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You are here: Home / Elections / Local Races / Late Night Creepy Tales Open Thread: Tim Ballard, Grifting & Groping for ‘Freedom’

Late Night Creepy Tales Open Thread: Tim Ballard, Grifting & Groping for ‘Freedom’

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Mike Lee (… roy Jenkins!) just dodged a bullet:


Best guide to ‘conservative’ politics — Every accusation a confession:

Tim Ballard, the founder and former head of the anti-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad whose heavily fictionalized exploits were the subject of this summer’s surprise box-office hit Sound of Freedom, has been sued in Utah’s Third District Court by five women accusing him of sexual misconduct. The Utah news outlet KSL was the first to report the filing. An accompanying press release issued by their attorney, Suzette Rasmussen, reports that additional suits are likely to be filed by more women in the coming month.

“The tragic irony is not lost on these five women,” Rasmussen wrote in the press release. “Tim Ballard literally trafficked them for his own sexual and egotistical gratification.”

In the suit, the women, who all live in Utah, and who filed the suit using initials to protect their privacy, accuse Ballard in detail of “coerced sexual contact.” The suit alleges that Ballard and/or the co-defendants have committed sexual assault and battery, conspiracy, fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and “outrage,” and accuses OUR of failing in its fiduciary duties, asking for a trial by jury and damages in an amount to be proven at trial.

The central allegations have to do with the so-called “couples ruse,” which is described in the suit as “a tool for sexual grooming.” …

The suit names a slew of co-defendants alongside Ballard, including Operation Underground Railroad, Children Need Families (an adoption grant organization founded by Katherine Ballard, Tim’s wife), the SPEAR Fund (a new anti-trafficking group for which Ballard has said he is a senior adviser), Liberty and Light (a Utah organization that appears to be the entity behind the SPEAR Fund), and three Utah shell companies that have been associated with Ballard: Rockwell Group Inc., Deacon Inc., and Slave Stealers LLC. The suit also names members of OUR’s board and Janet Russon, the purported psychic medium whose “intelligence” was used to carry out ineffectual missions for OUR and who was, the suit says, complicit in Ballard’s abuse…

The suit is the latest in a swift and stunning reversal of fortune for Ballard, long a prominent figure in anti-trafficking circles, and in Utah more broadly. It was filed on October 9, the day before Ballard was said to be planning to announce a bid for U.S. Senate, in the seat recently vacated by Mitt Romney. One of Ballard’s biggest supporters in the state, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes—who has himself gone on missions with OUR—said recently that in light of the allegations, he wouldn’t support Ballard in a Senate run…

If you don’t remember / were lucky enough to miss the whole Sound of Freedom circus, here’s a pretty comprehensive update from the Washington Post, dated last July 13th — “The man at the center of ‘Sound of Freedom’ abruptly leaves group he founded” [unpaywalled gift link]:

… Tim Ballard has “recently stepped away” from Operation Underground Railroad, the group said in a statement.

Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who has helped stage sting operations to catch child sex traffickers, left OUR before “Sound of Freedom” hit theaters, the organization said. Vice News first reported his exit earlier Thursday.

The news of Ballard’s exit comes barely more than a week after “Sound of Freedom” — a dramatized retelling of Ballard’s anti-trafficking efforts — nearly outearned Disney blockbuster “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on July 4, and just a week before a planned screening by former president Donald Trump.

The film has since become a hot-button discussion point for critics, conspiracy theories and major movie studios for twisting facts about child exploitation and tipping its hat to QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Ballard has not mentioned his exit during press interviews for “Sound of Freedom,” a gritty yet inspirational film that shares Ballard’s story of rescuing a brother and sister lured into a trafficking ring. In the film, Ballard, played by “Passion of the Christ” star Jim Caviezel, risks his life on a journey through Colombia to rescue the children from the lethal crime syndicate.

The film has earned about $50 million, much of it through a “pay it forward” system created by the film’s distributor, Angel Studios, that allows moviegoers to buy tickets for other people to see the movie…

… which ‘system’ led to a plethora of accusations that Hollyweird was suppressing the truth!!!! about child sexual exploitation rings, when all those tickets bought sight unseen meant whole theaters full of empty ‘sold out’ seats. Every truly successful conspiracy theory grift requires an intricate system of interlocking, invented ‘facts’…

Operation Underground Railroad, which Ballard founded in 2013, has been criticized for some of its claims and tactics, with some critics saying the organization exaggerates its successes. In Utah, the Davis County Attorney’s Office spent more than two years investigating OUR for alleged communications fraud, witness tampering and retaliation, according to the Deseret News. The investigations ended with no charges in May…

“Sound of Freedom” has also generated controversy because of Caviezel’s support for elements of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that a sinister cabal of world elites preys on sex-trafficked children. While the movie doesn’t mention QAnon, Caviezel has falsely claimed that Ballard rescues children from “adrenochroming,” a fictitious technique in which QAnon believers think children are tortured in satanic rituals.

… FOX 13 has been reporting on the criminal investigation of Tim Ballard and the nonprofit he founded, Operation Underground Railroad, since October 2020.

Several witnesses who interviewed with the FBI and Davis County Attorney’s Office say the public has a right to know the extent of Reyes’ connection to the case.

Although Reyes is almost never shy about his ties with OUR, he has not been forthcoming about his involvement in the criminal case.

The investigation, which is at least partially concluded, included questions about how the Utah AG’s Office handled both OUR money and federal grant money…

Documents released by the Utah AG’s Office illustrated how prosecutors repeatedly asked the Utah AG’s Office to open up their books, to show how the Utah AG’s Office spent both federal dollars and OUR dollars.

“Can you provide me with the accounting that you referred to, showing how the Davis County Attorney’s Office received just Operation Underground Railroad doner (sic) money in response to our ICAC Task Force Program grant application?” asked Bureau Chief Craig Webb of the Davis County Attorney’s Office in an email on December 22, 2022. “In addition, was it just the Davis County Attorney’s Office who received all Operation Underground Railroad money or did all Davis County ICAC affiliates receive them?”…

Both the FBI and Rawlings have declined to comment on the investigation. The Davis County Attorney’s Office first opened the case in 2020. Documents from the case show OUR employees reported Ballard for lying to donors.

OUR spent years telling people there was no criminal investigation.

Ballard is now “permanently separated” from OUR after an unrelated internal affairs investigation into his conduct. Several women accused him of sexual misconduct.

Reyes spent years declining to acknowledge the investigation, including at a press conference in 2021 in which he only expected to receive questions about an unrelated settlement…

Reader Interactions

57Comments

  4. 4.

    Joey Maloney

    The powerful forces aligned against us are very powerful and run the world but they can’t actually stop the film from being shown, they can only like turn the a/c up or off to make you uncomfortable

    One of the hallmarks of fascism: staking out an “other” as an enemy who is simultaneously all-powerful and threatening and yet weak and craven when faced with the in-group’s resistance.

  5. 5.

    Geminid

    In other Utah news, Mitt Romney will accompany Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on his trip to Israel this weekend. Senators Jacki Rosen, Bill Cassidy and Mark Kelly are also going.

  6. 6.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I see Dennis Kucinich is out as RFKJr’s campaign manager. His replacement in that job? RFKJr’s daughter-in-law.

  8. 8.

    Citizen Alan

    @NotMax: Has Jim Unpronounceable-Name been in anything of any importance since his debut in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ aka The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre? Moreover, was CavemanZeal’s bugshit lunacy even back then the reason Gibson cast him as Jesus?

  10. 10.

    satby

    Interesting read on fascism and “economic anxiety”: Hedges talks as if Christian fascists sprung full-formed out of the 90s when the US began to deindustrialize. But of course that’s nonsense; there were fascists in the US long before Clinton was born. They ruled large portions of the country, and/or all of the country depending on how you want to look at it. Trump is foreshadowed to some degree by Hitler, but he’s also very much the child of native genocide, of the Confederacy, of the Klan, of Jim Crow—of homegrown racist violence and authoritarian rule.

  13. 13.

    satby

    My market booth neighbors on both sides are religious. One is a fairly traditional black churchgoer who ends every verbal exchange with a “God bless you” and “witnesses” to polite but bored passersby when he really gets going. On the other side is a Trump-voting but more stealth Xtian who was talking about how badly she wanted to see the Operation Rescue movie.

    I really should start drinking on market days.

  14. 14.

    satby

    And before I forget, I have two invite codes to Blue Sky, which I will not publicly post because I guess bots are trawling sites looking for codes to scrape. Email if interested: skinluvvers at gmail. I will be able to respond later this afternoon / evening.

  15. 15.

    Kay

    Exaggerating the extent of sex trafficking has been a huge deal on the religious Right for decades now. Alberto Gonzales (GWB’s AG) was huge in the “movement”. I went to a legal seminar on it at Notre Dame law school twenty years ago for practitioners in the juvenile court system and one of the speakers was clearly a religious fundamentalist and also pulling numbers completely out of her ass – grossly inflated.

    Most sex trafficking is much less dramatic and cinematic – it’s ordinary, sleazy small time operators collecting low income or low status girls that no one cares about and providing them as prostitutes to an ordinary working class male clientele. The biggest sex trafficking hubs in the US for underage girls are truckstops. No one will make a movie about that.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The biggest sex trafficking hubs in the US for underage girls are truckstops.

    I’m a little surprised it’s not religious institutions.

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Right. I feel like the cycle from “Right wing hero” to “sexual offender” is getting shorter and shorter – they’re barely famous now when they’re exposed as complete frauds. Good. Nip these political campaigns in the bud.

    One would think at some point fundamentalist religious would take a genuinely hard look at why this continues to be such a huge problem in their organizations but instead they just seem determined to look to outside factors. The call is coming from inside the house. Duh. Perhaps less moviemaking and more cleaning up the sleazebags and frauds on the inside?

  22. 22.

    Tony Jay

    @Kay:

    It’s so prevalent you have to come to the conclusion that for many fundamentalists, in particular those running these cults, rampant sexual abuse isn’t so much a ‘problem’ as a perk of the job, easily dismissed when necessary as Jezebelish lies, devilish deceptions or just plain old tests from God that poor old Fallen Man is supposed to fail and maybe you should first look at your own sin of pride before rushing to judge others, sister, but otherwise something everyone at a certain level knows about and is willing to cover up if not approve of.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    “Sound of Freedom” has also generated controversy because of Caviezel’s support for elements of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that a sinister cabal of world elites preys on sex-trafficked children. While the movie doesn’t mention QAnon, Caviezel has falsely claimed that Ballard rescues children from “adrenochroming,” a fictitious technique in which QAnon believers think children are tortured in satanic rituals.

    Sinister cabal of world elites OR truckdrivers at the Travel Centers of America off I-80 in Ohio.

  25. 25.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Tony Jay: ​

    It’s so prevalent you have to come to the conclusion that for many fundamentalists, in particular those running these cults, rampant sexual abuse isn’t so much a ‘problem’ as a perk of the job, easily dismissed when necessary as Jezebelish lies, devilish deceptions or just plain old tests from God that poor old Fallen Man is supposed to fail and maybe you should first look at your own sin of pride before rushing to judge others, sister, but otherwise something everyone at a certain level knows about and is willing to cover up if not approve of.

    Also, one of the tenets of evangelical ‘purity culture’ is that we (cis het) men have next to no control over our lusts and desires, so the least bit of perceived suggestiveness in a woman’s or girl’s dress or conduct excuses any pastor or elder from being unable to restrain himself from sexually assaulting the woman or girl; it was all her fault for being a shameless hussy.

    So you get evangelical women who’ve been raped, blaming themselves and going over their conduct with a fine-toothed comb to try to figure out what they did that led the man on, so that they can avoid that conduct in the future. And if they do come forward, they’ll likely be made to publicly repent for fornication, and for having caused the man to sin.

    It’s horrible. But you can see what a great deal it is for evangelical men who are respected in that world.​

  28. 28.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Baud:

    @Kay:

    The biggest sex trafficking hubs in the US for underage girls are truckstops.

    I’m a little surprised it’s not religious institutions

    That’s for underage boys.

  29. 29.

    RevRick

    @Baud: In institutions where adults have close contact with children, such as schools, churches and Boy Scouts, there’s no need for children to be trafficked, since, by their very nature, every year there’s new children. Both the victim and the predator know each other, so it requires a process of emotional grooming.

    Truck stops, however, are anonymous places, where money is exchanged.

  31. 31.

    RevRick

    @satby: It’s telling that when Hitler came to power, the Nazis sent a delegation to the US South to study how Jim Crow did fascism

    (This little tidbit courtesy of Isabel Wilkerson in her book, Caste:The Origins of Our Discontents)

  32. 32.

    evodevo

    @Tony Jay: ​
      Yep…you nailed it. It’s always the woman’s fault, and if they just Jezus harder, things will work out. That has literally been the fall back for several hundred years…

  33. 33.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @lowtechcyclist: it’s not just evangelicals. To a point it’s society itself. Think of all the Rape Prevention advice posted in colleges and other places. Also talks by the police on campuses etc.  don’t run at night, don’t go out at night alone, don’t wait alone at bus stops or train stations, get someone to walk you to your car if you work at night.  Never mind the fact that many rapes and grooming and sexual assaults are committed by someone the person knows.  And putting “prevention “ on the person being targeted is the wrong focus

  34. 34.

    RevRick

    @lowtechcyclist: White Evangelical churches are the descendants of those that vociferously defended slavery, advocated for secession and Civil War, and supported Jim Crow and its violence. Their very foundations are in white male supremacy. Which means in their conceptual framework, women are made for men’s use.
    Given this, bodily autonomy and respect for women’s boundaries are null and void.

  36. 36.

    Joey Maloney

    @RevRick: But of course, my post was straight from Eco. I thought it has become so widely read since 2016 that there was no need for explicit attribution.

  38. 38.

    LiminalOwl

    @lowtechcyclist:

    So you get evangelical women who’ve been raped, blaming themselves and going over their conduct with a fine-toothed comb to try to figure out what they did that led the man on, so that they can avoid that conduct in the future. And if they do come forward, they’ll likely be made to publicly repent for fornication, and for having caused the man to sin.

    I had a client, years ago, who was made to “repent” by attending a meeting of church elders and kneeling before all of them (including her abuser, as well as her own parents) to “confess” and “repent.” She was just barely an adult IIRC.

    (Black Evangelical church based in Africa, if it matters.)

  39. 39.

    Anne Laurie

    @evodevo: That has literally been the fall back for several hundred years…

    Several hundred?  Back in the early 1970s, the Dominican nun who taught our Grade Twelve religion class said the foundational burden of original sin fell upon all humanity — and not just Man #One — because, when accused of eating the forbidden fruit, Adam’s immediate response was The woman tempted me!…

  41. 41.

    Phaedrusonbass

    Incidentally, the practice of purchasing tickets to an event en masse without people actually attending to inflate attendance figures is called “papering the house.” It’s been common in professional wrestling since there’s been professional wrestling.

    That is the level of people we’re dealing with here.

  42. 42.

    satby

    @Anne Laurie: I had Dominican nuns for teachers too. Not a meek one in the bunch; and because of them I could read rings around my classmates when we moved and I went to public school for 8th grade. But they were clear on that very point. Closet feminists dressed in penguin costumes.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    Slave Stealers LLC

    See, there’s a fake-out. You think at first “gee, they’re really bad at naming companies”, but then it turns out they really are stealing people and enslaving them.

  46. 46.

    MisterDancer

    @Steeplejack: Person of Interest is still an amazing show. And before the usual “I never saw or heard of it” crew rolls in, it was a major hit for CBS in its early seasons, and a critical darling throughout it’s run. The show was predictive of Snowden’s information, and what we’re dealing with today for AI. It’s of some importance.

    I follow the fandom and yeah, there’s broad awareness of Caviezel’s QAnon connections. Once he went public a few years back on it, the news spread like wildfire. Then, there was a podcast that made clear he was a Racist and Abusive PoS to the crew (but not anyone with any power, like Henson, so far as we can tell) during it’s run.

    Those of us who still like the show do so in pretty full awareness of his toxicity as a person.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: Why do people hate Jim Caviezel?

    edit: Never mind, answered by MisterDancer.

    …there’s broad awareness of Caviezel’s QAnon connections. Once he went public a few years back on it, the news spread like wildfire. Then, there was a podcast that made clear he was a Racist and Abusive PoS to the crew (but not anyone with any power, like Henson, so far as we can tell) during it’s run.

  51. 51.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Steeplejack: i saw him in Frequency which was a nice little movie. I was kind of surprised when he turned out to be such a nutjob.

    I just wonder if there are these thousands of groomers and child/sex traffickers. I am not naive. I know there are plenty of evil people in the world  but there’s people I talk to and they just seem to think every third person on the street is a groomer. I just wonder if social media exaggerates this.

  52. 52.

    kindness

    Sometimes karma is simply a wonderful bitch, eh?

    Why is it that all the holier than thou folk end up being secret sex extroverts?

  53. 53.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I have a friend who works for Lighthouse, a real organization that works to help trafficked people. She says sex trafficking is the small part of the trade; most of it is employment-related, but it doesn’t get much attention because it’s not “sexy” and doesn’t involve under age girls. There’s also quite a bit of parents “selling” their teenage girls to men for marriage. I don’t know how she does that job.

  54. 54.

    Soprano2

    @MisterDancer: I loved that show. My husband thought it was way exaggerated and there was no way that could happen, but he’s not tech aware. There are cameras everywhere now.

  55. 55.

    lee

    who filed the suit using initials to protect their privacy

    I have to give Europe some credit with SA cases everyone’s name stays private until a conviction.

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