Grassley Opens Judiciary Hearing on Child Safety

Prepared Opening Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
Protecting Our Children Online Against the Evolving Offender
Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Today's hearing will examine the emerging issues involving child online exploitation and the evolving offender.

As technology changes and evolves, so do bad actors who use it to commit all types of crimes. This is especially true in the child exploitation space.

Gone are the days of ordering child exploitation material from overseas by mail. Now, child exploitation material is readily available online through various file-sharing platforms, through direct access to victims and domestic and international websites, and groups such as "764."

Not only has technology changed, but today's online child offender has too.

Today's online offender is more violent, cruel and shocking than offenders just 20 years ago.

Offenders will manipulate, pressure, harass and seek to control vulnerable children through extortion, blackmail and shame. That conduct is commonly called "sextortion."

Offenders extort children for money or other things of value, or to manipulate them to commit harmful acts to livestream or record for others to watch.

Today's offenders target younger children, many between ages 12 and 15 but some as young as five or six years old, or younger.

Offenders exploit multiple victims, causing more pain, humiliation and degradation to more people than ever before.

They leave families of victims in insufferable pain and despair, and cause a lifetime of recovery for many victims.

Offenders feel emboldened in carrying out their illegal conduct on our children because of access to private hidden online groups of like-minded people who share their sick desire to harm and exploit children.

Sadly, offenders often operate under the cover of secrecy, making it even more difficult for law enforcement to identify them and bring them to justice.

They often focus on vulnerable populations, such as those with mental health issues, lack of strong family or community ties, or other insecurities.

Offenders will often disguise their true identity and pretend to be of similar age or background to their targeted victim in order to gain their trust.

Offenders seek an online relationship with a child to exploit them for money, for sexual images or to cause them to commit harm to themselves or to others.

When offenders are eventually caught by law enforcement, prosecutors charge them with the most appropriate charges. However, there are no specific laws to address the terrible and shocking acts conducted by gore groups such as 764 and those who engage in sextortion.

Two of the three bills I introduced today will address these offenders.

My first bill, called the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act, or the ECCHO Act, will address the horrific conduct these gore groups do when they target children to commit violent acts like injury to animals, self-harm and suicide.

My second bill, called the Stop Sextortion Act, will hold those persons who engage in online threatening acts of sextortion towards children accountable under the same law which addresses child sexual abuse material.

Finally, when offenders are convicted of child sexual abuse material offenses, less than one-third of cases are sentenced within the current sentencing guidelines.

Simply put, the current sentencing guidelines are outdated and disregarded by most federal judges because they do not adequately account for common offender characteristics that differentiate the bad from the worse online child exploiter.

My bill, titled Sentencing Accountability for Exploitation Act or SAFE Act, will require the sentencing commission to draft and revise the child sexual abuse material guidelines to include many of the aggravating factors we now see with today's online offender.

Those factors include whether encryption or other masking techniques were used or whether the offender was part of an online group to commit the offense, to name a few.

This bill will provide the much-needed guidance for the United States Sentencing Commission to overhaul the child sexual abuse material guidelines in a meaningful way to distinguish offender behavior.

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