Child Sex Abuse Victim Recounts Story to Whitfield's Subcommittee | News | Congressman Ed Whitfield

News | Congressman Ed Whitfield | United States Representative

Child Sex Abuse Victim Recounts Story to Whitfield's Subcommittee May 3, 2006 U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, on Wednesday held the third in a series of investigative hearings examining the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet. Members received testimony from a child victim who spoke of her past sexual abuse as well as federal law enforcement officials who updated the Subcommittee on their efforts to uncover and prosecute pedophiles.

On Wednesday, the Subcommittee heard from another child sex abuse victim, 13 year-old Masha Allen. At age 5, Masha was adopted from a Russian orphanage by a single divorcee living in Pennsylvania, Matthew Mancuso. During the five years she lived with Mancuso, Masha told the Subcommittee the harrowing details of how he repeatedly raped and abused her, keeping her chained to a wall in his basement and feeding her little to no food. Masha recalled how Mancuso took volumes of pictures documenting her sexual abuse and traded those images among a network of anonymous pedophiles on the Internet.

Mancuso eventually was convicted on both federal and state charges stemming from his abuse of Masha, and is currently imprisoned at a federal correctional facility in Massachusetts. Despite the fact that law enforcement discovered these crimes and successfully prosecuted Mancuso, Masha told the Subcommittee that her nightmare continues today. Usually, when a kid is hurt and the abuser goes to prison, the abuse is over. But because Matthew put my pictures on the Internet, the abuse is still going on, said Masha.

Mashas story is horrific, but it is a story that needs to be told, said Whitfield. These are not isolated incidents of individuals gone bad - this problem is widespread, and Americans need to understand that horrific crimes such as these are being perpetrated in cities and towns across the country right now.

Appearing alongside Masha at the hearing was CNN journalist and former Georgia state prosecutor Nancy Grace. Grace has featured Masha and other victims of child sexual abuse on her show, and also publicized Mashas story at a time when Masha was still and unidentified child victim of sexual abuse. Grace applauded Mashas courage in testifying about her abuse, and urged Congress to act on the issue.

I am here today on behalf of every child victim I ever represented, of every child victim I never met, on behalf of those who are too weak or young or innocent or simply too afraid to speak out, to ask you for your help in passing legislation that will not only crack down upon, but help stop ongoing child sex predators, said Grace.

The second panel to testify included Kentucky native Alice Fisher, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Raul Roldan, Section Chief of the Cyber Crimes Division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Both witnesses were invited to attend the Subcommittees April 6 hearing on child exploitation over the Internet, but their respective organizations did not make them available to testify. A third witness, Andrew Oosterban, Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section at the FBI, was invited to attend both the April 4 and todays May 3 hearing, but DOJ declined to send him to testify on both occasions.

Fisher and Roldan told the Subcommittee of recent efforts DOJ and FBI have made to combat online child pornography and sexual abuse. Federal law enforcement agencies have launched several national enforcement initiatives against online pedophiles, in particular users who trade sexually abusive images over peer-to-peer file sharing networks. This initiative, called Operation Peer Pressure, has resulted in 63 arrests and over 40 convictions of child pornography offenders. In addition, DOJ recently released a set of legislative initiatives to combat the exploitation of children over the Internet. The proposed legislation, which DOJ sent to Congress after the Subcommittees first two hearings on this topic, creates new criminal penalties for embedding sexually suggestive or misleading words in the source code of websites and increases financial penalties for an electronic communication service provider failing to report child pornography on its networks.

While the Subcommittee welcomed DOJ and FBIs efforts to combat online sex offenders, Whitfield cautioned that much work remains to be done. I continue to be amazed by the number of different law enforcement agencies are working on this problem, yet there still does not appear to be a comprehensive, national strategy in place to deal with this problem.

Whitfield continued, It is imperative that Congress, law enforcement, and private companies come together on this issue and find workable solutions to this growing problem. As this series of hearings continues, I hope that we will come closer to developing a strategy that works to ensure that our children are made safer and that child predators are caught.

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