A year after seven women accused Tim Ballard of rape and sexual assault, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad fired back this week, filing a lawsuit claiming the allegations are false and defamatory and demanding they pay for the damage done to his reputation.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Ballard’s attorneys claim that their client “has been victimized by a vicious onslaught of false allegations of sexual assault” that were concocted to derail his efforts to stop child sex trafficking.
“Unfortunately, it appears there are wealthy and powerful people connected to this dark and evil underworld who do not want to be exposed,” the lawsuit states.
After the release of the movie “Sound of Freedom,” which was loosely based on Ballrd’s anti-trafficking origins, and rumors of his plans to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Sen. Mitt Romney, the lawsuit states that “Mr. Ballard’s team received word that millions of dollars had been unleashed to tear down Mr. Ballard.”
The defamation suit names six women — Celeste Borys, Sashaleigha Hightower, Mary Hall, Krista Kacey, Bree Righter and Kira Lynch — who allege Ballard engaged in sexual misconduct while they were posing as his partner while training for or conducting purported undercover operations to target sex trafficking cartels.
Ballard filed another lawsuit in September alleging defamation by another accuser, former Miss Utah Amy Morgan Davis, who had been an anonymous plaintiff in the assault lawsuit against Ballard but was recently named in a story by The New York Times.
Suzette Rasmussen, one of the attorneys representing the women, said Ballard’s suit doesn’t come as a complete surprise.
“It was a bit anticipated based on the fact that this is his same [modus operandi] he has done in the past 10 years — he threatens to sue people if they speak out against him,” she said. “On his end, it’s really outrageous and outlandish that he’s doing this to the victims, but it just shows his desperation.”
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Ballard’s attorneys assert that all of the allegations against him are false, and, in many instances, the women are retaliating because they fell in love with him and he spurned their advances.
Rasmussen said Ballard’s lawyers cherry-picked text messages and conversations with other people to stitch together a false narrative
Borys, who had been Ballard’s executive assistant, is also accused in the filing of illegally accessing Ballard’s computer files, using them as part of the litigation against him and making them public, damaging his reputation and financial interests.
Last week, a Utah court commissioner approved a sexual violence protective order, finding that, based on a preponderance of the evidence, Ballard had committed sexual violence against Borys and ordering him not to contact Borys and to stay at least 250 feet away from her at all times.
The women filed multiple lawsuits against Ballard roughly a year ago. Their lawsuits came on the heels of a rare rebuke from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which it condemned Ballard’s “morally unacceptable” behavior and created distance from the church and one of its leaders — Elder Russell Ballard, who is not related to Tim Ballard — from the OUR founder.
Ballard resigned from the anti-trafficking organization this summer after the board of directors conducted an investigation into alleged misconduct. OUR paid Ballard $600,000 in 2023, despite his ouster in June of that year, according to the organization’s most recent tax filing.
This story may be updated.
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