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The Crypt

Watch out, Senate techies, the Oprah army is about to flood your servers.

On Monday, Oprah is expected to urge her viewers to contact their senators to ask them to support the Combating Child Exploitation Bill.

Oprah has about eight million viewers a day, and an e-mail went around this morning warning Senate offices to be ready.

"We have learned that Oprah Winfrey will be urging viewers to contact their Senators to support S.1738, the Combating Child Exploitation bill, on her Monday, September 15 show. She will also be providing a link to www.senate.gov on her Web site www.oprah.com," according to an email from the Senate system administrator's office. "We anticipate larger than normal volumes of traffic on senate.gov and increases in e-mail and Web form mail to Member offices as a result of this effort."

UPDATE: We're happy to report that Oprah's folks read The Crypt. Or perhaps they just have a Google alert set up for her. Harpo Productions, Oprah's broadcast company, contacted The Crypt and sent along a full statement on the child exploitation bill.

From Harpo Productions:

On Monday, September 15, Oprah issues an urgent call to her viewers to take action against child predators in an all-new episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “What you are going to see is going to shock you to the core, but I'm asking you to please not turn away because this is happening in our country, to our children, in the United States every day,” says Winfrey.

During the episode, Oprah implores viewers to help put a stop to child predators by contacting their Senators in support of U.S. Senate Bill 1738. Called the PROTECT Our Children Act, U.S. Senate Bill 1738 has bipartisan support and is currently before the U.S. Senate. Oprah.com will feature information and links to connect viewers with their Senators.

In an arresting hour, viewers will see the true extent and pervasiveness of child pornography trafficking in America, as state-of-the-art technology reveals the staggering magnitude of the problem for the first time. “Just in preparing for this show, I thought I knew some things about this. But I think it's expanding at a rate that nobody could even imagine,” says Winfrey.

During the hour, the “Oprah” show also reveals the devious new tactics that child predators don’t want parents to know about and examines the latest disturbing new fronts in the battle against child pornography. Oprah also reveals how law enforcement is using the latest technology to track down child pornography peddlers and rescue children from the dark world of child abuse and pornography. This special episode of the “Oprah” show is rated TV-14.

Oprah's long-standing commitment to children led her to initiate the National Child Protection Act in 1991, when she testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to establish a national database of convicted child abusers. On December 20, 1993, the "Oprah Bill" was signed into law. In 2005, Oprah launched “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List” and her pledge to provide a $100,000 reward per case to those individuals who the FBI or local law enforcement officials say provided critical information leading to the capture and arrest of fugitives featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or Oprah.com. Since its launch, nine of the featured fugitives have been captured.