Former football star Tim Tebow recently visited Capitol Hill to encourage lawmakers to advance legislation that would protect children seen in child sex abuse material by funding and training more law enforcement dedicated to identifying trafficking victims, among other provisions.
“I’ve had the privilege of playing for a lot of sports teams in my life,” he testified before lawmakers. “And on almost all of them, we’ve had incredible resources to give us a better chance at winning a game, something that ultimately, as much as we care about it, doesn’t matter. Why would we not give as many, if not more resources, to the frontline heroes that are going after the most vulnerable boys and girls on the planet?”
Camille Cooper, vice president of anti-human trafficking and child exploitation at the Tim Tebow Foundation, told members of Congress that the foundation has important requests.
“We need to build a rescue team,” she said. “We need dedicated, specially trained victim identification analysts. And we need hundreds of them. We need to invest in their training, and we need the best tools that we have to go rescue these kids.”
Watch Tebow’s testimony below:
The foundation urged Congress to advance legislation that would create a position focused on victim identification within law enforcement and the funding to deploy these analysts around the world.
Tebow has been an outspoken advocate for vulnerable children. He previously released a video in anticipation of Human Trafficking Awareness Month,, which urged more Christians to become involved with the issue, featured songwriter Tauren Wells. “Has God ever opened your eyes to a problem, to a need, to injustice, to a hurting person?” he asked. “If so, he’s probably telling you to get off your butt and do something about it.”
In 2020 he pleaded with Christians to join him and his organization in saying “no more” to human trafficking. In an op-ed for Fox News, Tebow recalled a phone call he received one day from his missionary father, who informed him that he had just purchased four young girls overseas.
“People buy groceries. Shoes. Annual passes to Disney World,” Tebow wrote. “They don’t buy other people. But I had heard him correctly. My dad had opened up his wallet and bought as many girls as he could with the cash he had on hand.”
Tebow worked with his father, Bob, to build a home for the girls. “Years later, countless more human trafficking victims have been rescued around the world, even right here in the states, because of the mission that began that day,” he said.
The hearing, held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, focused on the alarming increase of child sexual abuse material being distributed online.
He ended his Congressional testimoney saying “Most of you came to Congress because you wanted to make the world better, you wanted to help people, you wanted to change things. Today is not about policy or politics, it’s about people.”
–Dwight Widaman | MV