Blaze News investigates: Tim Ballard accused of sexual assault by multiple women, 1 of whom may have DNA evidence against him

Last fall, Blaze News reported on a group of women who leveled accusations of sexual misconduct against Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad and whose professed work of rescuing victims of sex trafficking spurred the 2023 hit film "Sound of Freedom."

Now, nine months after that initial Blaze News report, DNA evidence may connect Ballard to an allegedly nonconsensual sexual encounter with yet another woman. At the very least, it seems to directly contradict Ballard’s claim in response to the previous accusations that he never touched any female OUR operatives in any sexual fashion whatsoever.

In light of this new evidence, Blaze News spoke with three women who agreed to go on the record and use their real names to tell about their interactions with Ballard: Celeste Borys, Kira Lynch, and Mary Hall. Of the three, Hall is the only woman who spoke with Blaze News in connection with our investigative piece last year. However, Borys and Lynch also made accusations against Ballard at that time without involving Blaze News.

All three women became involved with OUR sometime in the fall of 2021 and worked closely with Ballard for anywhere from a few months to a year.

Blaze News also spoke with the women’s attorney, Suzette Rasmussen, who provided us with further information about the challenges she has faced in bringing these women’s allegations to the attention of law enforcement and the courts.

Blaze News also offered to interview Ballard about the accusations, as we did for our previous piece, as long as that interview was on the record. Instead, a spokesperson for Ballard provided a written response to some of the accusations leveled by the women.

'Centered around being sexual': Ballard, OUR, and the couples ruse

As Blaze News reported last October, during his time at Operation Underground Railroad, Ballard worked with many female operators who would pose as his girlfriend on field operations to give him cover for not wanting to engage in sex with other women or children even as he pretended to be a predator. Ballard dubbed this tactic "the couples ruse."

Like the women who spoke with us last year, Borys, Lynch, and Hall insisted that the couples ruse itself was a ruse that Ballard used on female operatives to persuade them to engage in sexual contact with him for the sake of "rescuing children."

'There wasn't any talks about how to physically prepare for this,' she said. 'There wasn't any talks about really doing really concentrated self-defense stuff.'

Perhaps to enhance their determination, he allegedly told prospective operators that other female operators in the past had failed him.

Hall recalled one of her first conversations with Ballard, in which he encouraged her to consider becoming an operator: "He had said that he was looking for a new partner to go on these ops with. He had briefly touched on how his other partners … all fall in love with him."

Lynch added, "I just keep telling myself, 'You can do this. This is so important. You can do this.'"

The women also claimed Ballard wanted to "practice" the couples ruse frequently in the U.S. to establish chemistry that would then fool traffickers, convincing the women that their lives and the lives of the trafficked victims depended on a flawless performance of amorous attraction to Ballard.

"Traffickers can smell the pheromones!" he often said, according to court documents and multiple women who spoke with Blaze News.

During training, Ballard even gave female operators a hypersexual code phrase to say to him during an operation whenever they felt in danger: "I want you to f*** me!" Ballard apparently convinced the women that this public declaration of urgent lust would allow them to leave a situation involving traffickers without blowing their cover.

Hall, an actress by trade who had no prior field experience, told Blaze News she was shocked at how much emphasis Ballard placed on working on sexual chemistry with his female operators and how little he placed on tactical training.

"There wasn't any talks about how to physically prepare for this," she said. "There wasn't any talks about really doing really concentrated self-defense stuff. When he was talking to me about it, it was all sexual and intimate and physical and practicing."

"It was so centered around being sexual."

In a conversation with Blaze News last year, Ballard denied that he ever engaged in any physical contact with a couples ruse partner that went beyond "hand-holding, arms around shoulders, stuff like that."

He also alleged that some female operatives wanted to kiss him during a mission to put on a more convincing performance but that he always refused. "There's no reason to do it. It's not appropriate," he claimed he told them.

'Beyond inappropriate': Women who worked with Ballard speak out

Of the three women who spoke with Blaze News this month, Lynch made the most terrifying allegation against Ballard. To wit: In early January 2022, Ballard allegedly went to her home, pushed her onto the stairs, and forcibly raped her.

Borys had the longest professional partnership with Ballard, working as his executive assistant as well as an operator. During this time, she and Ballard had 30 sexual encounters that Borys and her attorney described to Blaze News as "assaults," ostensibly since the encounters allegedly occurred while Ballard was her direct supervisor and while Borys was under the belief that failure to convince traffickers of their sexual chemistry might threaten their lives or the lives of trafficking victims.

On one such instance, traces of Ballard's semen were apparently deposited on Borys' skirt. That incident will be discussed at greater length in this article.

Hall had just a brief professional relationship with Ballard. On at least one occasion, Ballard allegedly attempted to practice the couples ruse with her in a way that she described as "wrong" and "beyond inappropriate," especially since her training as an actress had already prepared her to pretend to be Ballard’s girlfriend whenever necessary.

In that "inappropriate" incident, Ballard made such ardent advances that he allegedly "pinned" Hall "up against the door" and stopped only when someone else unexpectedly entered the room, she indicated to Blaze News.

'Violent and forceful': The alleged rape of Kira Lynch

Kira Lynch met Ballard through her work as a hairstylist and spent only a few months training to be an OUR operator, she told Blaze News. During that time, she said, Ballard often acted like he was her "boyfriend."

"I love when you giggle at me," or "I love that I make you blush," he would supposedly say.

Lynch told Blaze News that she found Ballard's attentions embarrassing and tried to deflect them by asking him about his wife, Katherine Ballard. "I wanted to know so many details. I wanted to know what she knew, how she felt, how she was dealing with it. I wanted to know if she knew if I was his partner. I wanted to know everything because I didn't want to feel like I was doing something wrong," Lynch said of Katherine.

'These things are natural. And sometimes these things happen, and it's good.'

"He assured me multiple times she knew. He told me multiple times that she wanted me to be his partner and she felt good about it."

So Lynch continued to train as an operator. As part of that training, Ballard apparently planned for several OUR operatives, including Lynch and Hall, to spend an evening bouncing around various strip clubs in Salt Lake City.

When Ballard arrived to pick Lynch up at her home that night, he walked upstairs to her bedroom under the pretense of using the bathroom, she told Blaze News. When he exited the bathroom, Lynch said, he began lifting up her dress without consent and started "making out" with her "stomach." Lynch claimed she tried to distract Ballard by reminding him that their friends were waiting for them at the strip club but that Ballard kept asking her to "relax" and even tickled her at one point so she would stop being so "stiff."

Once at the strip clubs, Ballard's advances continued, making Lynch feel ever more uncomfortable and humiliated, she said. At one club, Ballard allegedly rented a private room where he invited Lynch to sit on his lap while a stripper performed for them. As they sat together, Ballard allegedly began grinding against Lynch.

"This is what I’m talking about," Ballard reportedly whispered in Lynch's ear as the striptease continued. "These things are natural. And sometimes these things happen, and it's good."

Then one of Ballard's sons — who was an adult at the time and had recently returned home from a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — apparently arrived to join them at the strip club. The young man's presence infuriated Lynch, who told Blaze News she stormed out, unable to withstand any more, bringing the night to an immediate close.

He also told Lynch during the alleged assault that he 'had been wanting this' and claimed he knew that she 'wanted' it too, but Lynch told Blaze News that she 'asked him to stop multiple times.'

Despite her horror at the events both before and at the strip clubs, Lynch kept in regular contact with Ballard over the next several weeks. So she was not surprised when he called her in January 2022, asking for a haircut, she said.

According to Lynch, from the moment Ballard arrived at her house either late on January 7 or early on January 8, 2022, he was emotionally out of sorts, unable to "snap out of Brian Black," the alter ego Ballard assumed while on operations. "I couldn't even get him to look at me," she said. Lynch claimed that she repeatedly attempted to console Ballard but that he remained on edge.

Suddenly, she said, he turned "violent and forceful" and ultimately raped her.

"He finally had pushed me up against my stairs after I tried to back away and forced himself on me and held me down," she told Blaze News.

He also told Lynch during the alleged assault that he "had been wanting this" and claimed he knew that she "wanted" it too, but Lynch told Blaze News that she "asked him to stop multiple times."

A graphic statement in a court document submitted last fall closely resembles the story Lynch told Blaze News:

He starts grinding on me. I just remember squeezing my legs closed tight as I could. He starts telling me how beautiful I am. I'm starting to feel like I'm going to freeze up. I feel very trapped. I tried to get him to look me in the face. He wouldn't. He just kept almost talking to himself like he was talking himself into whatever mad state he was in. Finally, when he did look me in the face I said Tim you don't want to do this. "Please. Tim" he stood up, zipped his pants up … grabbed his shirt and walked out my front door.

Attorney Suzette Rasmussen noted that Lynch had undergone major surgery involving her upper torso and legs just a few weeks prior to the alleged attack and had very little physical strength to resist Ballard.

According to Lynch, Ballard forgot his belt at her house the night of the alleged rape and later messaged her asking for it back. She told Blaze News that she left it on her porch for him to pick up. A screenshot of text messages she exchanged with Ballard — whose undercover name was Brian Black — appears to corroborate that aspect of her story.

Screenshot of text message shared with Blaze News

Despite the violent nature of the alleged attack, Lynch did not report it to law enforcement for nearly two years. A deputy report from the Utah County Sheriff’s Office confirms that Lynch filed a claim of "sexual abuse — forcible" on October 16, 2023.

"Delayed allegations of sexual assault by an adult female against an adult male. Please see Investigative Report Supplement for additional details," read the entire offense description included on the document.

'I have nothing to hide.'

Between the time of the alleged rape and the time she reported it, Lynch had minimal contact with Ballard, repressing the memory in favor of attending to other emotional concerns, she said. Her father, who had been terminally ill for some time, passed away several weeks after the alleged rape. She was also still reeling from "a horrible divorce" a couple of years before.

Lynch admitted, however, that she did reach out to Ballard barely a week after the alleged attack, fearing that another female operative had compromised an OUR mission. "I found out that one of his operators had maybe been telling people that she was an operator and not a hairdresser," she told us.

So Lynch sent Ballard some text messages and eventually had a phone conversation with him, during which Lynch conveyed "what happened and what [she] had heard" about the other operator’s alleged misstep. Those text messages were the first messages they exchanged following the conversation about the belt.

Screenshot of text messages shared with Blaze News

When Blaze News pressed Lynch about reaching out to Ballard so soon after he allegedly raped her, she explained that while she felt relieved after she hung up the phone with him that day, she also felt she needed to inform him about the other operator's alleged misstep because she still believed that absolute secrecy regarding operations was necessary to save trafficking victims.

"I felt like, my gosh, children are not going to be rescued … people are going to be compromised, and I felt like I had to tell him this," she told Blaze News. "So then I did, and that was it."

While she acknowledges that some people will not be convinced by her story, Lynch told Blaze News that nothing can change what Ballard did to her. "I don't want to prove my innocence," she said. "I only have facts, and I only have the truth."

"I have nothing to hide."

Lynch also claimed she ran into Ballard at an event in May 2023 and was so traumatized by the unexpected encounter that she started trembling and eventually became physically ill. "I ran to the restroom and just started puking," she said.

Ballard was apparently likewise shaken by the meeting. Lynch told Blaze News that he quickly turned pale and looked like "a deer in headlights."

Blaze News reached out to Chad Kolton, Ballard's spokesperson, regarding the allegations of rape and the allegedly forgotten belt. Kolton did not directly respond to questions about the alleged rape but claimed that we had only "cherry-picked details" about Lynch's story overall.

'A 100% match': Borys' skirt and Ballard's DNA

In October 2022, Celeste Borys, who was already an OUR employee, began working as an operator. She also eventually became Ballard's executive assistant, and over the course of the next 11 months, Ballard allegedly convinced her to engage in various sex acts on 30 separate occasions for the sake of the couples ruse.

One such incident allegedly occurred on January 8, 2023, the day Borys and Ballard left for a supposed operation in Mexico. Ballard had asked Borys to pick him up from his office in Lindon, Utah, so that they could go to the airport together.

Though Borys continued to work with him, she slowly began to realize that every OUR operation that she had gone on was 'fake' since they had never managed to rescue any women or children, she told Blaze News

When Borys arrived at the Lindon office, Ballard had just gotten out of the shower and was apparently still in a state of undress, she said. Borys then offered to find the wig Ballard intended to wear as part of his undercover identity, and when she returned, they had an encounter that she and her attorney characterized to Blaze News as an "assault."

Borys had been wearing a leather skirt that day. When she returned from the alleged mission to Mexico, she stuffed that skirt into the back of a drawer, she said.

A few months later, several former OUR operators had come forward to accuse Ballard of sexual misconduct, and Ballard and OUR parted ways sometime that summer.

Though Borys continued to work with him, she slowly began to realize that every OUR operation that she had gone on was "fake" since they had never managed to rescue any women or children, she told Blaze News.

At that point, she also had to come to terms with the fact that the couples ruse was never necessary and that all the sexual encounters she allegedly had with Ballard in the hopes of saving victims had all been for naught, she added. By September 2023, Borys had left OUR and soon afterward joined the growing group of women accusing Ballard of misconduct.

In an effort to find evidence that might substantiate her claims against Ballard, Borys remembered the skirt still sitting in the back of her drawer, having never been washed or dry-cleaned.

Borys brought that skirt to law enforcement in November 2023, and a Utah County detective later reportedly discovered a semen stain on it and sent the skirt off to a Utah state crime lab. The lab found that the DNA from the semen was "a 100% match of Ballard’s DNA," recent court documents said.

'The victims and the public are not being protected.'

In the state of Utah, sexual assault victims are entitled to the results of "a sexual assault kit or … other crime scene evidence," so long as sharing such evidence does not impede an investigation. Thus far, investigators seem to be relying on that stipulation in order to delay releasing the results officially.

Though a detective reportedly informed Borys in June 2024 that the DNA testing on the semen sample had excluded her husband and had instead matched Ballard's DNA profile, she has yet to receive a copy of these test results, attorney Rasmussen told us.

Screenshots of text messages apparently exchanged between Rasmussen and an unnamed "Sargeant" on June 21 were included in the recent court filing. In one apparent text message, Rasmussen asked for a "verification letter" confirming the DNA test results, but the sergeant demurred.

"I will need to check with my Lieutenant before I release anything and he is in training in Florida through next week," the sergeant seemingly replied before alluding to a possible "meeting" sometime in the following week

Screenshot of court documents

In the messages, Rasmussen also apparently expressed concern that any "delays" from law enforcement in submitting these results would undermine Borys' case in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. "The victims and the public are not being protected," Rasmussen insisted, according to court documents.

Screenshot of court documents

In response to questions regarding the reported DNA evidence, Chad Kolton, Ballard's spokesperson, gave Blaze News the following statement:

Tainting an ongoing investigation to desperately try to generate some PR is consistent with the other illegal and unethical behavior that has been a hallmark of the Borys case from the beginning – and a reason the whole case is now in jeopardy. We’ll wait for the court’s judgment on their actions and for law enforcement to complete its investigation, if that’s even possible now.

OUR also provided a statement about the possible DNA evidence implicating Ballard:

OUR Rescue will not comment on newly alleged evidence that is part of a pending civil matter and an ongoing investigation by law enforcement. In sharp contrast to our commitment to uphold the integrity of that process, counsel for the plaintiff publicly released private text messages with law enforcement during an ongoing investigation in attempt to control the media. Such conduct violates public trust and undermines the investigative process. OUR Rescue holds strong to its position that our organization has acted in accordance with the law and look forward to defending the integrity of our work.

'All this darkness': Court cases reach standstill

Though multiple civil suits have been filed and accusations of criminal wrongdoing reported to law enforcement, there has been little movement on any cases regarding Ballard and alleged sexual misconduct. In fact, it appears that none of them has progressed into the discovery phase, and several cases have even been dismissed.

Kira Lynch, Celeste Borys, and Mary Hall all indicated to Blaze News that they are frustrated by the slow process.

They also feel betrayed by Ballard, someone they once considered a friend, as well as OUR, an organization ostensibly founded to help victims of sexual abuse. Hall claimed that OUR had been far too "blasé" about the similar accusations made by so many women.

"It shows that this organization really does not maybe do or follow through with all the things they say they do," she said.

For Borys, the most dispiriting aspect of her time with Ballard is that it never led to the rescue of a single sex-trafficking victim. "There were so many times where I said, 'I'm going to quit' because it was sucking the life out of me," Borys said through tears. "But I just kept thinking, I just want one win. I need to see one kid because I have all this darkness."

"My soul was slowly dying."

Lynch told us that she is still coming to terms with the loss of her father and the alleged sexual assault by Ballard. "I'm still trying to figure this out in my mind," she said. "And the problem is that nothing will ever be okay. Nothing can justify my dad dying or Tim Ballard raping me."

"So what I can do now is try to get the truth and the facts out there so that he doesn't harm anyone else."

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