Tim Tebow testifies before Senate committee on bipartisan bill to combat child exploitation

Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, where he urged Congress to pass the bipartisan Renewed Hope Act of 2026, which addresses the escalating crisis of online child exploitation. 

Tebow, the founder and chairman of his Tim Tebow Foundation (TTF), gave an emotional testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in March 2024, particularly when he read a message from one of at least 20,000 boys and girls whose images and videos of their sexual abuse and rape were housed in a global database at Interpol, and their identities were unknown."

Tebow said more of the same on Tuesday, where he broke down "Operation Renewed Hope," the largest victim identification operation in the world. 

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"Over the course of 3 operations — 1,119 children have been tentatively identified. 500 children have been safeguarded. Almost half of those were American children," Tebow said during his testimony. 

"In preparation for this hearing we asked Interpol what the new number was of unidentified images. And it’s now over 89,000 series. And that’s just one database. The UK has a database called CAID. The Child Abuse Image database. Canada has a database. Their database has over 94 million uncategorized files waiting for assessment that it has scraped from the dark web. We don’t even know yet how many children that represents."

Furthermore, in the past six months, more than 338,000 unique IP addresses in the United States were identified trading child sexual abuse images across peer-to-peer networks.

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The Renewed Hope Act of 2026 would establish and equip a dedicated workforce of analysts, investigators, and forensic specialists focused on identifying unknown children seen in sexual abuse images so they can be located and safeguarded. 

The bill passed committee markup in the House on Jan. 13. 

As of now, the Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center has seven full-time victim identification analysts assigned to identify the large number of children impacted by sexual abuse and rape. And identification requires extensive time and coordination with jurisdictions before law enforcement gets involved. 

"Our country’s most precious and vulnerable lives have been forgotten," Tebow, the Florida Gators national champion who played three seasons in the NFL, said. "Every day, these children lose hope, and it’s not the fault of law enforcement that these children wait. They need more resources, plain and simple. 

"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 rescue team of analysts and investigators so that children who are suffering can be identified and protected. This is a problem we can solve."

Tebow and his foundation, in partnership with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), are also filing an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear a landmark case against X. The case centers around the platform’s failure to remove child sexual abuse material and its reliance on Section 230 immunity to avoid accountability for possession and distribution of this content.

With faith, hope and love being the three pillars of his foundation, Tebow continues to fight for what he calls the MVPs of the world – the most vulnerable people. 

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