In 2023, Ballard quietly parted ways with OUR following an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations that employees made against him. Lynch, who was not an employee, has a vague recollection of that time, but she remembers telling friends of an OUR employee that inappropriate things had happened. They, she says, told their friend, who then reported it to human resources. (Her attorney, Suzette Rasmussen, confirms this sequence of events.)
Borys became Ballard’s executive assistant in early 2023. She said she was isolated from other OUR employees. When the investigation began, she knew little about it and was told its scope was limited to one report made by one woman and that it would go away. It wasn’t until after she left OUR and saw attorney Suzette Rasmussen on TV discussing a lawsuit that the pseudonymous women she represented had filed against Ballard in a Utah civil court that she really began to process her experiences.
“I was still trying to come to terms with everything I had been through working for him,” she says. “Once I saw Suzette, I felt like she was the safest place I could go to protect myself.”
Borys says it wasn’t until she stepped out of Ballard’s orbit, blocked his phone number and filed a lawsuit that she began to understand how traumatized she was. “I was listening to a police officer doing a podcast or on the news, and he said you can’t…” Here she pauses and begins to cry. “You can’t create a victim by saving victims. And that really affected me.”
The legal process is ongoing; in addition to the lawsuits and criminal investigation, Borys and Lynch have requested permanent protective orders against Ballard, which are currently awaiting the scheduling of evidentiary hearings.
The two are also still processing their experiences not only with Ballard but also with OUR, which neither now believes was ever a legitimate child rescue operation.
“Where is the evidence?” Borys asks. “There is no evidence, and when you try to talk about it with someone who still works there and believes it, they are like Tim Ballard: red-faced, nervous and frustrated. Instead of answering questions, they come back with the gun.”
WIRED provided a detailed list of questions to Chad Kolton, a spokesperson for Tim Ballard. In response, Kolton wrote, in part, “I started answering each one and then reconsidered because it seems like a waste of time… There is absolutely nothing new in Tim’s work with Republicans, which he has done openly for years because they genuinely want to do something about the trafficking problem rather than deny its existence. The cases against him have begun to fall apart, with one already dismissed and another facing an evidentiary hearing on serious allegations of illegal and unethical conduct by the plaintiff and her attorneys.”
OUR did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
“I hope he goes to jail,” Lynch says. “It’s a really hard thing to say, honestly, and I’ve had a hard time understanding that that could happen. I have to realize that it’s not me that puts him in jail. It’s not us. It’s him and what he did.”
She too, she says, simply wants the truth to be known.
“Nobody deserves to go through something like that, and someone like him doesn’t deserve to be in a presidential campaign or to be giving speeches,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve that right now.”