Attorney General Alberto Gonzales promised Monday that more money would be made available in the fight against childhood abuse and abduction.
The Project Safe Childhood campaign works with 47 task forces dealing with Internet crimes against children. Gonzales announced at a Washington, D.C., conference that an additional half million dollars in federal funds would bolster the effort. Ernie Allen, president of The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, welcomed the help.
"The total investment in this effort is huge," he told Family News in Focus, "but what the attorney general was trying to do is to bring additional resources."
The campaign is a collaboration of all U.S. attorneys general, state and local law-enforcement officials and key nonprofit leaders.
Daniel Weiss, media and sexuality analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said there was much to applaud in Gonzales' remarks.
"It's clear he doesn't want any more children harmed," he said. "We can feel pretty confident that he takes the safety of our children seriously."
But, Weiss pointed out, in his speech of more than 2,000 words, Gonzales never mentioned the problem of adult pornography, the starting block for most future predators.
"For some strange reason it appears that there is a very strong kind of demarcation between child pornography and child predators and adult pornography and obscenity," Weiss said. "It seems the Justice Department takes one very seriously and one not seriously at all, even though both pose threats to kids."
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