Former University of Florida star Tim Tebow testified before Congress on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to punish sex traffickers who exploit children to create online pornography.
The former Heisman Trophy winner, and now leader of the charitable Tim Tebow Foundation, argued for passage of legislation crafted by his group to create a “rescue team” to try to save the thousands of children being peddled in the sex trade.
Tebow told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance that he wanted to be involved in stopping the scourge of porn featuring children after learning an estimated 50,000 unidentified kids have been abused by the global smut merchants.
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Tebow noted that was the figure that emerged at a meeting in France that he attended and brought together international law enforcement personnel, Big Tech leaders, and child-safety activists. The former Gator star told lawmakers that the meeting led to 316 children being IDed and rescued within just 15 days.
But, he added, “It was an incredible operation, but it was a tiny dent.”
“There are so many front-line warriors and heroes, but there’s just not enough. And we need to support them, and we need more of them to get to these 50,000 boys and girls.”
Tebow appealed to lawmakers by noting that more than half of the 316 children saved during Operation Renewed Hope were located in the U.S.
“If you extrapolate those numbers, that means there are thousands of boys and girls in our backyard who are starving for hope,” said Tebow.
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“We have the chance to bring hope to those who are starving for it, if we’re willing.”
“I believe if we build that rescue team, we will have a chance of getting to every one of those boys and girls. … If all we do today is speak, all i do is speak, then I missed the mark. We have to do more than just talk about it. We have to act on it.”
According to the foundation’s website, the bill Tebow brought to lawmakers would:
- Create positions within law enforcement that would focus exclusively on the identification of victims and adequately fund them to be deployed globally.
- Expand the training capabilities of the Department of Homeland Security and Interpol to support such work globally, because images of victims from the U.S. are shared by computers around the world.
- Modernize Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation so law enforcement officials around the world could keep pace with the exploding market of exploited children.
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