The Inaccuracies of Sound of Freedom Contribute to Harming Real Victims of Child Trafficking

This is not merely a controversial film, it's a dangerous one

Child trafficking exists. It is a horrific human rights violation which must be fought tooth and nail. Bringing awareness to the horrors of child trafficking is good and right and necessary.

Sound of Freedom, the new film starring Jim Caviezel which is based on the life of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), does not accurately portray the reality of child trafficking.

Let me be clear before I continue: there are many good people in my life who are moved by the horrors of child trafficking and wish to support this film because they believe it will raise awareness and help fight child trafficking. And those are exactly the kind of people I am addressing in this post.

When I first heard about Tim Ballard and the work of OUR back in 2018 as #savethechildren was popping up all over social media, like many, I was moved. A family member sent me his story, and I pored over stories of wildly dramatic rescue missions into the deep recesses of countries to which I have never traveled and wouldn’t have the bravery to do so. My own stateside volunteer work with asylum seekers reinforced the reality of child trafficking. I heard horror stories of those whose families were threatened. I thought of my own children and felt physically ill imagining how I would deal with that kind of threat, and I remain in awe of the strength so many mothers and fathers have in fighting for the safety of their own children.

However.

The film Sound of Freedom misrepresents the reality of child trafficking and uses both the mythical representation of Tim Ballard along with misleading statistics in order to do so.

Sound of Freedom may take flashy movie-making liberties in places, such as fabricating Ballard’s killing a man to save a child, but the film’s stated mission is to promote Ballard’s methods as successful in fighting child trafficking. To that end, patrons are encouraged to pay it forward and buy more movie tickets for others who might not otherwise see the film as a way of raising awareness. But on the movie production’s own website, they admit that the reality of child trafficking isn’t portrayed in their movie.

From a section called “What the Sound of Freedom movie changed from real life,” the FAQ states:

In the beginning of the film, real security camera footage is shown depicting various kidnappings. While such incidents do occur in the realm of human trafficking, it's important to recognize that they do not represent the majority. When we think of "sex trafficking," our minds often conjure up images of dimly lit foreign alleyways where vulnerable street children are abducted, exploited, and sold. While this is a horrifying reality, it's crucial to understand that sex trafficking is not limited to foreign countries—it is an alarming issue within the United States as well, and it is on the rise.

If your mission is to raise awareness and inspire action, why would you waste your platform with misleading information?

According to several experts in the area of child trafficking, Sound of Freedom misrepresents reality to an alarming detail. EJ Dickson writes in Rolling Stone with the assistance of experts in the field that the film implies traffickers routinely snatch children off the street, when the truth is, most children know and trust those who traffick them.

But why is that important? Well, as parents we should of course always keep an eye on our children. But realistically speaking, no, your children are not in danger of being stolen from the Target bathroom. No matter how many suburban moms make TikToks about how they went “mama bear” and defended their cubs from this threat, traffickers don’t steal children who will be missed and searched for. Children who are trafficked are those who won’t have communities immediately rally around them, causing searches and attention.

Horrifically, most children who are trafficked are done so by their own parents.

The danger of being misled from where I stand is two-fold: It causes parents to look outwardly and be on constant alert for stranger danger while not paying closer attention to those we trust such as family members, teachers, scout leaders, and clergy. And it causes trusted adults in authority over children to ignore warning signs present for the children in their care.

The film reports the claim that over 800,000 children go missing in the US alone each year. While this is technically true, or rather was in 2013 when that statistic was released by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), what the film neglects to illustrate is that of those cases, 115 are stranger abductions.

The overwhelming majority of these cases are runaways. And each instance of running away counts separately. To illustrate these statistics accurately, NCMEC says that of the 424,066 reported missing children in 2019, they assisted law enforcement with just 29,000 of those cases. Because 99% of missing children cases are runaways reunited with their families.

Of the missing children cases in 2019, 10,700 of those reports included possible child trafficking, which isn’t even the number that turned out to be substantiated instances of child trafficking.

That means that roughly 1.3% of the 800,000 number had even the SUSPICION of trafficking. Again, I must ask: if you are setting out to make people aware of the reality of child trafficking, why be so inaccurate?

Other issues regarding Ballard’s actual methods and raids are being raised by those who have experienced them as well. Meg Conley wrote in Slate of her own firsthand experience as a participant in one of Ballard’s raids. Conley is a Mormon herself, as is Ballard, and through her experience, she learned many troubling truths.

Conley writes: “I was told two of the children had been trafficked for the first time that day. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that OUR may have created a demand. After the sting, I asked people on the jump team where the 26 kids were taken. I was given only vague answers. Aftercare wasn’t really their focus, I was told, but they partnered with people who did it well.

I found out what really happened from a Foreign Policy report:

In 2014, after OUR’s first operation in the Dominican Republic, a local organization called the National Council for Children and Adolescents quickly discovered it didn’t have the capacity to handle the 26 girls rescued. They were released in less than a week.

Some testified, the article reported. The local organization lost track of others. All those kids in 2014 got from us was a soda and a swim—and Ballard came out ahead in the deal.”

Not only did Ballard create a demand for trafficking during that “jump,” the children he “saved” were back in danger within one week.

Emily Belz in this piece for Christianity Today also spoke with several Christian anti-trafficking organizations that have been frustrated by the demand created by Ballard-style raids. While many of the leaders are grateful for the attention the film is bringing to trafficking, they wonder what viewers will do with this information, and particularly worry about the misrepresentation.

She writes: Some of the trafficking fighting methods depicted in the film—creating an island where Ballard and his team ask traffickers to bring children, or one character buying children out of sex trafficking to free them—could inadvertently create more demand for trafficking children and worsen the problem.

“You can’t help but ask the question, ‘Did they go take more kids away from their families in their communities to come meet this demand?’” said Shaw from Frontline Response. “It’s complicated.”

At the end of the 131 minutes of Sound of Freedom, all are invited to donate to OUR by the actor who portrayed Tim Ballard: Jim Caviezel. I can only imagine after watching Caviezel running into the jungle and rescuing small children from the jaws of a fate worse than death, moviegoers are primed for contributing. Who wouldn’t be? Child trafficking is evil and must be stopped.

For this reason, the financials of this organization are worth exploring.

According to Ministry Watch, a watchdog organization that helps Christian donors make the most of their donation dollars, in 2020, OUR took in $45 million but spent only $13.5 million. It had a whopping $33.9 million in profit.

This link-heavy piece in VICE which includes some other criticisms of the film and of OUR notes that Ballard’s own salary increased significantly in recent years.

Anna Merlan writes: The premiere of the film follows an increased cash flow to OUR, as recent tax filings show. The documents, which were some of thousands recently released by the IRS after a pandemic-related delay, show that Ballard’s salary increased by 54% between 2021 and 2022, to about $546,000, even as donations to the organization appear to have decreased by roughly 30%. (Both Ballard’s wife Katherine and one of the couple’s children are on the payroll, as is Emily Evans, Ballard’s sister, who works as their communications officer, and Mark Blake, the organization's director, who is Ballard’s brother-in-law.)  

[NB: As of five days ago, OUR and Tim Ballard have parted ways, according to multiple news articles sharing an official statement that he left prior to the release of the film, despite the fact that during press for the movie after the release date, he is referred to as OUR’s Tim Ballard.]

Allow me to risk redundancy and say that child trafficking is a horrific evil that must be destroyed. Ways that you and I can combat child trafficking at home and abroad include:

• Paying attention to the trusted adults in our children’s lives.

• Being aware of at-risk youth in our communities and taking note of any red flags such as hunger, truancy, neglect, and know how to get them local support.

• Donate to non-profit organizations working abroad that have favorable financials. While not every org can be St. Jude’s, which spends less than 10% of donations on administrative costs, examine where your donor dollars are going. You can access most charities’ IRS filings with some googling.

• Some charities that have been fighting human trafficking and helping victims rebuild their lives include: Polaris Project, International Justice Mission, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Included in the articles I’ve linked are some other concerns such as conspiracy theories in which both Tim Ballard and Jim Caviezel have dabbled or flat-out promoted. Additionally, the financial backers of this film include some suspect characters. It’s not that these issues don’t matter to me, because they do.

But setting aside these other issues and looking strictly at this film as an isolated project, Sound of Freedom is not going to help victims of child trafficking. In fact, it’s very likely it will bring more harm to them and to others, including legitimate charities that have spent decades supporting victims.