Tim Tebow Raising $1M to Combat Trafficking - His Ministry Has Already Rescued 2,000 Victims
The huge box office success of The Sound of Freedom is exposing the dark world of human trafficking and boosting efforts to fight it. One ministry that's been working for more than a decade to combat trafficking is the Tim Tebow Foundation.
Tebow recently reported that the non-profit he founded in 2010 has helped to rescue 2,000 victims and bring more than 500 traffickers to justice in the last ten years.
Tebow and his foundation are looking to step up their efforts to rescue innocent children. For his 36th birthday, the pro athlete started the UNKNOWN campaign to raise $1 million to expose the darkness.
"I believe that human trafficking and child sexual exploitation are two of the greatest evils we face today," he recently shared on Instagram.
According to the foundation's anti-trafficking campaign, UNKNOWN, more than 50,000 images of unidentified children being abused, raped, and tortured are sitting in a global law enforcement database.
"And for those 50,000 law enforcement has not been able to identity," Tebow explained, "many people would refer to this as CSAM – child sexual abuse material – and we know that there are boys and girls that are being raped and tortured but are still unknown."
According to the foundation, the U.S. hosts many of those websites that contain this harmful material – more than any other nation in the world.
"Children around the world are suffering from horrific sexual abuse, many from the very people who are meant to protect them. CSAM, or child sexual abuse material, is an evil that has been hiding in the darkness of our communities, our homes, and the internet for too long and it's past time we exposed it to the light," Tebow recently wrote.
"Those are all boys and girls that are made in the image of God that are going through torture," he added.
The campaign's website says that more than two videos or images depicting child abuse are produced every second.
The site also shares cases where law enforcement agents were successful in locating unidentified children and saving them from trafficking.
In one case entitled, "The Bird Chirp Case", a special agent was working to identify one child in a sex abuse video. The agent heard a bird chirping in the audio of the video. That agent isolated the sound of the bird and sent it to an ornithologist. They identified the species of bird and its migration pattern. From that information and another clue, they were able to locate that girl and arrest the perpetrator.
In another case entitled, "Wristband Case", agents identified an amusement park wristband on a girl who was being severely abused in a video. Using that and other clues they were able to locate her exact location. She was rescued and agents learned that the perpetrator had created his own images of the girl as well as 100,000 images of other children over 15 years.
That man was sentenced to 100 years in prison.
"Can there be a more daunting thought than 'Am I worth enough for someone to rescue?'" Tebow asked.
He is asking for people to join him in the effort. So far, more than $716,000 has been raised to help victims of abuse.
You can visit the Tim Tebow Foundation for more information.
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