Thank you, Alan. It’s
my privilege to welcome everyone to the Department of Justice.
Let me begin by thanking Alan and Caren for their outstanding
leadership in the Office of Justice Programs.
And my thanks to the staff of our Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention for organizing today’s ceremony, and for all they do,
every day, to keep our children safe.
I want to express my deep appreciation to John Clark and our
friends at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The Department of Justice and the National
Center have enjoyed a long and productive partnership that strengthens by the
year. We’ve teamed up to create some
incredible public safety resources, like the CyberTipline and a 24-hour hotline
that fields tens of thousands of calls each year. There’s no question that our nation’s
children are safer thanks to our alliance.
I also want to thank Russell Barnes for being an important
part of our ceremony. We so deeply
regret the pain that your daughter’s murder has brought to you and your
family. Please know that we are inspired
by your example of strength, and we are grateful to have you with us today.
And finally, let me congratulate the remarkable group of
people we are honoring today:
They are local and
federal investigators who coordinated a complex child pornography and sexual
abuse case going back to the 1970s.
They are
detectives who have found scores of missing children and who shut down a child
pornography operation that had ensnared more than 40 victims.
And one is a
concerned citizen whose courage, compassion, and vigilance helped bring home an
abducted baby.
Through both public service and private acts, these
extraordinary individuals displayed ingenuity, resourcefulness, and an
especially high order of civic responsibility.
They exemplify, and magnify, the dedication and professionalism of our
law enforcement professionals, and they model what it means to be a good
citizen. We are fortunate – indeed,
blessed – that they have chosen to apply their exceptional talents to the
protection of our children. The
Department of Justice is proud to honor them today.
It is gratifying to be part of an agency that supports the
excellent work of law enforcement officers and child advocates like so many of
you in this room.
Through our Internet Crimes Against Children task force
program, we are supporting more than 4,500 federal, state, local, and tribal
law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies nationwide as they combat
computer-facilitated child exploitation.
ICAC task force investigations have led to the arrests of more than
83,000 individuals suspected of sexually exploiting children – more than 10,300
in the last year alone. In 2017, the
ICAC task forces conducted more than 66,000 investigations of
technology-facilitated crimes against children and supported almost 2,000
regional law enforcement trainings. Task
force personnel have also given more than 12,800 presentations on Internet
safety over the last year.
Another Justice Department effort, Project Safe Childhood,
is maximizing the enforcement potential of our U.S. Attorneys’ offices, our
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and federal and local law enforcement
agencies to bring to justice those who use the Internet to exploit children. Last week, we secured a guilty plea from a
26-year-old man who had spent months using social media to groom a 12-year-old
girl and lured her into performing sexual acts.
The week before that, two Maryland men were sentenced to 26 years in
prison for the sex trafficking of three underage girls. Both cases were the product of collaboration
between federal and local officials made possible by Project Safe Childhood.
I’m also very proud of our work with the AMBER Alert
program. AMBER Alert is a centerpiece of
our child protection efforts and one of the most valuable public safety tools
we have at our disposal. Thanks to a
strong network of law enforcement partners, transportation officials, and state
coordinators, and an ever-expanding secondary distribution system of Internet
providers and wireless carriers, the AMBER Alert program has helped to recover
more than 920 abducted children.
We continue to make this vital public resource more
effective, and more capable of reaching every community. In particular, our efforts in Indian country
are beginning to pay dividends. The
differing laws governing jurisdiction on tribal lands, coupled with the
difficulty of patrolling vast spaces, pose unusual challenges to the recovery
of missing American Indian children. But
these obstacles should never prevent us from coming to the aid of a child in
danger. None of us here accept them as
an excuse for what happened to Ashlynne Mike, the 11-year-old Navajo girl who
was abducted and murdered two years ago.
We are working with tribal officials and our partners at the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to strengthen tribes’
capacity to respond to these cases. So
far, we’ve trained more than 1,500 tribal first responders and child protection
professionals, and we now have a tribal database that serves as a one-stop shop
of training and other resources. And
just last month, President Trump signed into law the Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert
in Indian Country Act. This new law
makes critical resources available to protect American Indian children and, we
hope, will spare others the loss and suffering endured by Ashlynne’s family.
We remember so many others who have gone missing, as
well. Last year, more than 460,000
reports of missing children were entered in the FBI’s National Crime
Information Center. That’s almost
half-a-million entries in a single year.
It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by these numbers. A single case involving a missing or
exploited child can be complicated, time-intensive, and resource-draining. Multiplied into the thousands, the problem
can seem hopeless.
But it isn’t. The
professionals we’re honoring today have shown what an enormous difference a
well-constructed investigation can make – in the life of one child, a dozen
children, scores of children in a single case.
These skilled detectives epitomize the tenacity and resolve of
investigators across the country – federal, state, local, and tribal officials
working together to find missing and exploited children and bring them home to
safety.
We are so appreciative of what they have managed to
accomplish, and of what all of you are able to do every day. On behalf of the Attorney General and the
more than 113,000 employees of the Department of Justice, we are grateful to
you for protecting our children, and we pledge to stand with you as you
continue your work to achieve a safer, a more just, and a more compassionate
nation. You are all heroes, and we stand
by you.
Thank you.
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