[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15860]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   ONLINE PREDATORS THREATEN CHILDREN

  (Mr. KIRK asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, last night Michael Macalindong of Fox Lake, 
Illinois, was charged by Federal authorities with luring a 15-year-old 
minor to his home. This happens too often in America.
  What is new is that Macalindong used a social networking site, 
Facebook.com, to attack a minor child. Congress can do something about 
this. Sexual predators now use MySpace.com and Facebook.com to attack 
not dozens of children but thousands.
  In the last Congress, we overwhelmingly passed the Deleting Online 
Predators Act by a vote of 400-15, but this act stalled in the Senate. 
The House should now take up this bill again, now with over five dozen 
cosponsors, to protect children.
  The danger posed by predators online in Facebook and MySpace have 
turned those sites into a virtual hunting ground. This was not part of 
my childhood, but it is now part of growing up in America. Our laws are 
falling behind the cyberthreat to kids, and Congress should pass the 
Deleting Online Predators Act.

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