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Skriven 2007-04-04 23:33:00 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0704047) for Wed, 2007 Apr 4
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Mrs. Bush's Remarks at the Announcement of the Texas Regional Office of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
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For Immediate Release Office of the First Lady April 4, 2007

Mrs. Bush's Remarks at the Announcement of the Texas Regional Office of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children San Jacinto Room The
Four Seasons Hotel



1:51 P.M. CDT

MRS. BUSH: Thank you, Rae Leigh, thank you very, very much for that very
kind introduction.

I'm so happy to be here today in this room with so many good friends. I
want to thank everybody for coming. I want to especially thank Diane
Allbaugh for being the one who is really responsible for this, for putting
this event together, as well as for doing all the hard work that you've
done to make sure a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is
here in Austin. Thank you very, very much, Diane. (Applause.)

Joining us also today is Ernie Allen, who is the president and CEO of the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He's one of my favorite
people. I love to have the chance to talk to him whenever I can, to hear
stories, all the different stories -- and many, many stories with very
happy endings from the center. Thank you, Ernie, for joining us today.
(Applause.)

Jan Bullock, my partner -- my partner when George was governor and Bob
Bullock was lieutenant governor -- is also an event chair. Thank you very,
very much, Jan. Thank you for your great work. (Applause.)

Anita Perry, I want to recognize you. Thank you for joining us today.
Nadine Craddick, the speaker's wife, thank you very much for joining us.
And I especially want to thank Nelda and Pete Laney for being with us here
as well.

We're going to hear in a minute from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Thank
you, Senator, for joining us. And Attorney General Greg Abbott. Thank you
so much, Greg.

Mayor Will Wynn is with us, and Austin, of course, will be the site of this
regional center for Missing and Exploited Children. And, Mayor, thank you
for being a part of this, as well.

In the room are a lot of state officials. Many of you I have known forever
and I want to thank you all for joining us today, for working on each one
of the issues that surround the whole idea of the exploitation of children
-- from the judges who are here with us to the state representatives and
the state senators. Thank you all so much for being here.

In 1981, as you heard on the video, a six-year-old boy named Adam Walsh was
kidnapped from a Florida department store. Soon after Adam disappeared, he
was found murdered. Adam's mother and dad, Rev and John Walsh, were
devastated -- and they were determined to build a nationwide network that
would help other families recover missing sons or daughters. John and Rev
's advocacy helped establish the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. And just in case you couldn't tell from the video, this is John
Walsh that you know now from TV's "America's Most Wanted."

Today, federal, state and local law enforcement cooperate to pursue
kidnappers across state lines. National registries alert parents about
convicted sexual predators living in their neighborhoods. And across the
United States, there is one hotline number to call immediately to report a
missing child. In 1990, 62 percent of children reported missing to the
National Center were recovered. Today, that number has climbed to 94
percent. That's really terrific. (Applause.)

I'm proudest of the National Center's heroic response to Hurricane Katrina.
With help from the government, from the American Red Cross, and from many
individual volunteers -- including a very large number of retired law
enforcement from around the United State -- the National Center worked day
and night to reunite families that were separated by the hurricanes. Of the
more than 5,000 children who were initially reported missing, every single
case was resolved. (Applause.)

And congratulations to Ernie Allen and to everyone at the National Center.
I visited the National Center while this search was going on for the
children who needed to be reunited with their families after the hurricane
and met people -- law enforcement, FBI, police chief, Secret Service,
retired Secret Service who were all working, manning the computers there,
and then a number of these retired law enforcement also went straight to
the shelters along the Gulf Coast to work to make sure every family was
reunited with their children.

Recently, this January, Madam Chirac in Paris hosted an International
Conference on Missing and Exploited Children, which I attended. And I was
so proud to be there with Ernie Allen. Our National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children has worked with other countries to make sure there is
now an International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

At Madam Chirac's conference we talked about what each of our countries can
do to improve cooperation between all countries, since all the new
technology -- like the Internet -- have made child exploitation an
international crisis. Ernie Allen was there and the National Center was
working with Interpol and Europol and a number of other groups to make sure
the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children can continue to
work across borders to make sure children are reunited with their families.

The center's success shows how important a network of individual citizens
is to keeping children safe. In fact, the public is the best resource to
help recover missing children. Just last month in Lubbock, an anonymous tip
from one woman helped return three-day-old Mychael Darthard-Dawodu -- who
was kidnapped from the hospital by a woman posing as a nurse -- to her
mother.

And through the AMBER Alerts, all Americans who watch TV, or listen to the
radio, or see the special highway signs, AMBER Alert highway signs, can
help locate missing children. So far, AMBER Alerts have saved more than 300
young lives in the United States -- including Rae Leigh Bradbury's.
(Applause.)

When I was in Paris, the French government had just instituted AMBER Alerts
and actually called them AMBER Alerts, like ours are. And just in the two
weeks -- or the one-and-a-half weeks the AMBER Alerts had been in effect,
they had already found two children with the help of an AMBER Alert.

Every year, 850,000 children are reported missing in our country -- 60,000
of these cases are right here in Texas. Yet because of the hard work of law
enforcement, concerned Americans, and the National Center, most of these
cases are resolved. And today, I'm so happy to announce that Austin will
soon be home to a new regional center for the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children. (Applause.)

This center will serve as a regional hub to manage cases throughout the
southwest, and they can help resolve the increasing number of cross-border
abductions. It'll help U.S. Marshals track non-compliant sex offenders, and
coordinate the local efforts of Team Adam: Team Adams are the
rapid-response teams, made up of retired law enforcement experts, who go to
the scene of a breaking cases to assist local and state investigators.

The center will be the first place for children and families to turn to in
time of emergency. After the hurricanes, Congress designated the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children as the lead agency for child
relocation. Now, the center can use this Texas office to coordinate
regional efforts to reunite families in the aftermath of a disaster.

The National Center will also partner with local non-profits, government,
and youth-service organizations to help prevent child exploitation and
abduction -- especially online. Because of the Internet, predators can now
make contact easily with children. Child pornography has become a national
and global crisis.

Posting or downloading pornographic images of children is not an exercise
in free speech. It's a criminal act of child abuse. Our government is
working to end this abuse through the Justice Department's Internet Crimes
Against Children task force. With the help of task force members, federal
prosecution of child pornography and abuse has increased from 350 cases in
1999 to more than 1,400 cases in 2005.

The new regional center will build on this success by educating parents and
children about safe use of the Internet. And it will encourage Texans to
use the National Center's CyberTipline, www.cybertipline.com , which has
handled over 465,000 reports of suspicious online encounters since 1998.

This new regional office shows the National Center's commitment to the
families of Texas, and it shows Texans' commitment to all of our children.
I'm proud that it'll be located here in Austin -- and that so many of our
friends, led by Diane Allbaugh, are responsible for getting the center
here. This group of people are the ones who made the phone calls, who went
door-to-door. They collected donations of money and time from people across
the state. They encouraged companies to offer in-kind contributions -- and
these companies responded with building materials, and printing services,
and audiovisual equipment. This group even got the American Bank of
Commerce to provide 2,500 square feet of office space in one of its bank
building.

According to Diane, citizens throughout our state -- and I quote -- "also
gave tremendous emotional support. I just can't say enough about the people
of Texas -- about how generous, how caring, and how motivated they are to
do the right thing." Because of Diane's efforts, this new center will help
law enforcement, private citizens, and the National Center do the right
thing for our children --children like Kevin Brown.

On a Thursday evening last September, two-year-old Kevin Brown was playing
outside of his home in Alvarado with his four-year-old brother. When
Kevin's brother was attacked by fire ants, he ran into the house, where his
dad began treating the bites. In all the confusion, Kevin disappeared. When
Kevin's dad discovered his little boy was gone, he called the Johnson
County Sheriff's Office to report his missing son. Throughout the evening,
the sheriff's office, the FBI, and volunteers searched the area. They used
horses, ATVs, K-9 units, and divers -- but they still couldn't find Kevin.

Two National Center Team Adam consultants arrived on the scene to assist
the sheriff's office. The next day, they searched county roads and
highways, fanning out to cover a three-mile area. The sheriff led the
search on horseback; authorities dragged and drained 15-foot-deep ponds.
Law enforcement began to fear that Kevin had been abducted.

Three days later, during an air search by the Texas Department of Public
Safety, Kevin was found. DPS officers had spent all day Friday flying the
area by helicopter. They'd taken over from an Austin DPS crew, who had
flown the same area Thursday evening with a thermal-imaging device.

On Sunday morning, even though it was the officers' scheduled day off, they
made one more pass over some water tanks near the spot where Kevin had
disappeared. And it was a good thing they did: The officers spotted
something yellow -- and they soon realized that it was Kevin's tank top.
They found Kevin lying face down near one of the tanks.

As the officers rushed toward Kevin, calling his name, the two-year-old
lifted his head. This little boy endured three days of severe storms and
Texas heat topping 100 degrees. But because of determined efforts of more
than 20 agencies -- including U.S. Marshals, local law enforcement, the
Salvation Army, a nearby church, and the National Center -- Kevin's life
was saved.

Now, with the resources offered by Austin's regional center, the National
Center will be able to coordinate more successful rescues -- and protect
other vulnerable children like Kevin. Thanks to each of you for your hard
work to make this center a reality. And thank you for your commitment to
the children of Texas, and to the children of our country.

Thank all you very, very much. (Applause.)

END 2:06 P.M. CDT

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