U.S. Department
of Justice
Project Safe Childhood
Project Safe Childhood Press Releases
The United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida is dedicated to protecting children from exploitation and abuse. Internet predators, child pornographers, and individuals who recruit and coerce children into prostitution in our cities or who travel abroad to sexually abuse foreign children shatter lives and rob youth of their innocence. This Office is committed to aggressively prosecuting individuals who sexually abuse and exploit children.
In 2006, the Department of Justice launched Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a national initiative to coordinate federal, state, and local resources to prevent and interdict child exploitation and abuse. The USAO/MDFL's PSC program consists of five components:
- Coordinating federal, state, and local efforts to investigate and prosecute child exploitation cases, and to identify and rescue child victims
- Participating in coordinated national initiatives
- Increasing federal involvement in child exploitation cases
- Training federal, state and local law enforcement
- Increasing community awareness and education about the threats to children and ways to prevent child exploitation.
Collaboration, cooperation and communication are the key components of our effort to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of child exploitation cases. Cooperation among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies ensures that the most serious crimes are investigated and that the most dangerous offenders receive the greatest punishment. This Office also seeks to raise the public's awareness about the threat of online sexual predators, by providing tools and information to educators, parents and children to reduce the likelihood of harm to children and to encourage them to report possible violations. Since the inception of the PSC program, this Office has worked closely with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, the FBI's Innocent Images Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Task Force, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), to investigate and prosecute child exploitation crimes, and to provide and promote public outreach and awareness programs.
Any questions or suggestions regarding the USAO/MDFL 's PSC program can be directed to Assistant United States Attorney and PSC Coordinator, D. Rodney Brown in the Jacksonville Office.