Tebow urges Congress to fight child trafficking, abuse in emotional plea

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow appeared on Capitol Hill last week to urge lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass legislation to better combat child exploitation, trafficking and abuse — describing the effort as a fight “for people who can’t fight for themselves” and in their “darkest hour of need.”

Tebow, founder and president of his eponymous Tim Tebow Foundation, used his passionate testimony before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee to build support for the Renewed Hope Act of 2026, or bipartisan legislation that aims to increase federal resources to combat child exploitation and abuse.

Framing the crisis as a “fight for people who cannot fight for themselves in their darkest hours,” Tebow said his foundation works “imperfectly, but in every way possible” to support the fight against child exploitation, including providing additional support to law enforcement and funding long-term restoration efforts to support victims.

His foundation currently supports some 52 safe homes and is in the process of expanding its support to an additional 19 homes.

Then-Broncos player Tim Tebow prays before a game against the Oakland Raiders in 2011. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

“There’s a fine line between tortured and precious,” Tebow told lawmakers Tuesday. “And you are that thin line,” he said, urging the chamber to move quickly to approve the bill.

“I’ve spent way too much time in my life chasing a much lesser MVP,” Tebow added. “I want to spend the rest of my life chasing after the most vulnerable people.”

The Renewed Hope Act of 2026, which cleared House committee markup earlier this year, aims to establish a dedicated workforce of more than 200 analysts, investigators and forensic specialists working within DHS’ Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, to “decouple, coordinate and synchronize child sexual exploitation investigations.”

The bill would specially equip and train officers on victim identification, location and rescue of children unknown or identified in sexual abuse databases.

Support for this legislation comes as the number of unidentified child victims in exploitation databases has increased in recent years. According to the Tim Tebow Foundation, there are approximately 57,000 unidentified victims of child trafficking. The foundation stresses that these children remain hidden from official statistics and protection systems – as others who testified during Tuesday’s emotional hearing reiterated.

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Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, speaks during a hearing. (Valérie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In the last six months alone, Tebow noted that more than 338,000 unique U.S.-based IP addresses have been identified exchanging child sexual abuse images on so-called peer-to-peer networks.

“Every day, [these children] “We pray that we will respond,” Tebow said in his testimony. “But how are we going to respond?”

“I am deeply grateful to the members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who are coming together to support the Renewed Hope Act of 2026. This legislation gives our nation the opportunity to build a stronger relief team of analysts and investigators so that children who are suffering can be identified and protected. This is a problem we can solve.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, has long prioritized issues of child trafficking, which he called a “scourge” on our society.

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“I am convening this subcommittee hearing to expose how our young people are manipulated, exploited and neglected by the existing system,” he said this week. “Congress must dismantle the criminal networks that profit from the exploitation of the most vulnerable among us and end child trafficking.”

Scott Thompson of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.

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