The Sound of Freedom Seems an Awful Lot Like Lying for Money

For those who don't know, Sound of Freedom is a movie released to general audiences in 2023 about a former Homeland Security agent who fights against child sex trafficking. So far so good, right?

The people who have spoken to me about the movie have attempted to make it out to be a real movement, something to get behind. They talk about how it's based on a true story and that child sex trafficking is rampant, especially among the "elite." The main character in the story, Tim Ballard, is a hero for fighting for children. Major distributors didn't want to carry or promote the film because they are filled with pedophiles. Movie theaters were purposely "cold" to encourage people to leave, or would list the movie as "sold out" when it was empty in order to keep people from seeing the movie.

It's bullshit. All of it. Here are some highlights:

• The story is entirely made up.
• The story is really, truly, awful about misrepresenting human trafficking. It's not just unhelpful, it depicts actions that actively get in the way of people who are actually working in the field.
• The movie stokes QAnon conspiracy fantasies.
• Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad ("OUR," a non-profit purportedly seeking to end child sex trafficking) wanted to use the made up story in movie form as "sizzle" to drive people to bring money into his own pockets and into the arms of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka "Mormon Church") as converts to the faith.
• Ballard, while true that he worked for the US Government, appeared to be largely a desk agent and not involved with operations similar to those depicted in Sound of Freedom.
• Around the time that the movie was being released, or just before, Tim Ballard left OUR under a cloud of accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior. This stuff is what caught my attention, but there is too much to write about in a single article. Therefore I'll be covering these accusations in the article to be released on Thursday.
• While it happens - and a single instance is too often - it turns out that the "epidemic" of child sex trafficking is a fake phenomenon, largely promoted by followers of QAnon and other conspiracy theories/groups.
• In fact, though it claims to have rescued more than 6,000 victims, none have actually been confirmed. Or, if there were any, I couldn't find any evidence of them. For a group that loves to tout its successes, absence of evidence is likely, in my view, to be evidence of absence.
• Despite telling heroic stories to donors and the media, the truth of what OUR did on at least some of its so-called operations or "jumps" was actually not finding child sex trafficking, but creating it.

What Does this Have to Do with Private Investigation?

Nothing so far, other than to say that you might want to check into organizations that you donate money to. That's not a private investigator thing, though. It's just a good rule to follow. Because make no mistake, OUR has been credibly alleged to have committed fraud to get donations.

As mentioned above, I will be talking about the workplace accusations in Thursday's article. That is where the intersection of what 888 does and this story is.

Instead, as I dug into the story, I became enraged. If we all agree that human trafficking needs to be stopped - and it unquestionably does - people like Tim Ballard should be put away for a long, long time. And organizations like OUR should receive the corporate death penalty. Instead of donations going to groups that do good, donated money was used for strippers, alcohol, and massages. I'm absolutely sickened and disgusted with their actions. So I wanted to put up an article about it.

Go to hell, Tim Ballard. And so should everyone else who was in on this scam and effort to steal money and valor.