This National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction is designed to prevent child sexual exploitation from occurring so as to protect children from sexual abuse, trauma, and exploitation.
This goal will be achieved by efficiently leveraging assets across the Federal Government in a coordinated manner. All entities with a stake in the fight against child exploitation will be involved in the strategy, from Federal agencies, investigators, and prosecutors to social service providers, educators, medical professionals, academics, nongovernmental organizations, and members of industry, as well as parents, caregivers, and the children at risk. In 2008, Congress enacted and President Bush signed the Providing Resources, Officers, and Technology to Eradicate Cyber Threats to Our Children Act. This Act requires the Department of Justice to formulate and implement a national strategy to combat child exploitation. The legislation mandates that the national strategy contain a significant amount of information, including an assessment of the magnitude of child exploitation; a review of the Justice Department and other State and Federal agencies' efforts to coordinate and combat child exploitation; and a proposed set of goals and priorities for reducing child exploitation. In this inaugural National Strategy report, the Justice Department describes its first-ever threat assessment of the danger that faces the Nation's children, its current efforts to combat child exploitation, and outlines the goals and plans to fight the threats facing the Nation's children. This report reviews threat assessment research and describes the focus of the national strategy on the following types of child sexual exploitation: child pornography, online enticement of children for sexual purposes, commercial sexual exploitation of children, and child sex tourism. The strategy's efforts are multifaceted. The report describes these efforts in detail. Appended threat assessment, Justice Department funded research, and a synthesis of major studies