MAP Forum

The founder of a Utah-based non-profit organization that claimed it was dedicated to fighting human trafficking pleaded no contest to multiple felonies Thursday, including fraud, theft by deception and forgery.

“Whenever there is any catastrophe of any kind, it is what the traffickers call ‘harvest time,’” Ballard told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview. “So that is why we went there.”

“We then found a group of pedophiles, born out of Holland, who are trying to legalize sex with children, and were trying to move children from Ukraine to their sex markets in Latin America. So in four months, we go from Ukraine, blow through three continents, four countries, and completely dismantle this organization. The whole thing ends with us liberating a child sex hotel in a little village in Ecuador,” Ballard said.

A district attorney based in Salt Lake City is declining to file charges against the founder of an anti-child-trafficking organization – made famous by the 2023 movie Sound of Freedom – in the wake of sexual assault claims by several women in lawsuits.

Sim Gill, the district attorney, issued a statement Friday saying there is “insufficient admissible evidence”, and his office has declined to file charges against Tim Ballard in connection with the allegations.

“It does not mean that we disbelieve or diminish a survivor’s account, but rather that the law requires evidence strong enough to remove every reasonable doubt for a jury,” Gill said in the statement.