NCMEC On a Mission: President Signs Law Expanding Our Reach

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine your child goes missing—they run away, are abducted, or vanish while playing outside. Or imagine being a child, sexually abused, with videos of your suffering distributed online. Or a teenager who's being sextorted online, feeling helpless and alone. As a law enforcement officer, you might face your first missing child case or need help identifying a child seen in a sexually abusive image. The hopelessness would be overwhelming. 

Four decades ago, Congress recognized the urgent need for a national resource center to help parents, child victims, and law enforcement when a child goes missing or is exploited. After John and Revé Walsh's son Adam was abducted and murdered, they dedicated themselves to making the world safer for children. Congress responded in 1984 by designating and funding the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to serve as the nation's clearinghouse to protect children. Last week, President Biden reauthorized funding for NCMEC, underscoring its critical role. 

Many know NCMEC for our vital work disseminating AMBER Alerts, circulating missing child posters in the media or responding to reports of online child sexual exploitation via our CyberTipline. In fact, NCMEC's efforts extend far beyond these critical programs. This year, as we mark our 40th anniversary, we continue to operate 16 diverse child protection programs under our Congressional authorization. NCMEC operates a 24/7 Call Center, manages public leads on missing children, and provides free training to Federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement and safety education to schools and communities. Our Child Victim Identification Program assists law enforcement in identifying children depicted in sexually explicit imagery, and we offer crucial support to parents facing the crises of missing or sexually exploited children. 

NCMEC's assistance touches every town and state, with calls for help rising from a few hundred in 1984 to over 148,000 in 2023; missing child cases increasing from a few dozen to over 28,000 last year, and CyberTipline reports surging from 4,500 in 1998 to over 36 million in 2023. New threats, including child sex trafficking, online enticement, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material, are constantly emerging and challenging our team to innovate new ways to protect America's children. 

Throughout NCMEC's four decades, we have been able to rely on our Congressional supporters to help fund our activities and to work across the chambers and across the aisle to pass child protection legislation that strengthens the capabilities of law enforcement, private attorneys, prosecutors, social service workers, and NCMEC. Our organization is fortunate to be a public-private partnership, which enables us to also work closely with and benefit from the support of corporate and private supporters. As detailed in NCMEC's new reauthorization, this public-private partnership allows us to more rapidly distribute geolocated missing child posters, support survivors of child abduction and child sexual exploitation, run innovative programs like Take It Down to remove explicit images of children from the internet, and improve reporting of online child sexual exploitation as set forth in the recently enacted REPORT Act.  

Utilizing our authorization, technology, and partnerships, we quickly provide resources to families and law enforcement to help find missing children; create and share massive lists of "digital fingerprints" of child sexual abuse material with tech companies to voluntarily detect, report, and remove this harmful content from their platforms; and educate the public on emerging trends as the landscape of child protection changes.  

We appreciate our Congressional champions who have fought with us to protect children. We are especially thankful to members of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, including the leadership of Senator Shaheen, Senator Moran, Congressman Rogers, and Congressman Cartwright.  

Today, more than ever, Congress, the private sector, and the public must work together to thwart offenders who seek to abduct, entice, sextort, traffic, and sexually exploit and abuse America's children. As challenges to child safety continue to evolve, NCMEC, law enforcement, and all our child protection partners must continue our efforts to keep children safer. Only by working together can we help ensure that every child enjoys a safe childhood. 

SOURCE The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children