Operation Underground Railroad, the Utah-based organization that inspired the hit indie movie “Sound of Freedom,” has no shortage of problems right now.
There’s a news organization (Vice.com) that is constantly running exposés on it; the unexpected resignation of its telegenic CEO, Tim Ballard, in June due to allegations of sexual misconduct; a criminal investigation (since closed with no charges filed) by the Davis County attorney’s office; and a dust-up with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Also, a Utah Fox News outlet — which was totally fed up with Ballard’s antics — ran this story about the called-off criminal investigation. Shortly thereafter, the attorney’s office released a bunch of documents. At that point, newsrooms pounced.
The latest piece of news sounds like a tabloid title. “Operation Underground Railroad Child Rescue Missions Were Based on Psychic Intelligence,” was the Vice headline last week.
Before quoting from that piece, I want to note that the media pile-on over “Sound of Freedom” exaggerated claims about Ballard’s heroic role in stopping child sex trafficking does mystify me. This isn’t the first movie out there to take major liberties with the original story, while bringing “reality” to the screen. Look at what “The Sound of Music” did to the real Von Trapp family.
A key piece of the Vice story:
It was a tense day in February 2016 for Tim Ballard and operatives working for Operation Underground Railroad, the anti-human trafficking group he founded. They were on what would prove to be a bumbling and ineffective mission to save a trafficked child Ballard believed was being held in a village on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
This wasn’t just any mission, however. The child they were searching for was Gardy Mardy, a missing Haitian boy whose abduction Ballard has portrayed as “the case that led us to found OUR.” Joining him and his team of elite operatives was Janet Russon — a psychic medium from Utah whose supposed visions were guiding the mission.
Vice News has had OUR in its crosshairs for some time, including a large investigative piece that ran in 2021 followed by several more articles. The gist of the 2021 piece alleged sloppy training done by OUR for its operatives; that OUR chose its workers more on the basis of how much they donated to the organization and that some of its methods were making the sex-trafficking industry worse.
Vice knew about Russon back then, but getting proof of her work via court documents was definitely a plus.
Now, though, the investigative files reveal for the first time the level of influence Russon had within the organization, how much she was paid for her services, and how little intelligence there was to back up some of the missions conducted beyond her word—that of a Utah psychic who claimed to be able to communicate with the prophet Nephi, a figure from the Book of Mormon who has been dead for thousands of years.
The plot gets better.
An investigator wrote in the documents that they had learned that Russon was “being paid a monthly consultant fee of approximately $5,000 with an hourly/operational readings contract of approximately $1,560” by OUR, and that the group relied on her visions to do operational planning for missions.
You can’t make this stuff up , but it also helps to have the documents.
The story goes on to say that Russon identified specific locations in Haiti where the missing boy supposedly was — but he wasn’t there. And that M. Russell Ballard, a key official in the LDS church, supported her work.
That last bit set off a firestorm at the Mormon HQ in downtown Salt Lake. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:
Tim Ballard, the former head of the anti-human trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, has been condemned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for “morally unacceptable” behavior by saying M. Russell Ballard, the acting president of the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was a central figure in support of OUR and Tim’s private business efforts.
The strongly worded public rebuke, rare for the church, came as Tim Ballard is said to be prepping a run for Utah’s soon-to-be open U.S. Senate seat next year.
VICE first reported Tim Ballard, who is not related to the 94-year-old church leader, said the two were close associates and even partners in for-profit business ventures that would help him monetize the celebrity status he had gained through his exploits rescuing human trafficking victims.
Yes, you can see why the LDS leadership had some problems with that. And yet, maybe the story is true, albeit embarrassing to the elderly Ballard. Here’s a guy he was privately friends with, who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. (More on the relationship between the two Ballards is in Jana Reiss’ column here).
Back to the Vice piece, in which we learn more. It was Ballard the apostle, according toVice, who was well aware of the psychic’s abilities and gave his blessing to the operation. Quoting Davis County attorney Troy Rawlings:
“Janet Russon talks to dead Mormon leaders,” Rawlings wrote. “Particularly a Mormon prophet from 600 BC named Nephi to get intel on where to find Gardy Mardy in particular, but also in respect to a slew of other things.”
“Donors,” Rawlings added, “are not made aware that Nephi, via [Ms.] Russon, is the key piece of O.U.R. Operational intelligence.”
Again, this is major bad PR. Although the LDS Church Handbook is relatively mum on things like psychics, the Old Testament definitely is not. Talking with the dead was definitely a no-no.
There are a couple of take-aways and unanswered questions from this still-developing story. First, someone needs to get ahold of Janet Russon and find out how she got on Ballard’s — and the LDS Church’s — radar, because the odds are good that she didn’t just appear out of nowhere.
Secondly, Ballard, a devout Mormon, had lots of donors from his church, starting with Glenn Beck, who helped this film get off the ground. How invested was the church itself, not to mention many of its members, in “Sound of Freedom”? Read this fascinating American Crime Journal piece by investigative reporter Lynn Packer on the roots of OUR.
Thirdly, does anyone realize the movie has made more than $100 million? Who was in the group of Mexican backers who financed the film for $14.5 million, according to this Vanity Fair piece (which is one of few objective pieces of hard-news journalism out there about Ballard, OUR, etc.).
You heard that right: Mexican backers fronted the money for a movie distributed by the Provo, Utah-based Angel Studios, which was co-founded by two Mormons.
Last of all, a lot of media organizations have dumped on the film and Ballard for taking creative liberties with the topic of child trafficking — notwithstanding that the real thing is notoriously difficult to film. Thus, its depictions have to be re-imagined for film. Did “Sound of Freedom“ disrupt Hollywood, as Christianity Today says it did, by being one of last summer’s most successful films?
There are a ton of religion threads in this evolving story. I’m curious why the psychic picked Nephi as her go-between. Any word on that? It can be difficult to find fresh, original news in the LDS world but I think the younger and older Ballards just presented us with a goldmine.
FIRST IMAGE: Publicity photo of Tim Ballard taken from his new website — www.thespearfund.org