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Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, urging 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 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 photos and videos of their sexual assaults and rapes were stored in a global database at Interpol, and their unknown identities.
Tebow said more of the same Tuesday when he broke down “Operation Renewed Hope,” the largest victim identification operation in the world.
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Tim Tebow testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance on Capitol Hill on March 6, 2024 in Washington, DC (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
“Over the course of three operations – 1,119 children have been tentatively identified. 500 children have been protected. Almost half of them 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 awaiting assessment that it has scraped from the dark web, where many children don’t yet know how many children don’t even represent..”
Furthermore, in the past six months, more than 338,000 unique IP addresses in the United States have been identified as trading child sexual abuse images across peer-to-peer networks.
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 protected.
The bill passed committee markup in the House on January 13.
Tim Tebow speaks at a Tim Tebow Foundation event. (Tim Tebow Foundation)
So far, the Homeland Security Investigations Cyber Crimes Center has seven full-time victim identification staff to identify the large number of children affected by sexual abuse and rape. And identification requires extensive time and coordination with jurisdictions before law enforcement becomes involved.
“Our country’s most precious and vulnerable lives have been forgotten,” said Tebow, the Florida Gators national champion who played three seasons in the NFL. “Every day these kids lose hope and it’s not law enforcement’s fault that these kids are waiting. 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 allows our nation 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 on the platform’s failure to remove child sexual abuse material and its reliance on Section 230 immunity to avoid liability for possession and distribution of that content.
Professional baseball player Tim Tebow visits “Fox and Friends” at the Pakinomist Channel Studios on October 9, 2019 in New York City. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
With faith, hope and love as the three pillars of his foundation, Tebow continues to fight for what he calls the world’s MVPs – the most vulnerable people.
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