Exposing the Sound of Freedom Hoax

For additional articles covering O.U.R., please go to ACJ Investigates: Derailed: Operation Underground Railroad

The mega-hit movie Sound of Freedom may carry the tagline “Based on a True Story,” but its primary plotline is pure fiction. The film portrays Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), as a Rambo-like hero who ventures deep into a Colombian jungle to rescue a kidnapped child sex slave. Finally, after years of trying, Ballard managed to get his Big Lie on the Big Screen and stands to make millions of dollars in the process. My report reveals that Ballard began telling versions of his brother-and-sister-rescue story more than a decade ago; no two versions alike. The version that made it into theaters is about a boy and his sister being kidnapped in Honduras, the girl sold to a Colombian drug lord as a sex toy and the boy freed after his abductor tried to smuggle him into the United States through Mexico. Other versions have the kidnapping occurring in Mexico, Colombia and the United States. Even though officers for Utah’s Angel Studios, which distributes the feature film to theaters, heard allegations that Ballard is a fraud, they proceeded with marketing the movie anyway.