Former football player and committed Christian Tim Tebow testified before Congress on Wednesday, March 6 about rescuing child trafficking victims. During the powerful, heartwrenching hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, Tebow called on the FBI to create a “rescue team” that would save exploited kids.
Tebow appeared before the committee because The Tim Tebow Foundation is pushing legislation that would “enhance the capability to identify and locate the more than 50,000 unidentified children who are being abused, raped and tortured.”
During his testimony, Tebow focused to a large degree on the resources issue impacting efforts to stop child trafficking and child exploitation. In his view, the agencies responsible for dealing with the horrific crime don’t have enough funding or support to fulfill their mission and tackle the traffickers, which have a nearly unbelievable scope.
Commenting on the resources issue, he said, “I’ve had the privilege of playing for a lot of sports teams in my life. 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 much, if not more resources, to the frontline heroes that are going after the most vulnerable boys and girls on the planet?”
He argued that DHS and Interpol should have funding for further training on the issue, and that the International Child Sexual Exploitation database needs to be modernized to help agencies keep up with the ever-growing threat. “If all we do today is speak, all I do is speak, I also missed the mark,” he said. “We have to do more than just talk about it. We have to act on it and be about it.”
Making his point by reading a heart-rending letter from a child victim, he said, tearing up, “Rescue me. Help me. Monsters are chasing. Can’t you see? Monsters are whispering. Can’t you hear? Monsters are shouting you are nothing. Can’t you feel my pain?” Emphasizing the message of that letter, written by a boy who was abused every night for seven years, Tebow said, “Every one of those boys and girls is worth us answering the call and doing everything we can so they can experience the faith, hope and love that they deserve, not the bondage and torture they’re in right now.”
Explaining what needs to be done to fight the issue, which he said was one involving tens of thousands of children, Tebow called for the creation of a “rescue team,” saying, “I’m here today to ask you to say yes to a bill we’ll present. The bill has one goal: to build a rescue team.”
He added, “There are so many frontline warriors and heroes, but there just aren’t enough and we need to support them. We need more of them to get to these 50,000 boys and girls. “The bill’s intent is to build a team that has the funding, the support, the training, and the technology so they can get to these 50,000 children.”
Watch Tebow here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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