Tim Ballard’s Claims to Fight Sex Trafficking Made Him a MAGA Star. These Women Told Police He Abused Them

The man whose followers scorn and harass them seems to have no such problems. Long a household name in conservative Mormon circles, Tim Ballard has become nationally known in recent years: He’s the former operative for Homeland Security who says he became so alarmed during the Obama administration by the government’s supposed inaction on child sex trafficking that he decided to go out and fight it on his own, recruiting other true believers to join him on dramatic sting operations in dangerous places, later serving as cochair of the Trump administration’s advisory council on trafficking and ultimately inspiring the heavily fictionalized film Sound of Freedom based on Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), the anti-trafficking organization he founded. (The organization now goes by the name OUR Rescue.)