Pat Meehan, the Republican in the 7th Congressional District race, was honored Thursday by the Delaware County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for the work he did to protect children from online predators.

“You get a real sense of accomplishment when you look back and see what this task force has accomplished over the course of the past ten years," said Meehan in a release. “We’ve put some truly despicable people behind bars and helped make the Internet a little safer for the millions of young people who use it every day.

“When we launched the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in 2000, this was largely a new area for law enforcement. We were one of the first ten such programs funded in the United States, bringing together federal, state, and local law enforcement agents in an effort to pursue online predators.”