces, 200 new Federal prosecutors, 45 new forensic scientists dedicated to investigating crimes against children.

More fun quotes from our friend beneath the fold…

Let me also alert our colleagues–today is National Missing Kids Day. Every day, 2,000 children go missing. Even though many are returned home safely, many are still unaccounted for. Sexual predators roam free, foisting their sickness on the most vulnerable. Despite our success in recent years of tracking down our missing kids, much more needs to be done.

If you watched recent episodes of Dateline or America’s Most Wanted, online predators have a pervasive and sickening impact on our children.

There are over 5,000 registered sex offenders in this country, and 150,000 of them go without any kind of checking in or any kind of tracking. We track library books better than our sexual predators. We have to stop playing Russian roulette with our children’s lives.

Madam Speaker, let me commend the administration, particularly Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for his investigation that has busted a ring of 27 charged in a child pornography sting. Images traded worldwide on Internet chat room, despicable, disgusting, disgraceful conduct. Agents from the Justice Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and law enforcement authorities in several countries participated in this sting.

This is disturbing news about pedophilia at the youngest, youngest age of children and victims. I urge the Senate to take up the House bill that was sent over in messages to help us rid this society of the scourge of child pornography, sexual exploitation, child molestation and finally get tough with the people that commit these heinous crimes against our most vulnerable. We have sent it overwhelmingly by voice vote to the other Chamber.

I urge Senator Frist to bring his Chamber together to pass this vital legislation so we can continue to crack down on these monsters.

I also want to thank them for their courageous vote and excellent vote on H.R. 3132, the Children’s Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act. Overwhelmingly passed by voice vote, that measure is on its way to the other Chamber to set up for the first time a national sex offender registry, getting background checks on foster care parents so we know if we are putting our kids with appropriate individuals, a national database requiring bracelet monitoring for sex offenders.

We track library books better than we do sexual predators. It is time we get this right. This bill does that. It puts in law guarantees that will protect our kids. It is high time we passed this measure. I thank Senator Frist, John Walsh, among others, who have brought this to the forefront of the national conscience, and I urge we get that bill to the President’s desk before we lose another child.

But let us talk about what we are here for today, and that is to protect the vulnerable children. You have heard the names repeatedly in this debate. I do not want to read about another one for our failure to act.This House did overwhelmingly approve this bill because there are a lot of good legislative initiatives in this bill to protect our children. I have said repeatedly on this floor that we protect library books better than we do our children. We have a better system of accountability than we do for our children.

This is about the kids that have perished because they were at the hands of despicable child predators.

Talk about a champion of the children…

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Rants. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.