David Keith is a sometimes-farmer from Sweetwater and often an actor in Hollywood movies. But today he talked to Tennessee legislators as a board member of the National Association to Protect Children.
As part of National Crime Victims Rights Week, Keith was in Nashville to urge lawmakers to fund a major task force to fight Internet child pornography. He says there’s
more than 100-thousand such web sites for “the multi-billion-dollar a year, global industry and the primary market is the U.S.”
“The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in Knoxville, Tennessee, estimates that Tennessee has about forty thousand people trafficking in child porn. Last year there were twenty-five convictions. Now there’s a way that law enforcement can go back through the Internet and get these guys where they live, but they’re so under-funded, they’re so under-resourced… They say it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, they’ve got the gun but no bullets.”
Keith says only a tiny percentage of such child-centered pornography involves simple child nudity. Most is hard-core. Some is violent. All of it is disturbing.
One of the measures Keith is asking state lawmakers to pass would pay for two new task forces…one in Middle Tennessee and one in West Tennessee. Keith says that would make the state one of the most-guarded in the country.
WEB EXTRA
National Association to Protect Children is also seeking seven hundred and fifty-million dollars for the FBI’s “Innocent Images” program. Keith says the FBI child porn office gets only ten million dollars a year and has only ten agents.
Keith’s National Association to Protect Children is at www.protect.org
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