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Child Abuse and Exploitation

Attorney General King has directed the Family Protection Unit to work cooperatively with federal, state, and local prosecutors and law enforcement officials, to determine where our current efforts to protect our children are inadequate and how we can do better. When the innocence and trust of children is betrayed by physical or sexual abuse or neglect, it is a tragic loss for all of society. Those who commit these crimes against children must be made to pay a high price for their depravity. The Family Protection Unit will not rest until Alabama has been made a safer place for our children, a place where their trust will not be betrayed.

1. Drug Endangered Children Alliance
• This nationwide alliance is designed to address the problem of children who are found in, or around, environments where methamphetamine and other illegal substances are produced.
• The Family Protection Unit will make it a top priority to form a statewide task force to establish and adopt a uniform protocol for helping these endangered children who are rescued from clandestine drug labs.
• This task force will be part of a nationwide program designed to balance the enforcement efforts of law enforcement, medical services, and the needs of child welfare workers to ensure that children found in these environments receive appropriate attention and care.
• Children exposed to the many dangers of these drug production sites suffer a variety of health and safety risks including inhalation, absorption, and/or ingestion of toxins, drugs, or contaminated foods that can cause injury, and in some cases, even death.
• These children often suffer abuse and neglect and are exposed to a very hazardous lifestyle, including exposure to toxic chemicals, firearms and drug abuse. Last year, there were approximately 14,260 national methamphetamine lab related incidents. In over 10% of these cases there was at least one child at risk. These labs affected more than 3,000 children, including those who were residing at the labs but who were not present at the time of the seizure, as well as children who were visiting the site. Nearly 1,300 incidents involved a child being exposed to toxic chemicals.
• Attorney General's Office prosecutors will work with district attorneys across Alabama to insure that the individuals who are committing these crimes against children are prosecuted under existing laws and to further insure that we coordinate our efforts to strengthen and improve these laws and to propose new legislation to make these prosecutions more effective.
2. Partnership with the ABI Internet Crimes Against Children Unit
• The Alabama Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit investigates computer crimes committed against children, including child pornography, child endangerment, solicitation, etc. In the past, the Unit has had to rely on resources from different prosecutors across the state. The Attorney General's Office prosecutors will work with ABI to investigate and prosecute those who would prey on the children of this State. This partnership will provide a consistent and uniform approach to the prosecution of these cases.
• The Family Protection Unit will conduct an unprecedented statewide crackdown on child pornography. Every available resource will be utilized to ensure that these vicious predators are punished to the fullest extent of the law.
3. Prosecution of Fraudulent Government Funded Daycare Operations
• Federal and state funding provides assistance to welfare mothers who are attempting to return to the workforce. These families are in desperate situations and cannot afford childcare. Funds are distributed to select daycare operations, which meet the requisite guidelines under these federal programs. Approximately 15,000 children are on waiting lists to participate in these programs and when unscrupulous daycare providers defraud this program, these scarce resources are denied to deserving families. The Family Protection Unit will conduct a concerted effort directed at investigating and prosecuting these corrupt daycare providers and stopping the theft of these important resources from those desperately in need.
4. Mentor Alabama
• In August of 2000, the Office of Attorney General began encouraging adults across Alabama to become mentors to at-risk youth through MENTOR ALABAMA.
• MENTOR ALABAMA is an Attorney General's initiative to reduce juvenile crime by involving appropriate adults in the lives of at-risk children as mentors, tutors and role models.
• We know that mentoring works. The National Mentoring Partnership tells us that mentored teens are 46 percent less likely to use drugs, 59 percent more likely to make better grades, and 73 percent more likely to set higher goals.
• The goal in establishing MENTOR ALABAMA was to recruit 2,002 mentors by the end of 2002. That goal was exceeded nine months ahead of schedule and over 5,500 mentors have been recruited from every region of the state. The Attorney General's office has completed in-state criminal background checks on all of these volunteers at no additional cost to Alabama taxpayers.
5. Faithful Friends
• When a man or woman is convicted of a crime and sentenced to state prison, the "forgotten" victims are the children they leave behind. There are approximately 27,000 men and women in prison in Alabama, and it is estimated that 70% of them are parents.
• Statistics show that 7 out of 10 children who have one or both parents incarcerated end up incarcerated themselves.
• In October 2003, "Faithful Friends" was started as an extension of MENTOR ALABAMA to provide mentors to children of prisoners in Alabama. To accomplish this good work, "Faithful Friends" successfully sought to become one of 52 organizations nationally to receive a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources under President Bush's "Mentoring Children of Prisoners" grant program. This program is active in the greater Montgomery and greater Birmingham areas (specifically Jefferson, Blount, Shelby, Walker, St. Clair, Montgomery, Elmore, Autauga and Lowndes Counties.