Missing Children's Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2023 - P.L. 118-65
Date: June 2024
Overview
S. 2051
Enacted June 17, 2024
Purpose: To reauthorize through fiscal year 2028 the Missing Children's Assistance Act and revise programs and activities for missing and exploited children
Major Provisions of the Act
- Replaced the term 'child pornography' with 'child sexual abuse material'
- Expanded the functions and duties of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), including the following:
- Providing support services, consultation, and assistance to missing and sexually exploited children, parents, their families, and child-serving professionals on recovery support, including counseling recommendations and community support
- Providing technical assistance and case-related resources, including referrals to child-serving professionals involved in helping to recover missing and exploited children and to law enforcement officers in their efforts to identify, locate, and recover missing and exploited children
- Searching public records databases and publicly accessible open-source data to locate and identify potential abductors and offenders involved in attempted or actual abductions and identify, locate, and recover abducted children
- Coordinating with and providing technical assistance to Federal, State, and local government agencies relating to cases of children missing from a State or Tribal child welfare system and assisting the efforts of law enforcement agencies and State and Tribal child welfare agencies with the following:
- Coordinating to ensure the reporting, documentation, and resolution of cases involving children missing from a State or Tribal child welfare system
- Responding to foster children missing from a State or Tribal child welfare system
- Provided statutory authority for NCMEC to facilitate requests for removing from the internet any child sexual abuse material and sexually exploitive content depicting children
- (Currently, NCMEC operates an initiative to help facilitate the removal of such content from the internet.)
- Required NCMEC to report additional information in its publicly available annual report on missing children, including the following:
- The number of children reported as missing from State-sponsored care
- The number of such children whose recovery was reported
- The number of such children who are likely victims of child sex trafficking
- Required NCMEC to annually report on the criteria and processes used to establish forensic partnerships and recommend forensic resources to law enforcement