After winning the 2017 Miss South African beauty pageant, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters left her apartment dressed for an event and had pulled up to stop at a traffic light. Two men approached her car, and in broad daylight during rush hour one pointed a gun and told her to get out of her car and into theirs.
“My protective dad had made me go to an annual driving class that taught you to never get into the second vehicle, it’s not going to get better,” she said of attempted carjackings. “I remembered that the throat is vulnerable, so I punched him in the throat. I ran away in 6-inch high heels and knocked on car window after car window, and some were open and they could hear what I was saying.”
Nel-Peters said the “most horrifying part” was that no one was willing to help. One woman told her, “Shoo, shoo, get away from my car!” Then a Good Samaritan in the form of a 19-year-old girl pulled over at an intersection, almost causing an accident.
“(She) was yelling ‘‘Do you need help? Do you need help? Get in, get in!’” recalled Nel-Peters, who would be crowned Miss Universe later in the year. “I didn’t know if I’d be shot in the back. I didn’t know what my perpetrators’ intentions were, I just knew they were not good. (The girl) was able to take me to a safe space. But she did much more than that, she taught me what it was like to be willing to be interrupted for other people. She taught me that God can and will use you wherever you have been planted … but you have to be willing to say yes. That young girl taught me to always be willing to help other people.”
Now the wife of Tim Tebow, Demi-Leigh appeared with her husband at the Celebrators Conference in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, last week. One of her passions after that incident became “educating and equipping women on how to handle dangerous situations.”
She also grew up with a special-needs younger sister, and that’s where Tim came in. He was raised by missionary parents in the Philippines, and on a trip back after winning college football’s most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy — and leading the University of Florida to two national championships — he met a boy in the Philippines who was born with his feet on backward. Everyone in his tribe considered him cursed, as insignificant and a “throwaway.”
“God said, ‘Yeah, it’s heartbreaking, Timmy, but what are you going to do about it?’” he remembered. “I knew that day God was saying ‘I have a more important MVP (most valuable player) for you to chase. I want you to chase the most vulnerable people because they mean so much more to me than a game would ever matter.’”
After graduating from Florida, the first thing Tim did was establish the Tim Tebow Foundation “just thinking about that boy.” The foundation immediately sponsored A Night to Shine, a worldwide prom night experience for special-needs children. The couple met when that event took place in South Africa.
However, the couple are more concerned about, and fight against, an insidious practice through the foundation: human trafficking, and especially the sexual exploitation of children. As they testified of what was happening in all 50 states of America and every nation in the world, several thousand attendees at the conference, primarily seniors, were stunned and shocked to say the least.
During an on-stage interview by conference sponsor Phil Waldrep, he encouraged Tim to mention again what he had shared backstage about “people who can pay money and by way of the internet live watch anything done to a child.”
“There’s human trafficking, then there’s child exploitation, then there’s online sexual exploitation of children,” Tim replied. “There are so many people, right now as we speak that are going on the internet and paying for the rape of someone else in the world.”
And it’s happening in the Southern mountains. A girl rescued “not far from Pigeon Forge, just down the road,” Tim continued, was taken to a grocery store to be taught how to go shopping as part of her restoration, but hesitated to get out of the car. The girl told a team member, Tim relayed, “I’ve never done this in my whole life — I’ve never had a chance to go shop. Nobody’s ever taught me. They (her captors) barely fed me. They’ve abused me.”
At a church event Tim had brought his dog along. A girl undergoing restoration wanted to pet it, yet was hesitant.
“You don’t understand, for so long, when I was trafficked, the only place I got to stay was in a dog cage,” the girl told him. “The only thing I got to eat out of was a dog bowl.”
Tim revealed that law enforcement agents have been able to see 50,000 boys and girls involved in online sexual exploitation videos, yet are unable to identify the children.
“They’re literally unknown,” he lamented, with Demi-Leigh adding there are an estimated 50 million people around the world trapped in human trafficking, which is a $150 billion industry.
“How do I get to make a difference? How do I even get to make a dent in such evil?” Tim asked rhetorically. “It’s in every state, and every country around the world. And we realize that if for the rest of our lives we only get to rescue one more victim of human trafficking, it will absolutely be worth it.”
Currently, the Renewed Hope Act of 2024 has bipartisan support in Congress. Tim has testified before a House Judiciary Committee about the bill, which he said will strengthen the army of people who are out fighting for the most vulnerable, help in rescues and caring for them, help in victim identification and increase and coordinate the rescuer workforce.
“It creates a bigger army to go out and rescue all of these boys and girls, and to train rescuers,” he summarized, recommending the timtebowfoundation.org/unknown website as a resource to fight child sexual exploitation. Long-term restorations of the children are needed, and the ministry has more than 40 homes where they can safely stay and work on rebuilding their lives with the help of caring adults trained in professional counseling and other areas.
“God’s not looking for perfect people, he’s looking for willing people,” said Tim. Demi-Leigh added that when she cried out during the attempt to kidnap her, one person made all the difference.
Perhaps you can, too. The names of our two U.S. senators and the District 14 U.S. House representative are below. Reach out to legislators and tell them they need to pass the Renewed Hope Act of 2024. We can only make a difference if we try.
To fight for kids, contact:
— U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock
(202) 224-3643
warnock.senate.gov
— U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff
(202) 224-3521
ossoff.senate.gov
— U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(706) 226-5320 (Dalton office)
(202) 225-5211
greene.house.gov
Mark Millican is a former staff writer for the Dalton Daily Citizen.