A warning, this episode contains discussion of sexual assault that may be disturbing.

Listener discretion is advised.

As a note, we reached out to Tim Ballard's attorney to request an interview.

Our request went unanswered.

And one last thing.

After Tim Ballard left the anti-trafficking organization OUR in 2023. It was renamed OUR Rescue.

Its new leaders say they do not condone Tim Ballard's alleged actions while part of the old organization.

There's a moment in a lot of action movies where the hero is tempted to abandon their morals.

To take the blue pill.

To use the dark side of the force.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

It's a quote from the Batman movie, The Dark Night.

But it applies to lots of other famous anti-heroes who gave into temptation and had a dramatic

fall from grace, like Walter White in Breaking Bad, or Tony Montana in Scarface, or Darth

Vader in Star Wars, and also Tim Ballard?

Hear me out. For a decade between 2013 and 2023, Ballard appeared to be on a classic hero's journey.

He received a call to action when he saw how children were being abused, and he accepted the

call, crossing the threshold to start OUR and going on to conduct dangerous missions to rescue as many kids as possible.

To hear him tell it, when Ballard started out, he was motivated by only the purest of intentions,

and that very well may be the case. But based on my research and the many people who have spoken

to me about him, it seems that at some point there

...