CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) --Illinois Senator Dick Durbin visited the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center on the Near West Side Friday to push his bill that supports victims and increases accountability and transparency for online platforms.
Char Rivette is CEO of the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center on the Near West Side.
"We deal with children that have been sexually abused and we know that often times exploitation is part of their abuse experience meaning that there's online activity-either sexual abuse images that are produced to the child and can literally be online forever and ever," she explained.
There was a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday in which CEO's of five major tech companies faced accusations of not doing enough to prevent child sexual abuse online.
Jeannine Otte is a survivor of child sexual abuse. "It's important for all of us to speak out," she said. "It's important for every single adult to speak out. We all have children in our lives. All of us are responsible for protecting children."
Rose Bronstein's 15-year-old son, Nate was a student at the Latin School of Chicago. He committed suicide in 2022 due to online bullying.
"How many more children have to die before this urgent crisis is addressed" she asked in tears.
Senator Durbin said despite the divisions in Washington, there is strong bipartisan support for protecting children online and making tech companies liable.
"The differences politically that we have in America on Capitol Hill, in the Senate and in that committee, when we brought up these five pieces of legislation to protect children online from sexual abuse, bullying and other things, we got a unanimous vote out of the committee on all five majors."
Locally, the number of CyberTips received by the Cook County ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force doubled from 6,063 CyberTips in 2020 to 12,369 CyberTips in 2022.
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