Flatley: Congress letting online predators walk free
In a recent House Energy & Commerce hearing focused on “protecting kids online,” a stark reality emerged: Congress is missing the mark in addressing the real crisis of child safety. While lawmakers engaged in lengthy discussions about platform design modifications, age-verification strategies, and various regulatory frameworks, the critical issue of arresting and prosecuting child predators was glaringly absent from their agenda. Maureen Flatley, president of Stop Child Predators, highlighted this oversight, emphasizing that true protection for children comes not from regulatory tweaks but from robust law enforcement action against those who exploit and harm them.
The statistics presented during the hearing paint a troubling picture. In the past year alone, electronic service providers filed over 20 million CyberTipline reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, with a staggering 13 million of those reports originating from Meta. This equates to a private company alerting authorities about potential child exploitation 13 million times, yet law enforcement agencies, often under-resourced and overwhelmed, managed to address only a fraction of these alarming alerts. The bottleneck, as experts agree, lies not in the detection of these crimes but in the investigation and prosecution processes. Flatley argues that until Congress allocates adequate funding for law enforcement initiatives aimed at apprehending predators, the discussions in these hearings will remain little more than performative gestures.
Moreover, the current legislative proposals under consideration, such as KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and RESET, are criticized for failing to tackle the core issue of online child safety. Instead of focusing on meaningful solutions like funding for law enforcement or enhancing the capabilities of existing cybercrime units, these bills introduce new liabilities and bureaucratic hurdles without addressing the urgent need to take predators off the streets. Flatley calls for the reintroduction of the Invest in Child Safety Act, which seeks to directly reduce the number of predators through targeted law enforcement funding rather than expanding federal bureaucracy. She insists that any legislation claiming to enhance child safety must prioritize funding for law enforcement; otherwise, it merely serves as a facade that ultimately benefits criminals. In Flatley’s view, the path to genuine child safety is clear: it requires a commitment to effective investigations, trained prosecutors, and a justice system that can act decisively on the leads provided by technology companies.
After watching the House Energy & Commerce hearing on “protecting kids online,” I was reminded that Congress is debating the wrong crisis. Congressional leaders spent hours discussing platform design tweaks, age-verification schemes and so-called “duties of care.” Still, not one moment was spent discussing the only thing that actually protects children: arresting sexual predators and putting them in jail.
The government cannot lecture about child safety while ignoring the basic math of this emergency. Last year, electronic service providers filed more than 20 million CyberTipline reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children; 13 million of those came from Meta. Think about that: a private company calling 911 13 million times. And law enforcement bodies, starved of personnel, training and digital forensics capacity, answered only a fraction of those calls.
Every expert knows this bottleneck is not detection. The bottleneck is investigation, prosecution and incarceration. Until Congress funds the people who actually put predators behind bars, these hearings are unfortunately performative.
Lawmakers in the 119th Congress have been revisiting a familiar slate of bills (KOSA, COPPA 2.0, RESET and their legislative cousins) that promise online safety but deliver none. They create new liabilities, new bureaucracies, new mandates and new censorship risks. Everything except the one thing that matters: taking predators off the street.
Not one of the bills discussed includes serious law-enforcement funding. There was no mention of codifying or expanding the vital work the DHS Cybercrimes Unit has done. Not one suggested disseminating their Know2Protect public awareness program, a free, readily available tool for parents, kids and schools. Not one expands the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces. None of them gives the U.S. marshals the digital forensics teams they need. Not one modernizes NCMEC’s overwhelmed systems.
None of these bills aims to solve the core problem: the near-total impunity that online predators enjoy.
Predators worldwide are watching the House Energy & Commerce hearing and breathing a sigh of relief because they get another year of freedom. Another year to exploit, coerce, extort and re-victimize children. Another year where millions of CyberTips go unassigned, uninvestigated, unanswered.
Absolute child safety is not mysterious. We know what works: funded investigations, trained prosecutors, digital forensics teams, and a criminal-justice system capable of acting on the leads tech companies already provide.
That is why Stop Child Predators supports reintroducing the Invest in Child Safety Act. It is the only proposal that would shrink the predator population rather than expand the federal bureaucracy. Everything else proposed in Congress is noise. None of it gets a single offender off the street.
The truth is simple: If your “child-safety” bill does not fund law enforcement, it is not a child-safety bill. It is a gift to criminals.
Maureen Flatley is the president of Stop Child Predators/InsideSources
