The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

The effects of child sex tourism reach beyond the shattered lives of children overseas. Incountries like Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Costa Rica and Mexico, where the largestchild sex tourism crime problem exist, the plurality of perpetrators are from the U.S. Theprominence of child sexual abuse by U.S. citizens paints a despicable portrait of Americantourists among local populations in those countries, and fosters anti-American sentiment ingeneral.The FBI’s CST Initiative employs a proactive investigative strategy to identify and disrupt theactivities of child sexual predators before they are able to victimize additional minors.Intelligence sharing with both host country authorities and interested non-governmentalorganizations has led to the identification of offenders and predicated areas where child sexualexploitation is rampant. The FBI utilizes these partnerships to collect evidence againstpredicated targets and facilitate the arrest and prosecution of subjects by host country authoritiesand/or in the U.S. The FBI has implemented a three-step approach to addressing the CST threat.These steps include assessing the scope of the problem, identify training needs, and theimplementation of in-country operations.3. United States Marshals ServiceThe United States Marshals Service has a long history of recovering fugitives. In 2006, theAdam Walsh Act tasked them with primary responsibility for locating and apprehending sexoffenders who fail to register as required on state sex offender registries as well as initiatingfederal investigations into sex offender registration violations and related offenses innoncompliance of the Act. Since July 2006, the USMS has apprehended approximately 40,000fugitives wanted for sexual assaults, sex offender registration violations and other sex crimes.Additionally, investigators have opened more than 2,200 investigations on convicted sexoffenders for violations of the Act and arrested more than 770 individuals who have beenfederally charged.The Marshals Service conducts sex offender specific special operations in conjunction with theirstate and local counterparts to increase sex offender registry compliance and to identify, locate,and arrest those that are non-compliant. Since October 2008, the Marshals Service hasconducted 161 such operations, partnering with 566 state and local jurisdictions to conduct morethan 15,000 compliance checks resulting in the arrest of approximately 1,500 non registered sexoffenders. The compliance checks are designed to detect registry non-compliance and have ledto the discovery of and subsequent referral to FBI/ICE/ICAC and/or state authorities’ evidenceof possession of child pornography and other child exploitation crimes. This multi-prongeddepartmental approach maintains a consistent level of focus across the broadest spectrumenhancing the overall impact on those who offend.The Marshals Service works with NCMEC in recovering missing and exploited children throughits Operation Pickup program. There is a USMS case manager assigned to NCMEC who pursuesthe Services’ efforts on behalf of abducted children. Operation Pickup has been instrumental inrecovering more than 129 children since its inception in 2005. In recent years, the number of46