sound of freedom

A new, fifth lawsuit against disgraced anti-trafficking activist Tim Ballard, whose exaggerated rescue missions abroad were the inspiration for the hit film Sound of Freedom, has also taken aim at Angel Studios, the distributor of the controversial 2023 movie. It’s the first civil action targeting Ballard that simultaneously goes after the media company that made millions by mythologizing his exploits. Brought by the same law firms representing multiple women accusing Ballard of sexual assault in previous…

O n an August night in 2003, a young woman who went by the name Paulina sank into the sofa of her modest, rented apartment, opened up her laptop, and began talking about sex with a man she’d recently met in a Yahoo chat group. His name was Stephen Bolen. His first communications had been terse, but he soon warmed to Paulina. It didn’t take long for both of them to begin to open up.  Paulina had told Bolen she lived in the Atlanta area, that she had a three-year-old daughter, that her daughter’s father was…

When the child-trafficking drama Sound of Freedom conquered the box office this summer, ultimately taking in more than $242 million worldwide, it was touted as a triumph. Leading man Jim Caviezel, hardly seen since his CBS sci-fi series Person of Interest ended in 2016, proved that he could still command an audience. Tim Ballard, the anti-trafficking activist whose purported rescues of abducted children inspired the film, basked in its hagiographic glow. Director and co-writer Alejando Monteverde, who had once believed…

Since conservative audiences flocked to Sound of Freedom this summer, turning a biopic about Tim Ballard’s supposed exploits as an anti-trafficking operator into an unlikely hit, Ballard has had his heroic mythology rapidly stripped away in a series of lawsuits, formal rebukes, and dissolved relationships. But in recent days, his legal problems have gotten even worse — and now Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), the advocacy group he founded in 2013, is in the crosshairs as well. Ballard was apparently forced…