Sound of Freedom. Questions are good.

There is no question, human trafficking is a grave human rights violation that affects individuals of all genders and ages. It is an abhorrent practice that continues to exist globally, causing immense harm to countless victims, particularly women and children.

The recently released Sound of Freedom movie appears to have resonated deeply with audiences through its action-packed storyline that focuses on the urgent need to protect and rescue trafficked children. “We must save the children” taps into our innate instinct to protect and safeguard vulnerable members of society. It would be inhumane – unhuman – to respond any other way.

The two hour and fifteen-minute movie leaves many audience-goers moved and angry, reeling from what they have witnessed, and pulsing with a desire to do something – anything – to protect children caught up in this confounding web. This is right on track with the movie’s intent, a goal that is easy to support and some would argue, morally wrong to question.

However, the movie should leave many with questions. Questions about the story portrayed as it relates to the real-life story of Tim Ballard. Questions about the organization he founded, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) and their methodology. Questions about connections to conspiracy theories and QAnon. And the deeply human questions around what to do with the visions of child-trafficking that are left behind as the screen dims and the houselights come up.

Questions are good.

First and foremost, it’s important that we all remember that while movies like Sound of Freedom can be powerful in shedding light on the dark underbelly that is human trafficking, these movies are also works of fiction intended to engage and entertain audiences while making money for their producers. Sound of Freedom is a work of fiction based loosely on the life and work of Tim Ballard. It is not a documentary.

Tim Ballard is a real person who founded OUR which, according to its website, exists to “rescue children from sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.” But while his character, played by Jim Caviezel, spends much of the movie sneaking through the Colombian jungle and risking his life to find and infiltrate criminal hideouts, even Ballard doesn’t claim to engage in anything quite that cinematic. The reality is a tad more mundane in comparison, regardless of how much Ballard and others may wish to create a different reality.

What is real and what is fiction? We can learn a lot from those who have worked with Ballard and OUR.

In May of 2021, Meg Conley chronicled her experience for Slate Magazine. In 2014, she was invited by Ballard to join him to document a “child-trafficking sting” in the Dominican Republic. Despite only being a self-described “mommy-blogger and stay-at-home mom,” she went along, caught up in the lure of making a difference. They were accompanied by a camera crew who were there to film events, building the footage necessary for Ballard to pitch a TV series about his anti-trafficking efforts. The operation was put into action with members of the “jump team” contacting known traffickers, telling them that a group of Americans wanted to have a sex party with underage girls, “the more the better.”

A mansion was rented for the sting operation and a pool party was organized, complete with balloons. The day after Conley and the team arrived, 26 girls showed up on a bus. With hidden cameras rolling, the girls were led outside to the pool while traffickers engaged with Ballard to negotiate the deal. Once footage was obtained of the transaction and of money changing hands, tipped off local police entered with guns drawn.

Then he gave the signal. The raid started. I ran to the back door, where I was confronted by a local police officer brandishing a gun. I was told to get on the floor. The cameras were rolling for the hoped-for TV show.

I stayed on the ground as the raid continued, the white tile cool against my flushed face. There was shouting: from the officers, from the OUR undercover team feigning shock, from the traffickers. I stayed on the floor while the traffickers were arrested. I was still there when the kids, wet from the pool, were led through the room and out of the house. Many of them were crying. As they were led away, they stepped between us on the ground, dripping water along the way.

After the raid, Conley returned to her life as a suburban mom and blogger, feeling that she had participated in something profound. Her husband picked her up from the airport and after she described the raid, he replied “What the fuck was Ballard thinking? You shouldn’t have been in there.” At the time, she wrote off his concern as being overprotective and went on to write a glowing article about Ballard’s work that was published in the Huffington Post. She later attended the opening of OUR’s first documentary where footage from the raid was aired before a captivated audience. Over time, however, that glow began to dim as she began to question Ballard’s motivations, as well as her participation and what she had witnessed.

In July of 2016, Anne Gallagher, a lawyer and international authority on human rights and gender issues, published an essay in the Huffington Post regarding OUR’s approach. She states that OUR demonstrates an “alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal networks much be approached and dismantled.” She went on to call their operations “arrogant, unethical and illegal.”

OUR's modus operandi is simple. The organization receives allocated funding to conduct a rescue. A team flies out to the selected country and makes contact with local law enforcement. An elaborate sting follows: Bollard and his friends pose as sex tourists. They actively seek out those who can supply young girls for a 'party.' The girls and their traffickers arrive. Local police swoop in. The traffickers are arrested and the victims are handed over to social workers. All this is filmed so the person who funded the rescue can watch, in real time and from the comfort of his or her office or home, where their money is going. (Sometimes supporters can even participate). After arrests are made, the OUR team makes a quick exit, never to return.

Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman, in their article for Vice News (March 2021), also talk about concerns with OUR’s methodology based on other raids carried out in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other countries.

People who participated in and witnessed OUR operations overseas recounted blundering missions—carried out in part by real estate agents and high-level donors—that seemed aimed mainly at generating exciting video footage and that, in their view, potentially created demand for trafficking victims. A person who made it through what they described as slapdash training (and was offered a spot on the overseas “rescue” team, but did not join) said its leader talked about operators being sexually tempted by the victims they were supposedly out to save; he and an operator also said they were asked to pay for some expenses while abroad.

But, but, they saved children! They’re doing something no one else will do! It’s hard not to be swept into the afterglow of witnessing what appears to be a successful rescue of children, caught up in the horrifying reality of human trafficking. Again, it would be inhuman and unhuman to not respond that way. The screen dims, the lights go up, and audience goers leave with a sense that they now are in possession of new knowledge and a fire in their belly to do something. The after-story is often not so glamorous or wrapped up with a bow in two hours of cinematic greatness.

Going back to one of the early raids in the Dominic Republic, 26 “underage girls” were produced at the request of OUR to provide maximum slave-to-saved footage. After the cameras shut down, OUR and it’s “jump team” safely exited the country and went back to life editing film and fundraising with the images they captured. Of the 26 girls caught up in the raid, two were determined to be over the age of 18 and therefore (morally right or wrong notwithstanding) were released. Two were reported as not having been trafficked or involved in the sex trade before that day when they were picked up by traffickers for Ballard’s raid. Over the next week, all were released back into the situations they started from with no after-care, protection, trauma counseling, or pathway to follow to move forward into a different life.

Unfortunately, follow-up accounts like this are the norm, not the exception. The practice of swooping into a country, performing a commando-style, film-worthy raid and then immediately exiting the country to plan for the next has left a wake of questions, ill-will, and damage. Organizations who have worked long and hard on the ground by building strong programs, who truly help survivors and have been successful in identifying or dismantling trafficking networks, have seen years of work thwarted in a matter of days.

An interesting question also comes up when looking at the tactics of OUR as well as other similar operations. It is known that child trafficking is a massive problem in the US. With that in mind, why aren’t these organizations working within the United States? Or in Europe?

The answer is simple – and problematic. If OUR were to utilize the tactics that they employ in other, primarily third-world, countries, in the US, they’d face immediate arrest and prosecution. Not because there’s some elaborate cover-up about trafficking in this country, but rather because their methodology raises a myriad of concerns about the human rights of the very victims they are purporting to rescue and save.

But, but, they saved children! They’re doing something no one else will do! This is a good moment to reflect on the reality of that sentiment. Groups like OUR are soliciting traffickers for sex with saying that they’re interested in underage girls and willing to pay great sums of money to do so. Traffickers are going out to meet the requested quota and deliver the goods as requested and arranged. Local police are called in on a raid with no involvement in the logistics or planning. They are arresting the low-lying traffickers who are fulfilling a demand for services while letting the higher-ups to get away. A raid ensues which endangers the life of everyone involved, including the children. All of this is being streamed, real-time, to investors who are paying large sums of money to witness this “real-life” drama enfold from the comfort of their own homes and offices, thousands of miles away.

The children are whisked away to… to? Days or weeks later, those same children are released back into the situations from which they were originally recruited.

But the footage has been obtained. The frames captured that feed an audience high on adrenaline, seeking the action-packed, two-hour movie break from their daily lives. A movie that has a happy ending and the ability to click on a QR code that will satisfy the need to “do something.”

But the children! has been amplified by other groups, intent on using the horrors of trafficking to push other agendas. Although Sound of Freedom does not specifically discuss conspiracy theories being thrown around, it is profoundly QAnon adjacent. Actor Jim Caviezel followed script for the movie but has used his press opportunities and interviews to expand and expound on, among other conspiracy theories, the belief that child traffickers drain children’s blood to harvest a “life-giving substance” called adrenochrome.

Speaking at a QAnon-affiliated conference in Oklahoma in 2021, the actor said Ballard wanted to join him but “he’s down there saving children as we speak, because they’re pulling kids out of the darkest recesses of hell right now, in … all kinds of places, uh, the adrenochroming of children.”

The moderator asked him to elaborate. “If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline,” Caviezel said, his voice catching. “These people that do it, there’ll be no mercy for them. This is one of the best films I’ve ever done in my life. The film is on Academy Award level.”

Despite their being no evidence to substantiate the claims made regarding the “harvesting” of adrenochrome and the fact that simplistically, it’s a compound that can be created in a lab, the film and subsequent press junkets with Caviezel and Ballard have reignited the swirl of conspiracies that have real-life consequences.

Parents are being told that they should be terrified that their children will be spirited away from the Target parking lot by a shadowy cabal of occultists. Stories about how the online furniture retailer, Wayfair, was shipping trafficked kids in oversized wardrobes led to threats against employees and a total disruption in business until proven patently false. Edgar Maddison Welch showed up in a DC pizza restaurant, firing an AR-15 at terrorized patrons and employees. Real-life responses to made up stories about sex trafficking that put real-life people in danger.

Conley concludes her article about her experience with OUR by saying that anti-trafficking work is complex, difficult, and not a “punch-pow battle between good and evil. It means finding kids who are being trafficked and getting them into comprehensive aftercare. It means actively creating a world where fewer and fewer kids are trafficked—the consistent labor of prevention. It’s passing safe harbor, affirmative defense, and vacatur laws, designed to provide safe transitions for victims or help them avoid the criminal justice system. Anti-trafficking work is providing support for gay and trans kids kicked out of their homes and therefore exposed to heightened risk of being trafficked. It’s pushing for racial justice. It’s writing and voting for policies that provide a safety net and economic certainty.”

The work to end human trafficking requires effort that doesn’t make for good TV, movie, or internet viewing. It takes a concerted, multi-disciplinary, and multi-national focus. It requires building relationships and maintaining focus. And most importantly, it takes time and money. Time doing the hard work that isn’t exciting or glamorous. Money that is directed to legitimate organizations that are truly affecting change.

So, what now?

Should audience-goers go to see Sound of Freedom? Sure, if there’s an interest and a desire to be entertained, the movie does that in spades. It’s two hours and fifteen minutes of action-packed semi-fiction that carries a strong message. It is true that the film’s portrayal of this issue can inspire individuals to confront the realities of human trafficking and motivate them to make a positive difference.

However, it is crucial to channel this response into tangible actions and support efforts. At the end of the film, audience-goers are presented with a QR code that they’re told will provide tickets to those who can’t afford them. One might consider pausing at that moment to think of how their contribution might help other organizations, locally, nationally, or internationally versus simply going to help increase ticket sales. Producers of the movie have landed on genius marketing technique to demonstrate the movie’s success at the box office through the sale of tickets both to the movie-goer as well as to potential future audiences by riling up those in the theater and then providing them a quick and easy outlet for their desire to be involved and make a difference. Audience-goers need to take a breath at that moment and make an informed decision about how they want their money spent.

Ask questions. Do the research. Then look for ways to be involved. This includes supporting organizations that work on prevention, rescue, and rehabilitation, advocating for stronger legislation and enforcement, raising awareness, combating conspiracies that have real-life impact on lives, and engaging in an ongoing dialog to address the root causes of trafficking. By coming together and responding with empathy and determination, we can work towards ending human trafficking and protecting the most vulnerable members of our society.

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Bond, Sharon. QAnon supporters are promoting ‘Sound of Freedom.” Here’s why. NPR, July 19, 2023. Link here.

Scribner, Herb, Will Sommer. ‘Sound of Freedom’ is a box office hit whose star embraces QAnon. Washington Post, July 7, 2023. Link here.

Contrera, Jessica. A QAnon con: How the viral Wayfair sex trafficking lie hurt real kids. Washington Post, December 16, 2021. Link here.

Gallagher, Anne. Chasing the Slave Traders: A Law Enforcement Perspective on Operation Underground Railroad. HuffPost. July 31, 2015. Link here.

Merlan, Anna & Tim Marchman. Inside a Massive Anti-Trafficking Charity’s Blundering Overseas Missions. Vice. March 8, 2021. Link here.

Challenges in identifying victims of trafficking who are encountered as offenders. Nexus Institute. March 2023. Link here.

Bramesco, Charles. Sound of Freedom: the QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America. The Guardian. July 6, 2023. Link here.