The Appalling Hypocrisy of Sound of Freedom Subject and Suspected Sex Criminal Tim Ballard
The surprise 2023 hit biopic Sound of Freedom made Tim Ballard, the founder and former CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, the macho face of the anti-trafficking movement.
Sound of Freedom broke out of the Christian movie ghetto to become an unlikely blockbuster. The Jim Caviezal vehicle grossed a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS on a modest budget of less than fifteen million dollars.
The wildly fictionalized “biopic” seemingly came out of nowhere to compete with 2023’s biggest films. Despite opening in far fewer theaters, Sound of Freedom competed with the high-profile, big-budget likes of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One.
The future looked rosy for Ballard. There was talk of Ballard running for Congress in Utah or potentially getting a role in the administration of super-fan Donald Trump.
They have fun!
Ballard had the support of the former and future president and the Mormon Church. The tenth top-grossing film of 2023 depicted its subject as a fearless American hero willing to risk his life to save vulnerable children being sex trafficked or sold into slavery.
Ballard was famous, and he was rich. In 2022, the organization he founded and ran paid him over a half million dollars.
Then it all came crashing down. The seeds of Ballard’s destruction had already been planted and would soon bear fruit.
It turns out that Ballard was prominently involved in sex trafficking, but as a sex trafficker rather than the fiercest foe sex traffickers had ever encountered.
Ballard’s con was the “Couples Ruse.” Ballard recruited attractive women eager to help in the righteous fight against sex trafficking to assist him in his undercover work. Ballard’s love of publicity and hunger for the spotlight might seem at odds with undercover work requiring him to be anonymous and unknown, but getting good press was more important to Ballard than saving the babies. It was all about him. It continues to be all about him.
Ballard told these impressionable young women that they needed to be believable as a married couple, so they needed to practice their physical chemistry and send each other salacious texts in case the bad guys were to somehow commandeer their phones or intercept their communication.
Ballard was a favorite of Mormon church bigwig M. Russell (no relation) Ballard as well as Trump and enjoyed a sterling reputation as a living saint willing to do anything to protect the most vulnerable and helpless among us.
He seemed to think that if he refrained from penetration, anything and everything that he did with women who were not his wife but rather employees he had tremendous power over was kosher and acceptable.
Ballard played to these women’s religious devotion and eagerness to make a difference. He knew that in a “he said, she said” situation, he had an advantage because of his power, wealth, status, and connections.
Thank god he has a podcast!
When Sound of Freedom began shattering box-office records en route to becoming one of the most successful independent films in history, Ballard had already “stepped away” from Operation Underground Railroad in disgrace.
The Mormon church went to the unusual extreme of publicly denouncing Ballard and his actions, yet Sound of Freedom presented him as an exemplar of all that is noble and good about the American people and, by extension, humanity.
The Tim Ballards of the world will tell you that women and children are in terrible danger of being sexually assaulted or trafficked by sinister outsiders like undocumented immigrants, drag queens out to corrupt youth by, uh, reading stories to them in front of their parents and evil sociopaths intent on pretending to be women so that they can gain access to their private spaces for the sake of committing sex crimes.
They want you to believe that these predators are very different from us. They want you to think that scapegoated groups like trans women and undocumented immigrants pose a terrible danger to you and your family that only they can save you from.
Ballard wants the public to be terrified of the powerless while having faith in the moral rightness of the powerful.
Children and women face formidable threats every day, but they often don’t look or act like Ballard insists they do.
They are likelier to look and act like Ballard and use faith, power, and connections to punish victims and protect themselves.
I’m talking about the once and future President of the United States, who became a favorite of Evangelicals despite famously bragging about grabbing women by their genitals as a greeting and facing over a dozen allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and misconduct.
I don’t think it’s coincidental that the suspected sex criminal in chief nominated fellow suspected sex criminal Matt Gaetz for Attorney General before bad buzz caused Gaetz to take himself out of the running for a position he never should been considered for. It’s also not coincidental that he nominated Pete Hegseth, a veteran Trump nominated for Secretary of Defense, exclusively based on his strong jawline, action-hero good looks, and his affection for Fox & Friends.
Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault and harassment. Like Ballard, he claims that the women who came forward were in love with him and devastated that he rejected their sexual advances.
There is still a pretty good chance that a wildly unqualified suspected sex criminal will become the next Secretary of Defense. Despite everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ballard ends up in the upcoming Trump administration. Sex criminals protect each other.
In the real world, Catholic priests present a much greater threat than story-reading drag queens or undocumented immigrants, but Trump and Ballard want the public to look elsewhere so that they can continue to avoid responsibility for their actions and punishment for their crimes.
Ballard’s arrogance and hypocrisy are repellent and horrifying but also not particularly surprising.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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