Senate Floor: MISSING CHILDREN'S ASSISTANCE ACT

Mr. President, I rise today as an original cosponsor of the Missing Children's Assistance Act and to urge its prompt consideration by this body.

The Justice Department recently reported that in 1999, 797,500 children were reported missing to police or to missing children's agencies. That is equivalent to a startling 11.4 children per 1,000 in the U.S. population. There were 58,200 children who were victims of a non-family abduction in 1999. One hundred fifteen of these children were taken in a manner that we would think of as a stereotypical kidnapping, and tragically, in half of these cases, the child victim was sexually assaulted by the perpetrator. These statistics are unacceptable. As a Nation we should strive every day to eliminate the scourge of abducted children.

That's exactly what the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is all about. Since it was established in 1984, the Center has served as a resource to parents, children, law enforcement, schools, and the community to assist in the recovery of America's abducted children. It has worked on over 73,000 cases of missing and exploited children and successfully returned more than 48,000 of these children to their families. The Center is constantly striving to raise the Nation's awareness of preventative measures that can be taken to keep our children safe from abduction, sexual exploitation, and molestation. These notable endeavors have contributed to a substantial increase in nation's recovery rate of missing children from a dismal 61 percent in the 1980s to 91 percent today.

For these reasons, I rise today with the Senator from Utah and the Senator from Vermont to introduce the Missing Children's Assistance Act. This act will expand the ability of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to protect our children by doubling the Federal contribution to the Center to $20 million a year and by ensuring that Congress will continue to support the Center's noteworthy efforts through 2006. The act also authorizes the creation of a CyberTipline. As technology continues to transform and modernize our lives, we must make provisions to insure that our children will be safe from perpetrators who prey on children through the Internet. The CyberTipline will provide a forum for individuals to contribute tips and suspicions of Internet-related and other types of sexual impropriety directed towards minors to the authorities. It will allow those wary of contacting law enforcement a safe place to do so, while making it possible for law enforcement and missing children agencies to send email alerts to thousands of individuals instantaneously.

In the end, I believe that this act will make the Nation a safer place for our children. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has done a tremendous job of raising the nation's awareness of child abduction, and this act will make it possible for the Center to continue with these endeavors. I urge support for the Missing Children's Assistance Act. It is fundamental that our children's safety remain at forefront of our national agenda.