Donna Rice Hughes

For other people with the name Donna Hughes, see Donna Hughes (disambiguation).

Donna Rice Hughes
Born	Donna Rice (1958-01-07) January 7, 1958
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Education	Bachelor of Science, Biology
Alma mater	University of South Carolina (1980)
Employer	Enough Is Enough
Spouse	Jack Hughes

Donna Rice Hughes (born January 7, 1958) is president and CEO of Enough Is Enough (EIE), an author, speaker and film producer. In her work with Enough is Enough, Hughes has appeared on a variety of outlets as an Internet safety advocate. She first became known as a key figure in a widely publicized 1987 political scandal that contributed to end the second campaign of former Senator Gary Hart for the Democratic Party nomination for President.

Personal life

Rice graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of South Carolina as a biology major, where she was a cheerleader.

Donna Rice is married to Jack Hughes and has two grown step-children, Sean and Mindy, and three grandchildren. Rice has openly said she was a victim of date rape "on the way to New York City by an older man who was involved with the pageant system, and lost my virginity at that time". She says the rape was "the turning point in my life, the catalyst that propelled me further into an unhealthy lifestyle".

Career

After she graduated from the university, she entered the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant and won. She went to New York to compete nationally. Rice later moved to Miami, where she worked as a marketing representative for pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Laboratories in South Florida. She also worked as a television commercial actress and appeared in a 1986 episode of the TV series Miami Vice as well as an episode of the soap opera One Life to Live, and played a secretary in the movie The Last Plane Out.

Advocacy

Since 1994, when she became communications director and spokesperson for Enough Is Enough (EIE), an American secular nonpartisan non-profit organization whose mission is to make the Internet safer for families and children, Hughes has been an advocate and speaker on the issue of protecting children online. Hughes became president and CEO of the organization in 2002. The organization has produced an Internet Safety 101SM program with the Department of Justice and other partners. She is the executive producer, host and instructor of the Internet Safety 101 DVD series, which ran as a TV series on PBS, garnering Hughes an Emmy nomination in 2012 and the series an Emmy Award in 2013.

Hughes has appeared on The Today Show and other national broadcasts.

Hughes has testified before multiple congressional hearings on protecting children online. Hughes and Enough Is Enough supported the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). She was appointed by Senator Trent Lott to serve on the COPA Commission and served as co-chair of the COPA Hearings on filtering/ratings/labeling technologies. She also serves on various Internet safety advisory boards and task forces including the 2006 Virginia Attorney General’s Youth Internet Safety Task Force and the 2008 Internet Safety Technical Task Force, formed with MySpace and the U.S. Attorneys General. Beyond addressing the dangers of Internet pornography, Hughes has also spoken into the issue of privacy online, teen suicide and the impact of cyberbullying. She has received numerous awards including the National Law Center for Children and Families Annual Appreciation Award, and the "Protector of Children Award" and Media Impact Award from the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. Most recently, Hughes received the 2013 Women in Technology Leadership Award for "Social Impact."

In the fall of 2014, the group's "National Porn Free Wi-Fi" campaign" encouraged McDonald's and Starbucks to add filters to block pornography on their Wi-Fi networks. In 2016, McDonald’s implemented their filtered Wi-Fi policy in the majority of their 14,000 stores. According to its media, department, McDonald’s is “committed to providing our customers with a safe environment, and we took the issues raised by Enough is Enough under advisement,” “We are pleased to share that Wi-Fi filtering has been activated in the majority of McDonald’s nearly 14,000 restaurants nationwide, improving upon the restaurant experience for our customers.”

Starbucks followed suit nationally and to implement a global policy as well.A Starbucks representative stated: “We are in the process of evaluating a global protocol to address this in all of our company owned stores, and are in active discussions with organizations on implementing the right, broad-based solution that would remove any illegal and other egregious content. Once we determine that our customers can access our free wi-fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores. In the meantime, we reserve the right to stop any behavior that interferes with our customer experience, including what is accessed on our free wi-fi, as part of our commitment to ensuring that our stores remain a safe and welcoming environment."

Hughes also led Enough Is Enough in the development of The Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge which was signed by GOP nominee Donald Trump and supported by democratic Hillary Clinton via a letter in summer of 2016 which was an historic accomplishment. She had led the fight for years to get the existing federal laws enforced to protect children from illegal online sexual exploitation and sexually graphic content on the Internet, but the Justice Department isn't enforcing laws. The Pledge states that if elected President of the United States of America, [the pledging person] promise(s) to:

1. Uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws 
2. Aggressively enforce the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring schools and public libraries using government eRate monies to filter child pornography and pornography 
3. Protect and defend the innocence of America’s children by advancing public policies that prevent the sexual exploitation of children appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the prevention of the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age.
4. Establish public-private partnerships with Corporate America to step up voluntary efforts to protect children online.

Writing

She served as a subject matter expert and co-wrote the story for the May 2000 season finale episode of Touched by an Angel that dealt with online safety. She authored the book Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace and website ProtectKids.com. TV host Leeza Gibbons endorsed the book saying it is “A powerful tool for parents,” and Sen. John McCain wrote, "As parents, we have the responsibility to monitor our children's use of the Internet. Ms. Hughes has presented us with a resource to ensure that our children's experience using the Internet is a safe one." 

In 2014, she authored The Internet Pornography Pandemic: “The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment In Human History” for The Southern Evangelical Seminary’s 2014 Christian Apologetics Journal , a reference source for updated peer-reviewed studies and research on the issue and also provides a road map for solutions. 

In 2015, in response to the release of the movie “50 Shades of Grey,” she wrote  “Women want real love, not '50 Shades' of counterfeit,” where Hughes charges Hollywood for “pushing the cheap, lust-filled counterfeit of genuine erotic love.”

In 2016, “Trump and Clinton voice bipartisan support to protect children online was published in conjunction with the release of her organization’s “Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge.  Since 1998, she has called Disney's attention to the problem of Disney themed pornography which is a clear violation of Disney's copyrighted brand and its trademarked cartoon characters. This problem was also highlighted in the Internet Safety 101 curriculum as one of the tactics pornographers use to trick children into getting into their sites at a very young age. "Disney's full-frontal hypocrisy"  was published in an October 2016 edition of The Washington Examiner where Hughes and her organization urged   Disney executives to shut down Disney-themed hard core pornography sites and ran a petition campaign that received over 60,000 signatures.

During the 2016 presidential election, Hughes also authored several commentaries.  In November 2016, she stated her case on Fox News for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a Conservative Christian woman. Others included: Will Jeff Sessions drain the Internet swamp of crimes against children? (Jan. 10, 2017, thehill.com), DEMS' SUFFRAGETTE PROTEST FALLS FLAT  (March 2, 2017,  World Net Daily) and Cruel attacks on Melania Trump obscure her positive role (April 10, 2017, CNN Opinion).

Awards

• Founders Award, National Center on Sexual Exploitation 2015;
• The Professional Women in Advocacy 2014 Excellence In Advocacy Award for “Veteran Practitioner";
• The Women in Technology (WIT) 2013 Leadership Award for “Social Impact";
• Emmy Award as Executive Producer/Producer of The PBS/EIE Internet Safety 101® Television Series (2012); 
• Emmy nomination in the Program Host/Moderator category for PBS/EIE Internet Safety 101® Television Series (2012); 
• 3 Telly Awards for the Internet Safety 101® Television Series DVD Series
• As a youth, Donna was voted as an Outstanding Senior at the University of South Carolina (USC), earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and membership  into Mortar Board and served as head varsity cheerleaders at USC She was also crowned as Miss South Carolina in the 1980 Miss World beauty pageant.

Business Ventures

 Donna Rice Hughes established DRH Enterprises as a vehicle for her speaking, media, publishing and consulting endeavors.  In 2014, Friendly WiFi sought Hughes to bring the Friendly WiFi accreditation service to America. The service is operated under her business, DRH Enterprises. The 'Friendly WiFi' symbol is available to any business providing public WiFi, who  filter pornography and child abuse images on their public WiFi. 

Controversy

Rice met former Senator Gary Hart at a 1986-87 New Year's Eve Party at the Aspen, Colorado home of her then boyfriend, rocker Don Henley. Rice later met Hart in Miami, and stated that she was "very interested in getting into fund raising". Soon after meeting Rice, Hart announced that he would run for nomination as the Democratic candidate for president. Having enjoyed a surprisingly strong campaign in 1984 against the eventual nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale, he was widely perceived as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1988. Shortly thereafter rumors began circulating about him being a "womanizer", leading the candidate to invite the media to observe his public behavior, and to also claim that anybody who did so would "be very bored." However, he never intended to invite reporters to be "skulking around in the shadows" of his home.

Reporters for the Miami Herald, in a controversial move, stalked Rice on a flight from Miami to Washington, D.C., and then staked-out Hart's townhouse following a phone call from someone trying to sell pictures from the trip. There, the Herald 's Jim McGee saw Hart and Donna Rice return to Hart's townhouse. The Herald then reported that Rice had spent the night at Hart's residence, but later conceded that they had not watched the back door to know when she had left.

Their story was published on the same day that his quotation appeared in The New York Times Magazine. The ensuing report sent the media into frenzy. While Hart contended that the reporters could have no knowledge of exactly when Rice arrived or why she was there, Rice declared the association had been innocent, and denied that she had slept at Hart's house, or that the relationship was sexual. Hart also denied the accuracy of the story.

Hart's popular appeal nevertheless suffered, and polls taken almost immediately afterward found him to be 10 points behind Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire. On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart suspended his campaign after the Washington Post threatened to run a story about a woman Hart had dated while separated from his wife, and his wife and daughter became similar subjects of interest for tabloid newspapers.

On the cover of its June 2, 1987 edition, the celebrity tabloid National Enquirer published a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap. The pair were pictured on a dock, holding hands, during a yacht trip to Bimini that Hart, Rice and others took before he announced his campaign for President of the United States. Hart is wearing a t-shirt bearing the words Monkey Business, the name of the yacht. The photo was published alongside the headline "Gary Hart Asked Me to Marry Him". It was published weeks after Hart suspended his campaign, but has been subsequently collectively confused as the reason for Hart's exit.

Both Rice and Hart have consistently denied that their relationship had been sexual, and have stated that they were just friends.

The enormous publicity generated by the Hart scandal resulted in numerous lucrative offers, and while Rice refused most – including one for an interview with Playboy magazine, an ABC movie of the week, book and magazine offers – she did appear in 1987 as the No Excuses jeans girl in commercials and advertisements for No Excuses jeans. "A month after the scandal broke, I tried to go back to work at the pharmaceutical company after a leave of absence. But because of all the publicity and resulting pressure and stress, I finally resigned." A month after the scandal broke, she began reconnecting with her Christian faith and then disappeared from the public eye for seven years. Rice lived in Los Angeles briefly, then moved to Washington, D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia in the early 1990s. There Rice married Jack Hughes, a businessman in May, 1994.

External links

• Enough Is Enough: Making the Internet Safer for Children and Families
• Internet Safety 101: The Perfect Storm on YouTube
• How Gary Hart’s Downfall Forever Changed American Politics, The New York Times Magazine, September 18, 2014
• Who blabbed about Gary Hart-Donna Rice affair? , The Miami Herald, September 20, 2014
• Appearances on C-SPAN