Governor Scott: Why Are You Giving A Pass To Sex-Predators?

“Today we learned that four cyber-crimes advocates have been taken off the front lines of fighting child sex-predators because of budget cuts by Governor Scott,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20).  “Florida’s Child Predator Cybercrime Unit has been one of the best units in the country devoted to tracking down and stopping the sexual exploitation of minors on the Internet.

“Governor Scott came to Washington, DC on Thursday April 14th and told me to my face, in front of the Florida Congressional delegation and the press that positions in Florida’s Child Predator Cybercrime Unit would not be eliminated, which I knew wasn’t true then and now, unfortunately, we can all see it wasn’t true.” said Rep. Wasserman Schultz.  “I call on Governor Scott to keep his word to the Congressional delegation and restore these positions, or explain to the people of Florida why he is firing people who spend their days working to protect Florida’s children from sex-predators.”

The extent to which child pornography and the victimization of children is a problem in Florida is deeply troubling.  In 2008 there were 37,345 computers identified in Florida as trafficking in child pornography and in 2007, there was so much child pornography generated in Florida that if our state was a country, it would rank seventh in the world in production of these sickening images and videos.