Life

The best lies have a bit of the truth at the center. That is what I thought of when I ran across the story of Tim Ballard. Ballard has made himself a name as the rescuer of sex-trafficked individuals but has recently come under scrutiny as allegations of sexual assault and misconduct have come in against him. You can find more about the timeline of the allegations at this abc4.com article. Ballard is the center character in the movie “Sound of Freedom” but as anyone familiar with sex trafficking begins to examine the movie you can tell the stories have been greatly exaggerated or are likely fabricated. At first, I wasn’t going to say anything about the movie until learning of the allegations and that last week Ballard was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and received a public condemnation.

For those that don’t know, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we are often known by the nicknames of LDS or Mormon. I am also a survivor of all forms of childhood abuse and personally know individuals who had been trafficked from my time growing up in foster care. Excommunication in the LDS Church isn’t shunning as it can be in some churches but is a part of the repentance process and people can be rebaptized after completing the repentance process under the guidance of appropriate church leaders. For repentance of any major sin, a council is brought together for the decision, and a church court is convened. There are three levels of Church Courts beginning with the Bishops Court which can be appealed to the High Counsel Court which can be appealed to the First Presidency Court. For more information on Church Courts please read, “The Principles and Purposes of Church Courts”. 

“Members sometimes ask why Church disciplinary councils are held. The purpose is threefold: to save the soul of the transgressor, to protect the innocent, and to safeguard the Church’s purity, integrity, and good name.

The First Presidency has instructed that disciplinary councils must be held in cases of murder, incest, or apostasy. A disciplinary council must also be held when a prominent Church leader commits a serious transgression, when the transgressor is a predator who may be a threat to other persons, when the person shows a pattern of repeated serious transgressions, when a serious transgression is widely known, and when the transgressor is guilty of serious deceptive practices and false representations or other terms of fraud or dishonesty in business transactions.” (A Chance to Start Over)

For Ballard to be excommunicated he would have to participate in a High Counsel Court held by his Stake President and High Counsel, as that is the first level where the excommunication of a Melchesidic Priestholder can occur. A Church disciplinary council would never undertake to reverse a decision of the courts of law. So they often wait for legal proceedings to complete before taking action. When there is exceptional evidence they occasionally move forward before the legal proceedings are completed. So in Ballard’s case, there must have been some strong evidence. In addition, I have heard Ballard try to blow this off as him being excommunicated for going to strip clubs as part of his anti-trafficking work. Strip clubs are not something that will get you excommunicated. Generally serious sexual sins such as adultery and pedophilia or sins with victim such as murder will get a member excommunicated and sins like visitation of strip clubs would have a period of disfellowship (can’t hold a leadership position or pray for the congregation).  So we can deduce that the excommunication was related to one of the allegations of the women against him. 

So from understanding why he was excommunicated, I can’t recommend anyone watch the “Sound of Freedom” as it is a fictional work that purports to depict events that didn’t happen the way they were dramatized and also leaves out the sexual conduct of Ballard. Sex Trafficking is a major issue and I am disappointed Ballard decided to use his position of trust to abuse women and enrich himself. I hope my commentary will help those who are my friends and not members of my church to better understand what went on and its significance.

Hello my name is Paul Darr and I am a survivor of all forms of child abuse. Some of you might know me from different walks of life and might be barely aware of my past. I mean, I am a 42 year old man now, but I can tell you those physical and emotional scars you gain as a child are still there under the surface the rest of your life. I used to talk about it more when younger but I do so less often now.

Today I saw someone casually calling someone a “child abuse advocate” when the person they accused has never advocated on behalf of any abuse and has done so against it. I have also seen people call people child molesters (chomo) and groomers because they identify as part of, or support the Gender & Sexual Minorities (GSM) community. In other conversations I have seen foster children invoked as part of the conversation with reproductive rights, no matter the side of that issue. 

In all of the cases, I find it disgusting that individuals that genuinely show little to no real empathy towards those of us that have been victims will then invoke us for their own arguments. Since we are victims, do they see us as weak and unable to defend ourselves from that use? By using us as pieces in that argument I think they weaken the focus on our actual abusers and they themselves are the actual abuser advocates. This is an argument I have had with people in my political life and also some with church policies. I would just ask these people to stop misusing us and leave us out of arguments that are not meant to really help us.

That will end my rant on something that has been bothering me for a while but maybe I should talk about some of the abuse I have experienced in my life. My first memory of abuse was actually of my biological mother being the victim. I remember one evening seeing my biological father beat the living crap out of her while he was drunk. I screamed at him to stop but he continued on and beat me later but I don’t remember the details of that beating too much. This was around when I was 4 or 5 and lived in Sun City, CA. My brother luckily slept through the whole thing.

After that, my biological parents divorced and my brother and I lived with our biological father with his girlfriend and several other people that lived in the home. That is when I experienced all the other forms of abuse before entering foster care. Neglect was the first one that comes to mind. My brother and I were often left to ourselves for the day. That included me getting up and ready for school and finding food to eat. I remember finding some stale ice cream cones in a cupboard and having that for a meal one day. I also remember the dogs would get fed but we would not, so I remember grabbing dog food and eating that. Since we lived in California, there were also plenty of orange and pomegranate trees around for me to raid and get food from. So food was scarce but I found ways to obtain it for my brother and I.

At the time, my biological father worked at the local card house and sold drugs. I think he mainly sold marijuana and cocaine. He was also an alcoholic. During this time of living at his girlfriend’s house is when he started beating me on a more regular basis when he came home drunk. He had this thick leather belt with a heavy metal buckle. He would swing it, hitting the buckle against the back of my knees or the center of my back. With my back, it would just make me curl back in pain and the back of the knees would cause my knees to collapse so I would fall forward. He would then tell me to, “get the fuck back up” so that he could swing again and knock me back down. During these beatings he would typically say other things like wishing I was never born but really that felt minor compared to what was going on at the time.

Another memory was the time my uncle told me to run while my biological father was there. As I took off he pulled out his paintball gun and took careful aim before shooting me in the back of the knee. I don’t know what it was with going after the knees but they must have enjoyed seeing me tumble and fall.

This sort of thing was my daily life until the day my biological mother kidnapped my brother and I but I think I will split some of this up into follow up blog posts.