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, Reve 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 Reve'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.
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.
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, 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. | 
