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Since October, multiple women have filed lawsuits accusing Tim Ballard—the anti-trafficking crusader who inspired the viral Sound of Freedom movie—of sexually assaulting them during his undercover “rescue” missions.
Ballard conducted these sting operations through Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R), the anti-trafficking group he founded in 2013. But a decade later, the married dad and activist left the organization after an employee reported him for sexual misconduct and the nonprofit’s board recommended his termination following an internal investigation.
O.U.R., which is a defendant in several Utah lawsuits, argues Ballard participated in only a fraction of its operations in the three years before his departure and that “his operations were not representative of the vast majority of O.U.R.’s work.”