Tim Tebow is expanding his mission to rescue children who are being sexually abused and exploited online—and to hold offenders accountable.
After years of advocacy from Tebow, the bipartisan “Renewed Hope Act” is now in the House of Representatives for a vote.
As CBN News has reported, the Tim Tebow Foundation has been working for more than a decade to combat human trafficking and has helped to rescue more than 2,000 victims and bring more than 500 traffickers to justice.
“There are at least 57,000 [cases] of boys and girls getting abused and raped that have been labeled unknown or unidentified,” he explained recently on a Fox and Friends appearance. “They have yet to be identified. So it is boys and girls that are waiting to be safeguarded, protected, or cared for, and they are sitting there going through an earthly living h*** every single day.”
In the last three years, there has been a 56% increase in sexually abusive images online, and according to Tebow’s foundation, the U.S. hosts many of those websites that contain this harmful material – more than any other nation in the world. In the last six months, there have been more than 338,000 unique IP addresses seen trading sexual abuse images across a peer-to-peer network.
In 40 known cases, children died by suicide as a result of the “sextortion.”
Last year, the former NFL star, minor league baseball player, and ESPN college football analyst, testified before lawmakers in 2024 about the “darkest of evils” children around the world are enduring.
“For too long, hundreds of thousands of girls and boys have endured horrific abuse — often at the hands of adults who are supposed to protect them,” said Tebow. “Children in our nation are right now living in the darkest of evils, crying out for help. Their pain must stir us to act.”
He asked lawmakers to support a bill that would provide more resources to help victims.
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) reintroduced the Renewed Hope Act last week during the House Judiciary Committee.
“Children must be protected from the staggering rise in digital predators who seek to exploit them. That means expanding efforts to identify and support these child victims of online abuse,” said Rep. Schultz. “Mounting evidence points to a disturbing escalation of extreme, violent online content. I’m proud to join my colleagues to introduce this bipartisan legislation to increase capacity to identify victims of child sexual exploitation, and invest in front-line, dedicated professionals who can find predators and save innocent lives.”
“The scale and severity of online child exploitation continues to grow at an alarming rate,” Congresswoman Lee said in a press release. “The Renewed Hope Act ensures that federal law enforcement has the trained professionals and resources necessary to identify these victims and stop these crimes.”
Specifically, the bill would create a dedicated child exploitation workforce of at least 200 individuals who would be a part of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and work with the Department of Homeland Security to “deconflict, coordinate, and synchronize child sexual exploitation investigations.”
“I’ve had the privilege of playing for a lot of sports teams in my life, and almost all of them had had incredible resources to win a game that doesn’t matter,” Tebow told Congress last March. “Why would we not give more resources to the frontline heroes that are going after the most vulnerable boys and girls on the planet?”
“There are cities of boys and girls, right now, that are in the hands of offenders who want to take advantage of them. We have to do a better job,” he told Fox, adding, “There is an urgency.”
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