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 Donna Rice Hughes, President of Enough Is Enough (EIE), is an internationally known Internet safety expert and advocate. As a respected leader of national efforts to protect children from sexual predators and Internet pornography, Donna has championed EIE’s mission to make the Internet safer for children and families since the group’s formation in 1992. In September 2005, EIE, a non-profit educational organization (www.enough.org), launched The National Internet Safety Awareness and Parental Empowerment Program with the U.S. Department of Justice and other partners. The Program educates and empowers parents and other adult caregivers to protect the children in their care from Internet dangers.
Donna is frequently sought out by the media, educators, policy makers, law enforcement officials, and industry leaders for her expertise on solutions for ensuring that children have a safe and rewarding experience online. Her book, Kids Online: Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace (Revell, September 1998), was heralded by the media, parents’ groups, industry leaders, and Congress as a "powerful tool for parents." In response to the worldwide interest in the topic of Internet safety, the book has been translated into Spanish and Korean. Steve Case, Founder of America Online, applauds Donna as a "leader" and "effective advocate on behalf of children's online safety." He credits her with helping build the Internet into a "medium of which we can all be proud."
Donna has been interviewed on most of the leading national news broadcasts as an acknowledged expert on Internet safety issues. She has given over 3,000 media interviews and is a regular commentator on Internet safety issues on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. She has been a featured guest on Dateline, The Today Show, Oprah and 20/20. She co-wrote the story for the May 2000 season finale episode of Touched By An Angel that brought the message of Internet dangers and online safety to prime time television and won the Nielson ratings for it's time slot during the May sweeps period. Her views have been featured in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News and People Magazine. Additionally, she has authored numerous articles and editorials that have been published in USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and McCall's Magazine.
From 1994 until July of 1999, Donna served as Communications Director and Vice President of Enough Is Enough where she played a pioneering role in the national effort to make the Internet safe for children and families. She became President of EIE in 2002. Under Donna’s leadership, EIE pursues a three-pronged strategy that involves the public, the technology industry and law enforcement sharing the responsibility to protect children on the Internet. This approach has been adopted by many industry and government leaders.
She currently serves on the advisory board for the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Board, the GetNetWise initiative, and the National Cyber Security Alliance. In 2006, Donna played a key role in the development of the National Cyber Security Alliances, Help Keep Kids Connected and Protected to educate parents and teachers about safe online practices for teenagers using social networking sites and online communities and chat rooms.
Donna served on the steering committee for the Internet Online Summit: Focus on Children in December of 1997 and American Links Up. She proposed and led the Summit's adoption of an industry "ZERO Tolerance" policy against child pornography, which was endorsed by the White House and the Justice Department. She currently serves on the board of directors for the National House of Hope.
Donna received a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of South Carolina and graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Op-Eds
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 Donna Rice Hughes
A well-known Internet safety expert says staggering numbers of young people are involved in the dangerous world of cyber-sex -- but most parents are not even aware it's an issue affecting their children.
Eighty-seven percent of more than 2,500 university and college students polled across Canada admit to having virtual sex over Instant Messenger, web cams, or the telephone. The 20-question survey was conducted by Toronto-based CampusKiss.com, an online dating community for students.
Internet safety expert and advocate Donna Rice-Hughes, president of the group Enough Is Enough, says results among American students are no different.
"The majority of kids -- in fact, nine- and ten-[year-old] youths -- have accidentally come across pornography [on the Internet]," says Rice-Hughes. "We're also seeing other studies and surveys that show that some of the largest demographic groups of users of Internet porn and cyber-sex are youth and teenagers."
Rice Hughes says similar numbers are found in the next higher age category -- college students, which she points "are now out of the home and out from under parental supervision."
In addition, says Rice-Hughes, pre-teen girls are especially vulnerable to being solicited sexually through chat rooms and instant messaging. "When they have that kind of exposure to not only pornography and sexual predators online at such an early age," she says, "the boundary issues that have not been set cause problems down the road, where these kids start engaging in these behaviors themselves."
As an example she notes that in statistics provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, one of the largest categories of online perpetrators who were soliciting sex from other minors were minor children themselves.
Rice-Hughes is convinced that parental ignorance, lack of parental involvement, and access to porn in chat rooms and via instant messaging all are major factors that increase young people's appetite for engaging in virtual sex.
Seduction by Deceit
by Janet Chismar
It started so innocently. As a brand new believer, Justin sat down at his computer to search the Internet for information. When he keyed in "born again Christian," a screen immediately popped up, but not the one he was expecting. A single glance at the site led him down a road to sexual fantasy and addiction that took years to break.
Justin was a victim of pornography's latest ploy -- pirating Christian sounding names and search terms to lure unsuspecting victims onto X-rated sites. And his experience is not unusual.
In a Feb. 28 article from The Guardian, Sara Gaines reported that social psychologists at the London School of Economics found that nine out of 10 children, aged 11 to 16, had viewed pornography on the Internet last year. "Many had stumbled across it after putting in search requests for pop groups such as Boyzone," Gaines wrote. "And a U.S. government report said porn sites commonly use the brand names Barbie and Disney in hidden code to ensure they crop up in general searches."
Donna Rice Hughes has also studied the deceptive practices of pornographers. "Beginning in 1995-96, we began noticing that innocent word searches that anybody could type in, but especially children, could lead to a porn site," she told Crosswalk.com during a recent interview. "A child could type in 'girls' or 'boys' or 'dogs' -- and they would find more porn sites than they would legitimate sites."
Hughes is the author of Kids Online: Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace. From 1999-2001, she served as spokesperson and senior adviser to FamilyClick.com, a state-of-the-art Internet filtering service. In 1999, she received a Congressional appointment to the Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) to examine technological solutions to protect children online and served as co-chair of the COPA Hearings in July 2000 on filtering, ratings and labeling technologies.
From 1994 until July of 1999, Hughes served as Communications Director and then Vice President of Enough Is Enough, a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to make the Internet safe for children and families.
"The online pornographers have been very deceptive for a long time because they've been able to get away with a great deal," says Hughes. "They have had a window of opportunity to violate laws on the Internet because, for one thing, law enforcement simply hasn't been up to snuff on this issue."
According to Hughes, Internet pornography hasn't been a top priority in the past year for federal law enforcement in the Justice Department. "And number two, we simply don't have enough cyber cops to deal with all of the cyber criminals out there -- of which pornographers are just one lot."
The earliest black market porn surfaced on the news groups, even before it hit the web, says Hughes. "It was mostly child porn and hard core obscenity that you couldn't buy in a triple X-rated bookstore," she explains. When the pornographers found they weren't getting prosecuted, porn started to spring up on the web. It began with the soft-core version, but quickly, harder material began surfacing.
Deceptive marketing tactics have been around for a long time. "Now they are finding new ways to trick people into getting to the porn sites," says Hughes. "It goes without saying that anybody looking for it isn't going to have any trouble finding it, but the pornographer is after the new consumer."
Enter the Christian
And that's how Justin became a consumer -- by typing "born-again Christian." Why would a pornographer want to target believers?
"I think they're targeting any new market," Hughes responds. "This is marketing, and if they know the stats like I do, they'll know there are just as many professing Christians who are struggling with pornography addictions as there are people who aren't Christian. So it's a viable market for the pornographer."
According to Hughes, "whether you are a Christian, you're a non-Christian or you're a kid, this material is highly toxic and highly addictive." So if the pornographers can trick you into getting to their site and keep you there, they've got an opportunity to create a consumer.
While the initial viewing is "free," to continue onward, a credit card is required. That is how the pornographers make a profit. "Often times, the free images are quite deviant," Hughes explains. "They show you this so you'll know what type of porn you will get if you're paying."
One question that Hughes often hears is: "Why do they go after children? Children aren't paying."
"They are trying to hook as many people as they can," she responds. "When a young person or a child gets hooked on pornography -- unless they have real true inner healing that only comes from the Lord -- they are going to have an ongoing pornography consumer."
It's not a habit or an addiction that is easy to break, Hughes adds. "It is much more difficult than substance abuse, because when you stop using alcohol or cigarettes or drugs, you go through withdrawal, but you're not using anymore. When you stop using pornography, the thoughts are still in your head. You don't just erase them. There's a deeper level of healing and deliverance that needs to happen."
Hughes attributes the targeting of Christians by pornographers to another factor -- plain wickedness -- "you know, just to be mean and evil." In a way, they are "throwing darts at Christians," she says. "If you understand the root of evil, you know everything is coming from Satan to destroy you and the credibility of Christ."
The bottom line is the bottom line, Hughes adds. "Believe me, the pornographer is non-discriminate. As long as you're coming to their site and they can hook you, and you start paying, they don't care who you are."
In our final installment, we will look at ways to fight this problem.
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