‘Sound of Freedom’ Star Tim Ballard Accused of Preying on Staff on Undercover Missions

In a lawsuit five women allege the anti-trafficking hero sexually assaulted them, raising the question of whether ministries should engage in such off-the-grid operations.

Tim Ballard, the star figure depicted in the summer hit movie Sound of Freedom, has been accused of battery and sexual assault by women who worked alongside him in anti-trafficking rescue operations.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Utah, five unnamed women share detailed accounts of their experiences with Ballard. The film, which was released by the faith-based distributor Angel Studios, depicts the dramatic rescues that his organization, Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), became known for.

The women say that Ballard—a fellow Mormon and married father of nine—would pressure them into pretending they were a couple, signing a non-disclosure agreement once they agreed, and performing sexual acts, supposedly as a way to fool traffickers. But the women­ said he would also assault them when they were alone while describing his actions as “training” for pretending to be a couple on an operation. Ballard has denied the allegations.

One woman said that during her first meeting with Ballard, he explained the sexual acts she would need to act out with him in detail. “I would have to be willing to do these things in order to save children,” she stated in the lawsuit.

The women allege in various instances that he asked them to describe their sex lives and to prove to him that they could sexually arouse him. They also described his insistence that this “couples ruse” was a “revelation from God,” that Mormon leadership had approved it, and that the women had been “carefully selected to save lives in a very unique way that God has trusted us to do.”

While trafficking rescue operations can involve covert identities, experts say this alleged behavior would not be ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/UDQfuSN