“We must impose more severe penalties against those who would hurt our nation’s innocent children,” Isakson said. “I wholeheartedly support the improvement of the national program to register and monitor individuals who have committed crimes, including sex offenses, against children.”
The bill includes provisions from legislation introduced by Isakson and U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) that dramatically increase penalties for anyone who downloads child pornography off the Internet and fixes current law to allow adults to sue those who download images of them taken when they were children.
The bipartisan legislation, “Masha’s Law,” introduced by Isakson and Kerry in December, was inspired by Masha, a 5-year old girl adopted from a Russian orphanage in 1998 by Matthew Mancuso, who began sexually abusing Masha the first night she spent with him. Mancuso began disseminating Masha’s pictures over the Internet almost immediately, which is what led law enforcement to his home, where they were shocked to find that the victim was Mancuso’s adopted daughter. Subsequently, Masha was removed from the home and Mancuso was arrested, tried and convicted. However, hundreds images of Masha remain on the Internet and are being downloaded around the world.
In addition to the provisions contained in Isakson and Kerry’s legislation, the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 creates a National Sex Offender Registry with uniform standards for the registration of sex offenders, including a lifetime registration requirement for the most serious offenders, and it establishes strong federal penalties for sex offenders who fail to register. The legislation also enables child protective service officials in all 50 states to share information and more effectively investigate child abuse cases.
