Timothy Ballard

Timothy Ballard is a anti-human trafficking activist and author. He is the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) and a board member of The Nazarene Fund and Slavery Free World.[1][2] His work includes the development of software and internet investigations specifically to infiltrate file-share networks where traffickers exchange child pornography. Ballard has assisted in the training of many law enforcement officers in these procedures.[3] Additionally, he has also testified before the United States Congress and has recommended procedures and practices for rescuing children from trafficking rings.[4]

Timothy "Tim" Ballard
EducationLa Cañada High School
Brigham Young University
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Occupation
  • CEO, author, law enforcement
Known forOperation Underground Railroad
Spouse(s)Katherine Ballard
(m. 199?)
Children9
Websitehttps://www.timothyballard.com/

Ballard has credited his organization with rescuing thousands of trafficking victims, although his numbers have been disputed, and O.U.R. has been criticized for a lack of transparency and exaggerating stories.[5][6][7] In 2020, Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad were the subjects of several investigations.[8][9][10][11][12]

Biography

Schooling

After growing up in California, Ballard attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah.[13] As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he went on a church mission to Chile and then graduated cum laude from BYU with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Political Science. Then, he graduated summa cum laude from the Monterey Institute of International Studies with a Master of Arts degree in International Politics.[14]

Government

Ballard worked as a Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, for over ten years.[15] During his time working for the American government, he worked on the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and worked as an undercover agent for the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team.[15] Most of his career was spent working out of the US-Mexico port of entry in Calexico, California with the focus on child exploitation and trafficking cases. These cases regularly took Ballard, who speaks fluent Spanish,[16] into Latin America.[17]

Founding O.U.R.

Ballard left the government in 2013 and founded the non-profit organization Operation Underground Railroad, or O.U.R.[15][18] He has briefed politicians on the issue of child sex trafficking, including President Donald Trump in January 2019.[19][20][21][22][23] In 2021, his organization partnered with Face Forward International, a nonprofit that provides pro-bono reconstructive surgeries to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking,[24] and Phoenix Dream Center, a human trafficking program for young adults.[25]

Testifying before Congress

On May 14, 2015, Ballard was asked to testify before the United States Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Human Rights held a hearing on the partnerships between U.S. government and non-governmental organizations that rescue trafficking victims.[26] On March 6, 2019, Ballard was called to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee concerning US-Mexico border security and its relation to child sex trafficking.[27][28]

Presidential appointment

In 2019 Ballard was appointed to the White House Public-Private Partnership Advisory Council to End Human Trafficking.[29]

Media

In 2016, The Abolitionists, a documentary from Schindler's List producer Gerald Molen, featured the first operations undertaken by Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad.[30] Another documentary from director Nick Nanton, Operation Toussaint, was produced in 2018 which featured an operation in Haiti that had the support of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and former congresswoman Mia Love.[20] A feature film about Ballard's life, Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, and Eduardo Verástegui was announced in 2018.[31][32] The 2018 documentary, Operation Toussaint, and the 2020 documentary, Triple Take, were also based on Ballard’s work against sex trafficking.[33][34]

ESPN featured Ballard and Pittsburgh Steelers' head coach Mike Tomlin in a piece which highlighted the restavek issue near the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.[35] Tomlin would also write the foreword to Ballard's book Slave Stealers: True Accounts of Slave Rescues – Then and Now.[36][37][38]

Books

Ballard has written a number of books including The Covenant: One Nation Under God,[39] and its sequel, The Covenant, Lincoln, and the War.[39] In 2018 he published the biographical book Slave Stealers: True Accounts of Slave Rescues – Then and Now, which details his experience forming a non-profit to rescue children. The book also draws a few parallels to 19th-century American history and the transatlantic slave trade. The principal subject is a 19th-century abolitionist named Harriet Jacobs and her struggles to escape slavery and save her children.

Awards

In 2017, Ballard won the 2017 Social Entrepreneur Award at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2017 Utah Region Awards.[40]

Criticism

A 2020, Vice News investigation found that the organization employed "a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading". For instance, O.U.R. claimed that it rescued a woman named "Liliana", however, Ballard testified in court that she escaped herself and his organization is caring for her.[41] The organization's spending also lacks transparency.[42] A 2021 follow-up article further criticized O.U.R.'s practices, which included using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its "jump team", a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.

Ballard and supporters of O.U.R. have been criticized for promoting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory,[43][44] [45] yet he denounced any association with QAnon.[46]

Criminal Investigation

On August 27, 2020, Lynn Packer with American Crime Journal presented the findings of his investigation into Ballard and O.U.R. He reported criminal complaints had been forwarded to the Davis County District Attorney at their office in Farmington, Utah.[47] Packer was later interviewed by American psychologist John Dehlin. Dehlin, asked why would such a major "development for the state of Utah and the LDS Church" was not released or "being pursued" by mainstream Utah press? Packer asserted that Utah media and LDS Church was complicit in legitimizing Operation Underground Railroad with little to no oversight and fact-checking. Packer revealed that he had spent the last five years investigating Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad and anyone who spends more than five minutes looking into the organization could find fraud and corruption.[48]

In October 2020, the Attorney's Office of Davis County, Utah stated that O.U.R. and Tim Ballard were under criminal regarding complaints that O.U.R. had conducted illegal fundraising efforts.[49][50][51] Investigative journalists Anna Merlan and Tim Marhcmann for Vice News confirmed reports by investigative journalist Lynn Packer and Damion Moore of American Crime Journal of a clandestine meeting held in August, 2019, where Tim Ballard summoned officers and managers of his non-profit and for profit businesses, including several from Operation Underground Railroad.[52] At the meeting he presented, in detail a criminal conspiracy to launder donor money from non-profits which called "sizzle" into his for profit businesses, illustrating his plan in detail on a whiteboard.[53][54]

References
  1. "Home – The Nazarene Fund". The Nazarene Fund. Retrieved 2018-08-15.
  2. "Founder, CEO of Operation Underground Railroad to speak at UVU". DeseretNews.com. 2016-10-07. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  3. "Tech startup Operation Underground Railroad is saving kids from human traffickers". VentureBeat. 2014-04-26. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  4. "Hearing Sex Trafficking Victims, May 14 2015". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  5. "A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem With the Truth". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
  6. "Hunting for sex-traffickers abroad". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  7. "The Hypocrisy of Trump's Anti-Trafficking Argument for a Border Wall". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  8. "A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem with the Truth".
  9. "Inside a Massive Anti-Trafficking Charity's Blundering Overseas Missions".
  10. "Operation Underground Railroad's Carefully Crafted Public Image is Falling Apart".
  11. Derailed: Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.)
  12. American Crime Journal
  13. "Rescuing Children from Sex Slavery: One Mormon's Inspired Mission". LDS Living. 2015-02-27. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  14. "Operation Underground Railroad". ourrescue.org. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  15. "Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) – a Vanguard in the Fight Against Child Trafficking – End Slavery Now". www.endslaverynow.org. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  16. "Rescuing Children from Sex Slavery: One Latter-day Saint's Inspired Mission". LDS Living. 2018-10-18. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  17. Burleigh, Nina. "Inside The Fight Against Child Sex Trafficking". Maxim. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  18. Hanson, Kurt. "Operation Underground Railroad: Saves lives in ways most can't". Daily Herald. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  19. http://www.washingtontimes.com, The Washington Times. "Border security expert: 'The wall rescued this little boy'". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  20. "LDS Congresswoman, Operation Underground Railroad Founder Meet with President of Haiti to Address Human Trafficking". LDS Living. 2017-06-02. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  21. Aguirre, Alberto. "El amigou de doña Olga". El Economista. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  22. Toone, Trent (2017-10-26). "Operation Underground Railroad's Tim Ballard meets with Ivanka Trump, politicians regarding human trafficking". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  23. "Timothy Ballard: "I've Fought Sex Trafficking as a DHS Special Agent – We Need to Build the Wall for the Children"". whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-21 – via National Archives.
  24. Staff (Apr 27, 2021). "Operation Underground Railroad And Face Forward International To Offer Surgery And Counseling To Sex Trafficking Survivors". PR Newswire.
  25. "Operation Underground Railroad - Official website". ourrescue.org. May 17, 2021.
  26. "Hearing Sex Trafficking Victims, May 14 2015 | Video | C-SPAN.org". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  27. "WATCH: Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearing on human trafficking at U.S. southern border". PBS NewsHour. 2019-03-06. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  28. "Oversight of Customs and Border Protection's Response to the Smuggling of Persons at the Southern Border | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary". www.judiciary.senate.gov. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  29. "President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Individuals to Key Administration Posts". whitehouse.gov. Retrieved 2020-01-04 – via National Archives.
  30. Andreeva, Nellie (2015-06-01). "'Abolitionists' Documentary Series About Rescuing Kids From Sex Slavery Shopped". Deadline. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  31. "Child Sex Trafficking Explored in New Doc 'Abolitionists' (Exclusive Video)". The Hollywood Reporter. 6 September 2016. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  32. "Blockchain Platform TaTaTu to Co-Finance 'Sound of Freedom'". The Hollywood Reporter. 15 June 2018. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  33. Terry, Josh (26 July 2018). "Movie review: Gripping 'Operation Toussaint' shows Tim Ballard's real-life battle against sex trafficking". Deseret News.
  34. Briccetti, Peter (30 July 2020). "Operation Triple Take Fails to Address Systemic Issues with Child Sex-Trafficking". Whistleblower Network News.
  35. "Mike Tomlin, Steelers partner with anti-sex-trafficking initiative". ESPN.com. 2017-11-02. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  36. "Tomlin helping to tell a tough story". www.steelers.com. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  37. Fittipaldo, Ray (August 3, 2008). "Mike Tomlin and the Steelers are doing their part to end child sex trafficking". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
  38. "Mike Tomlin Authors Foreward For New Book Focusing On Fight Against Human Trafficking". 2018-08-03. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  39. Toone, Trent (2017-06-28). "Timothy Ballard or Tim Ballard? The Operation Underground Railroad founder and the author are one and the same". DeseretNews.com. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  40. "Ballard, Utah Region, 2017". EY Hall of Fame.
  41. "Tim Ballard Written Testimony" (PDF). March 5, 2019.
  42. Merlan, Anna (10 December 2020). "A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem With the Truth". www.vice.com. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  43. Roose, Kevin (2020-08-12). "QAnon Followers Are Hijacking the #SaveTheChildren Movement". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  44. "Donald Trump Is Gone, But QAnon's Sex Trafficking Conspiracies Are Here To Stay". BuzzFeed News.
  45. "WWE Referee, Wrestler-Turned-Mayor Fundraise For QAnon-Adjacent Charity". www.vice.com.
  46. Reneau, Annie (4 August 2020). "Kooky conspiracy theories are detracting from the very real issue of child trafficking". Upworthy.
  47. Tim Ballard Utah’s Flim-Flam Man
  48. Mormon Stories #1364: Lynn Packer Part 6- Investigating Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad
  49. "Anti-human trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad under criminal investigation by Utah prosecutor"
  50. Anti-human-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad under investigation
  51. BREAKING NEWS: Anti-human trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad under criminal investigation by Davis County Attorney
  52. Merlan, Anna and Marchman, Tim (2021-06-07) www.vice.com "Operation Underground Railroad’s Carefully Crafted Public Image Is Falling Apart"
  53. Packer, Lynn "Tim Ballard’s Secret “Whiteboard Meeting” in August 2019" www.americancrimejournal.com
  54. "Anti-human trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad under criminal investigation by Utah prosecutor"
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