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.”
Since the allegations of sexual misconduct were first reported on by VICE News and Utah journalist Lynn Packer, Ballard has insisted, for instance in a lengthy Instagram video, that the couples ruse, in which a male undercover operative is accompanied by a female one posing as his wife, is simply a tool to rescue children and keep operators from having to engage in the sexual abuse of alleged trafficking victims.
Hellbound and Down 