Catharine Trauernicht | The Bull Elephant

When you hear the word “Freedom,” what do you think of? A concept? A definition? A way of life? A state of being? What about a sound? Does Freedom have a sound?

A new movie was released in theaters on July 4: Sound of Freedom. 

It was the top-grossing movie that day, beating out the Indiana Jones sequel and grossing over $14 million.

Independence Day was a fitting occasion for the release date. The movie is based on real life experiences of Tim Ballard when he was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security’s Human Trafficking Division. Ballard has heroically pursued child traffickers at home and abroad, making it his mission to rescue victims, restore them to freedom, and bring traffickers to justice.  

During his work with Homeland Security, Agent Ballard often encountered bureaucratic roadblocks that thwarted some of his rescue missions. Eventually, he resigned from the department and founded Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) in 2013. O.U.R. is a non-profit organization whose mission is to expose the global epidemic of child sex trafficking, rescue children from slavery and provide them with ongoing aftercare, and to help law enforcement bring the perpetrators to justice. 

Renowned actor Jim Caviezel plays agent Tim Ballard in Sound of Freedom. As the movie unfolds, Caviezel portrays Ballard’s first undercover rescue mission, posing as a sex tourist to infiltrate a child sex trafficking ring in Cartagena, Colombia. Numerous gripping scenes follow throughout the movie, culminating in a harrowing journey through South American jungle territory patrolled by drug cartels.  According to Tim Ballard, every character is real.  

The acting is uniformly superb. The stench of pedophiles and predators, the unbound evil of traffickers, the pure innocence of young children, and the desperation of people like Tim Ballard whose mission is to rescue the innocent are all viscerally palpable. Mercifully, the children in the film were not made aware of the complete plot in order to shield them from the true horrors. Knowing the content of the film, I must admit to feeling apprehensive about seeing it, but it was so carefully and skillfully produced that its powerful message came across without blatant pornographic imagery.

According to Tim Ballard, the United States ranks #3 for destination countries for human trafficking. It ranks #1 for consumption of child rape videos and is now approaching #1 in child exploitation material. Read that again.

Apparently, the federal government (Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR) has lost track of more than 85,000 migrant children who came across our southern border in the last two years.  

Last year alone, ORR spent $2.7 billion to “sponsor” unaccompanied minors at the border; that worked out to roughly $18,000 per child. According to Tim Ballard, children as young as three show up alone at the border holding a little card with a phone number supposedly connecting them to a “sponsor.”  

In an interview with the Epoch Times, Tim Ballard proclaimed, “Our children are in the crosshairs of spiritual warfare.” He draws courage for the fight from the words of Jesus (Matthew 18:6): “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Tim Ballard says that more people around the world are enslaved today than ever before. $150 billion a year are made off the backs of men, women and children slaves … 27 million of them victims of slave labor, sex slavery and organ harvesting. Six million of these victims are children. He warns that the pedophile agenda has been pushed in this country for decades and we now see that agenda more clearly. For example: pedophiles want to be re-named “Minor Attracted Persons” (MAP); pornography, masquerading as sex education, is introduced in third grade; minor children can consent to sex change surgery. Ballard alerts us that, “Children are being groomed. They are being readied for pedophilia.”

With decades of experience, Tim Ballard pleads: “This country needs to be the solution. Instead, we are the problem. We’re the source of corruption right now that is enslaving children.  It is this country from whence the solution must come.”

What can we as individuals do? Demand that our elected representatives at local, state and federal levels tell us what they are doing to stop human trafficking. Learn more about the work of organizations such as Operation Underground Railroad and consider supporting them. Be vigilant. Stay engaged with your schools. Most immediately, see Sound of Freedom with friends and help spread the word about the movie.

Oh, about that question, “Does Freedom have a sound?” Well, during one particularly poignant scene in the movie, a group of children slowly realize they have been freed from their captivity. The innocents begin singing and lightly dancing. Jim Caviezel pronounces, “That’s the sound of freedom.”

WATCH THE TRAILER: