Hidden True Crime - TIM BALLARD: The shocking civil lawsuits are made public. Dr. John breaks them down.

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

The civil lawsuits against anti-trafficking hero Tim Ballard are shocking and hundreds of pages. You can read them in full on our Patreon account. Dr John breaks them down and assesses their contents in this episode on Tim Ballard. Many consider Tim Ballard a hero; a man fighting human trafficking and the subject of the movie “Sound of Freedom”. This week several woman have come forward accusing Tim Ballard of assault. Hidden True Crime delves into the controversial figure and topic in a way no one else does. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California. Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day. Dr. Matthias has been an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program since 2007. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in East Idaho, Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Your support helps us produce these podcasts/videos. We have some big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way that no one else has attempted. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves. LAUREN MATTHIAS has worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in East Idaho, Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah. In 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award. She left the reporting world to produce the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We are live from location, two separate locations. We are not, I guess we're always in separate locations, but not like this, not hundreds of miles away from each other. So, well, one one location is like, I don't know, you know, 15 feet away. And this is, this is like 800 miles away. So yes. Yes. Thank you to those who are joining in with us, especially after my live Friday night. I am out of town missing my husband and co-host, Dr. John Matthias, but so grateful he can be here tonight. Just so everybody knows this is going to be alive where we're going to process a lot together because a little bit of info, Dr. John, John, John, just finished reading both civil lawsuits, both civil lawsuits that were filed and filed in the third district court in Salt Lake County

against Tim Ballard, Operation Underground Railroad and its board members. Right before we jumped on this live, we're running so, we've been so busy and so much is going on here where I am that I haven't even, I asked John what he thought, And he said, just let's go live.

We'll, you'll find out. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure it out as we go since we're in separate locations and we really haven't had a chance to talk. But there's a lot to talk about. We'll just have to, we'll have to kind of ask good questions and have some audience help maybe. And we'll put the pieces together. Yeah.

A special thank you to our moderators that we do not always thank them enough. because they always kind of underplay what they do. But I do want to thank our mods here tonight. John, let's just start with what did you think? Tim Ballard, Operation Underground Railroad, the subject of the movie Sound of Freedom. And yes, he plays a part in other cases we cover. Go ahead.

What are your thoughts? Process it with us. So I guess the first thing I would say is, for those of you who haven't listened to our first episode of Tim Ballard, I'd recommend going back and listening to that because I think that's a good introduction, and we talk a lot about many things we will not talk about tonight. Tonight, I think we're going to do more of a deep dive into the civil suits and the documents, and we're going to hear from a lot of the victims.

In that sense, I don't want to repeat or cover a lot of the material we already covered, but there's so much new stuff here. I think that the fact that there's multiple victims, more or less all saying the same thing, it certainly gives a lot of credence to their stories and to their accusations. I guess we should say too, obviously these are not criminal charges. These are civil complaints. That's quite different than criminal. And these are alleged.

They're not, this hasn't gone to trial. It will go to trial, I'm sure, but it hasn't. At this point in time, obviously, Tim Bauerd is still innocent of anything and all the charges. And we should probably say that, disclaimers, before we start. The first thing I want to pick up on and mention because I just, I couldn't get past it, was the fact that Tim Ballard has a pseudonym or a false name for these operations. Do you remember what that is, Lauren? The couple's ruse. No, no, no.

He has a name for himself. So his name is Brian. Oh, yes, Brian. Okay, Brian, right. But there's one place in, I don't know, in over 100 documents, there's one place where one of the victims actually identifies his last name. And his, so his full name as an undercover op is Brian Black. Yes.

Brian Black. So let's start with that because, I mean, if you're going to pick a name, You know, Brian Black is a really interesting name to pick in the sense that, you know, I don't know, for those of you who watched Westworld, I know that wasn't a hugely popular show, but it's a fascinating show. Westworld featured a character played by Ed Harris, fascinating character, kind of the face of darkness in that particular show. But the character in Westworld that Ed Harris played was called The Man in Broward. Black. And the man in black was a bad guy, obviously. He didn't start out that way, by the way. So we learn at the end that his name is William. And in some of the earlier episodes, William enters Westworld as kind of this, he chooses the white hat, the white cowboy hat, and the white outfit. And he perceives himself as sort of this do-gooder that's going to come into this fantasy world and help people and save the damsel in distress, right? So that's how we're

it starts. But over time, we learn that William transforms. He becomes this man in black, and he ends up becoming a killer, and he sort of acts out all these really dark fantasies. And so I couldn't, you know, I couldn't help notice the irony in this name Brian Black in the sense that, in a way, kind of reminded me of William and the transformation of William in Westworld in the sense that William becomes this man in black, perhaps in the same way that Tim Bauer does in some sense. There's almost with Tim Bauer, I think, this dissociative element, or let's call it, kind of a Jekyll Hyde component. There's this part of him that wants to do good, wants to help these children,

right, that he's connected to religion and God and to his faith. And then this is part of him that is in this kind of dark undercover world acting out these deviant sexual fantasies. So I think it's interesting to speculate about, I'm going to read, this is a famous line from the man in black in Westworld towards the end where he kind of reveals what's really going on with him. and this is what the man in black says.

He says, quote, the darkness wasn't marred from something I've done. I was shedding my skin. The darkness was what was underneath. It was mine all along. So, you know, this is a question we raised a lot on our show. Did Tim Ballard break bad? or was Tim Ballard sort of this black character all along, this Brian Black character all along?

Is this an alter ego that's always been an expression of himself or something else, right? And, you know, it's an interesting question with Tim Ballard. I don't really know enough about his background and his childhood to answer it. But I think there's a real irony in the fact that he's, you know, why not choose the name Brian White? and where the white hat and the right in the white outfit it kind of like william did in westworld but um you know perhaps i'm reading too much into this but i think there really is this alter ego and by the way one of the victims talks about that one of the victims mentions that that brian is this alter ego that kind of has free reign in these

covert operations in foreign countries, right? That there's kind of a, in the sense, that's a little like Westworld too. So Westworld is this fictitious environment where people can pay money to go visit. It's a theme park. They can go pay money to visit and they can act out their wildest fantasies, even if those fantasies involve transgressing laws and social norms and rules because those don't exist in Westworld. So basically in Westworld, you can do whatever you want.

you know, in a way, I could argue that human trafficking, and I know there's people that are going to really not like this analogy, but in a way I could argue that human trafficking or these human trafficking operations in foreign countries were Tim Bowers' version of Westworld. And for the people who have seen the show, you guys will know what I'm talking about. So it is as one of the victims wrote, and this is a victim that was actually very close to Tim Bower and admitted that she did a lot of cover up for him. She said, quote, there was never a real plan. There was never a real plan to any of their operations. So in other words, that's amazing.

That is amazing. Right. This is someone who was with OUR for years. And she basically said she went on a couple of these ops and she got involved in the couple's ruse. And for those interested, this is the victim with the initials AA. She's basically saying this is a free for all. That, you know, as in the civil complaint, somebody called it an experienced vacation, right? that these rich, wealthy guys were showing up and playing cowboys or action-adventure heroes in

these foreign countries and trying to rescue people or victims. And it was all kind of a big fantasy. And A.A. kind of says something similar that, you know, in many ways, she said the couple's ruse was actually not a ruse at all, that it wasn't necessary. She says, quote, she says, quote, she talks about Tim being with escorts in Mexico. Here's what she says. Quote, Tim going off alone with one escort was so unnecessary. That debunked the entire couple's ruse.

Yes. Right? And so again, and again, it reminds me of Westworld. Like, you know, let's go to a foreign country where the rules may not apply as much. just do our thing. Let's just run wild. And let me say, before we get too far into this, I don't want to, I don't want to say that Tim Bauer didn't do any good. I'm sure his intentions were good. There may have been some victims that he helped. I'm quite sure that his numbers were very inflated. But, you know, I'm sure he did some good too. So let me say that. Of course,

it's ironic that one of the victims said they went to these brothels. in a foreign country, and this is not AA, this is another victim. And she received the number of names that she thought were related to human traffickers. And she asked Tim Ballard later, whatever happened to all those victims and all the work I did to get those names. And Tim said, oh, well, you know, we're working on it. It seems like when people ask, where are the real victims and who have you helped, he always comes up empty.

He couldn't give her a tangible victim that they assisted or he couldn't identify a single human trafficker. And, you know, that's not to say that there aren't. I'm sure there are. So I don't want to minimize that too much. I'm sure there are some victims he's helped. And I'm grateful for that. Yeah. Even reading this, I felt wasn't worth it either.

Like, this is such, this is such, it was such a horrible read. I kind of see this as Yeah, some people are arguing. I'll be honest, John, I read it. And after I read it, I went along with that narrative for our first podcast after I read the civil suits. I did not think his intentions were ever good. I questioned that. But I guess maybe that's for another time.

But, you know, it's, I don't know anymore. I'll be honest. That's how I felt after reading. I don't know if his intentions were ever good or if it was just a fantasy. But, well, it was definitely. a fantasy. But the larger question there, there's no question it was a fantasy.

Like I said, that in many, so that's why I started with this whole idea of, the man in black from Westworld, because that's how I kind of see this. And his version of Westworld was, was engaging in these human trafficking operations in foreign countries where there was no accountability or less accountability,

or where people could be paid off. So, yeah. So I, you know, in that sense, you can't argue that the man in black or Brian Black, who is Tim Bower, has necessarily has good intentions. So I'm not saying he has good intentions at all. I'm just saying these are still alleged crimes and I'm just giving him some benefit. It seems like all of his victims believed they all believe they all believe to some degree that his intentions were good and that he was trying to do good. They realized later that they were completely duped. But at the time, you know, they were true believers.

So I don't know. It's confusing. Did OUR have the infrastructure and the means? They certainly have the money. Did they have the infrastructure and the means and the operations to carry out these projects that really made a difference? I don't know. You know, in 2022, they received donations of 56.

million dollars. For any normal nonprofit nonprofit in this arena, that would make a big difference or it could make a big difference. Never mind that 14 million of that went to Tim Bowerd. Not in his salary, by the way. He made half a million in his salary, but then he funneled, he funneled approximately by most, by some accounts of people on the inside. And these numbers, I don't know, these are just in the, these are in the civil suit. I'm just using their numbers. So I can't verify this, but he would funnel a lot of money from OUR into his own for-profit businesses. The estimate is that up to $14 million is what he made in 2022. Think about that.

So is this about money also? Of course. This is about greed and power and control. Yep. For sure. And we'll get into that a little more as we go along here. Yeah. Okay.

That's fair. And I guess, again, it goes back to the whole Chad Daybell. thought is, you know, Chad Daybell, did Chad Daybell really believe it or not? And in many ways, I think Chad Daybell did believe his delusions. And there's, yeah. So anyway, go ahead. So yeah, so just let me just, so having said that, and I do think there is sort of this alter ego, which is actually mentioned by one of the victims, which is troubling. And this alter ego is based in fantasy for sure. Maybe the whole thing is based in fantasy. It's hard to know. I think he, you know, I sort of thought that the best analogy I could come up with would be something like

if Rambo was in human trafficking, this would sort of be like Peter Pan meets Rambo, the human trafficking hero, right? Or something like that. Well, someone also pointed out that Walter White from Breaking Bad, it's Walter White and he's Brian Black. I mean, there's just so many. Right. Like that's, it's kind of. If you're, right. I mean, it just, I don't know.

You know, if you're going to do good and you're, you're trying to create this alter ego that's supposed to be this heroic guy saving children from these, you know, malicious characters in foreign countries. It seems to me you wouldn't go with the name Brian Black. But he did. Brian Black. So that's interesting. Even the choice of names is interesting here. It says a lot, I think, about Tim Bower and how he perceived himself. So let's talk about these suits in general.

I think one thing that there were a lot of things I learned about Tim Bauer that we didn't talk about. The one thing I learned, the couple of things that stood out immediately were how manipulative Tim Bauer is. I mean, I don't know about you, but like it just page after page after page, is this guy just bamboozling and manipulating people and lying, right? He's, he's, I can, I don't even know where to start with that. I thought you're just going to jump into how we know now that he colors his hair and gets mist on tans. Oh, I didn't, I missed, what? I didn't see the mist on tan part. Is that?

I added that. Sorry, that was. Oh, you added that. Okay. Because I think he does. But we do know that he colors his hair and that he wants it to be blonde and blonder and blonder. Sorry, that was talked about. Yeah, I did see that because the person who did his hair actually became one of his victims.

Correct. So that was, yeah, that was a big part of one of the victim statements. So I think there's three things that we talked about that Jimmy Rex, in our previous episode, Jimmy Rex talked about his narcissism. So we kind of mentioned that. That's all over this as well. You know, one of his victims, HDT, says, quote, he feels very much like a narcissist. And then she actually even talks to him about reading books on narcissism to help him with his narcissism. So I'm sure that worked out well, by the way. I'm sure giving Tim Bauer some books on narcissism is going to care his narcissism, right? And I'm not, by the way, I'm not diagnosing here.

I'm just saying that these are some, this is some of the language from the victims. That the victim, HDT, initials HDT says that. She calls him a narcissist. She tries to get him to read some books on narcissism. HDT also says, this is, I love this part. She says earlier when she, when Tim Ballard first comes over to get his hair done, so this is relevant to your hairdresser part. She's talking to him and she doesn't know who he is.

And he's astonished. He can't believe it. And he's upset by that. He's upset. He's upset. He can't believe it. So she says, I don't even, who are you? I guess you're somebody, but I don't know who you are.

And here's what he tells her. You ready for this? He says, quote, I'm actually a big deal. He tells her, I'm going to be the prophet of the LDS Church. And I'm going to be the president of the United States of America. So Tim Bauer lets her know. And by the way, like, you know, I had my hair cut a few months. I'm sorry, a few weeks ago.

And some of you commented on that last week, by the way. Thank you. I was picturing getting my haircut and the stylist saying to me something like, I recognize you or, you know, I think I recognize you. What do you do? I'm and I can't imagine ever ever in a million years saying something like that so in fact she she asked me what I did and I just said I'm an educator because you know if I say I'm a clinician or a forensic psychologist they want to you know usually people want to tell me their life story and

I didn't want to get into that but like this whole notion of I'm actually a big deal like what who says that what normal human like that's the last thing I'd want to say to someone I just want to lay low and, you know, get my haircut. But not Tim Ballard. Tim Ballard says, I'm actually a really big deal, HDT, and you need to take me seriously. So don't mess up my haircut.

Right. Part of me even wondered if he targeted her because it upset him so much that she didn't know who he was. Like that's, you know, using, yeah, Jimmy Rex's narcissistic term, you know, that would upset a narcissist. You know,

It's almost like I wonder if that's made her target her even more because she's going to know who I am and she's going to come with me and be my couple ruse partner. Just the thought I've had to. Yeah. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, actually, and I think rejection is a big part of this. Well, we'll talk a little later about how every one of these victims, he wanted to know if they were attracted to them.

I mean, it's like this kind of this almost this desperate childlike quality about. Do you think I'm attractive? Do you think I'm like the most handsome kid ever, right? Like it's really, at the very least, it's immature. But he's obsessed with this idea of being attractive and, you know, the victim's being attracted to him. And I think some of that, no doubt, probably has to do with some of his childhood stuff. I don't know anything about his childhood, so I can't really comment on that. but there does seem to be this intense need for validation,

which some of the victims talked about. And there does seem to be sort of this underlying vulnerability that he's really afraid of that he wants to kind of cover up. And he does that through letting people know what a big deal he is and how attractive he is and all that kind of stuff. But I think getting back, to this idea of manipulation, you know, the reason I think this is important,

by the way, is because manipulation would be, and I'm again, I'm not diagnosing here, but manipulation at this level would be consistent with, might be consistent with someone

who has some psychopathic traits. That's what I was thinking. Manipulation is actually And there's something called the dark triad, which is really pushing us into like really serious psychopathology. But the dark triad is something that really hardcore criminals seem to have. And there's something called Machiavellianism, which is a version of manipulation.

Machiavellianism is when somebody does whatever, that the means always justify the end, that they do whatever it takes to get what they want. So in other words, Machiavellianism is a version of manipulation. And I think you really, you have something like that here. You have that quality. And then you have the dark triad is narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. And so I think you're getting a little hint of some of those qualities here.

And as you might guess, the dark triad is not considered efficient. favorable group of characteristics. So, you know, some of the greatest criminals of all time would be, would, would show the dark triad. So, and again, I'm not saying those necessarily apply to Tim Ballard, but the level of manipulation here is amazing. And some of the examples would be the, the non-disclosure agreements he requires of everyone.

his constant his constant repetition of this idea that this is life and death that this idea of extreme secrecy that if you talk about this we're all going to be killed the cartels are going to jump in here and they're going to

kill us and he you know all the victims said that he was constantly talking about you know taxi drivers and Uber drivers they're all watching us and everyone's watching us because we're so important and we know they all know that we're trying to save the world and they all want to stop us and they're all evildoers.

Like, it's such a manipulation at such an amazing level. He tells one of the victims that if you ever leave me, I'm going to put a bill in my brain. Or if you ever, if you ever reveal these secrets, I'm going to put a bullet in my brain. So, you know, again, manipulation, Machiavellianism. Like, it's, it's mind-boggling. I think we saw some of that before, but after reading these victim statements, it really stands out. You can see that this is someone who is deeply invested in manipulating other people and getting his way, and he's going to do whatever it takes to do that.

So that really stands out. I think the other thing that I didn't see quite clearly, as clearly before, is paranoia, that there's a real intense paranoia going on here, which, by the way, is also consistent paranoia. consistent with some of the most hardcore criminals of all time. And I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying that Tim Ballard is one of those, but I'm just saying that paranoia tends to be a quality that many criminals who get into lots of trouble have. You might ask, okay, where do you see the paranoia?

This is from the victim with the initials AA. Quote, there was always something or someone doing wrong to Tim in Tim's eyes. He told the victim, HTD, quote, everyone I love always turns on me. He told that to several of the victims. So not only is there this paranoia about people watching him and trying to get him and trying to hurt him, but he also likes to play the victim. So he steps into the victim role. And there's one point where one of the victims is going to leave him,

and he kind of has this meltdown. and basically he tells her, you know, look, I'm just trying to save the world here. And all these evil people are trying to harm me. And I don't understand why all these people want to come after me. Because I'm just a do-gutter. I'm just, even though his name's Brian Black, I'm just trying to do good and save the world and I don't get it. You know, never mind that by harming a number of people,

these victims and apparently many other ones. There's a lot of supposedly, allegedly, there's a lot of other victims out there too who have not come forward. But over a period of well over a decade of doing this, it's not hard to imagine that there's many people that he may have potentially harmed. Yeah.

What do you think about how he took his son with him to some of these? these clubs in Utah and he trained the victims in the couples read with his son there. Yeah, it's mine. I don't, I didn't know. It didn't say his son's age, so I wasn't quite sure. He'd just gotten back from a mission,

so he would have been 21. Okay. If he would be 20, 21, um, is because boys go on missions, you know, around 18ish, sometimes, uh,

19. I think my reaction was probably somewhere to the victim. which was that it's appalling. You know, he's bringing his son into these strip clubs to apparently teach him the ways of oh, you are, I guess. But, you know, the irony of that whole situation is that he's doing, so he's doing this, he's doing this training with the victims so that they can get in character when they go on actual operations, right?

But he's doing it in the Salt Lake Basin. So he's going around to strip clubs where they know. know him. Right? That's never talked about, but he has to be known. He's probably the best known guy to step through those doors because he goes there all the time to supposedly train people, right? And so I'm thinking, this is bizarre.

Like he's going into these strip clubs that he's been in probably a hundred times. And he's bringing his son in there. He knows what goes on in there. He knows there's going to be lap dances. He knows he's going to interact with the escorts or whatever. You know, he know, I mean, so I don't, I don't know how that's relevant to training someone to be in the couple's ruse. There's something really odd and salacious about it, right? I think, and that's starting to move us in the direction of sexual deviancy.

If there's, if there is some sexual deviancy here, that's, that's where it's where you start seeing it. You know, that. Yeah. Yeah. Kelly points out, you know, he was grooming his son right along with the women he groomed. Someone else pointed out, yeah, Tim also gave his son pills to take. Like, you know, that that's an interesting moment to me. I agree.

It's one thing to, I mean, I don't know, to take your son along with, you know. I don't, yeah, it's hard to believe. I mean, clearly it's not something I would ever envision myself doing. But yeah, right. He's trying to, that's, I think that's. accurate in the sense that he's he's trying to normalize this type of behavior for his son. So I guess what he's trying to do, he's grooming his son to take over his role at some point, I guess. Or that's a good point, grooming his son to think that this is okay and this is what it's about, too.

And that if his son starts doing these covert ops or whatever they are, that his son can learn how to do it. and his son can also learn how to objectify women and belittle them and treat them this way. You know, I do want to say this. I do have some inside info, take it or leave it. I vet my sources, but it's a source. People are asking about the family. And I do believe at this moment in time his wife is standing by him, um, believing that strip clubs are something he needs to go for training.

you know, similarly to, you know, just a person's training that it's part of what he should do. I've also heard from this person that he has been excommunicated from the church and that they both feel it's, you know, unjust, both he and his wife. That she just thinks that strip clubs are part of saving children as well. I don't know how it would be hard to believe that when he, He clearly knows every strip club in Salt Lake City. He knows their owners. He knows their patron. Right.

He knows everything that goes on there. I don't like to go on those strip clubs and get lap dances and interact with the escorts on a sexual level. That's not training. Right. And as someone said, I think he was doing it to make his son think it was normal. It isn't training. And then think about it, right? A 501c3 is probably then donating the booze and the visits to the strip clubs.

because it's under training, under the guise of training. Well, not only that, you have, as somebody, as they pointed out in the civil suit, as the attorney will file the civil son pointed out, I think donors should know where their money's going. He's using that money essentially to fund his sexual deviance. And if it's not deviant in the sense that maybe it's consensual, it's not consensual with these victims, by the way. We'll talk more about that later.

but in the strip clubs where he knows everyone, including presumably the strippers, maybe that's consensual, but he still doesn't need to do it. And he's also using the context of the strip club to commit crimes with his victims in the sense that, right, he's trying to train them

and he's using that context to have them perform lap dances and sexual acts on him. Right. So, yeah, I don't, I mean, that was one of the ironies is that only a few of these victims actually went on ops with him. Most of them just, most of them were just in training or, right, or they were going to local strip clubs or they were going to his house or their house or, you know, but nevertheless, he convinced them that they had to practice, right? There was this training practice component to everything he was doing. And most of the victims rightly suspected they suspected that something was amiss when he was doing that.

Like what, you know, one of the victims was, a couple of the victims were actresses. And they said, well, you know, I can get in character whenever necessary. Don't worry about it. Just we don't need to practice. And he said, oh, no, no, no. Nope, I need to know that there's chemistry. I need to know that you're attracted to me, right? Yeah, he would say, no, this is life or death.

You don't understand. I need to know that you can do this because my other couple of ruse partners didn't do well and they got us in so much danger. You really have to show me. You know what you're doing. I mean, how manipulative. So let me just, I'm going to read from one of the, I'm going to read from one of the victim statements here. on this issue. Ballard said he needed to know,

this is the victim, W.W. initials, W.W., page six, of her victim statement. Ballard said he needed to know W.W. W.W. was attracted to him. Ballard asked W.W. if she was attracted to him, to which W.W. said not in that way. Ballard asked how W.W.

Bailor asked how WW could convince traffickers of chemistry then. She told him she did not need to practice because that was what she was trained to do as an actor to get into character when in role but only on action and out and out on cut. Ballard then stated that this was the practice he mentioned, meaning the couple's ruse, and that WW needed to be attracted to him in order to convince traffickers that they were, quote, a kinky couple. So she finally convinced him that this attraction component, first of all, he's hurt that she's not like instantly attracted to him.

She didn't say, yeah, I think you're the most handsome guy I've ever met. She says, I'm not attracted you to in that way. Which also is manipulative because he said to the women, oh, all these couple ruse couples fall in love with me, you know, and it never works out. It never ends well because they always fall in love with me. So, you know, and everything's a test, too. They're they, he tells them that everything's a test.

So, you know, are you attracted to me? She's like, not in that way. And then that makes him, you know, and he's not happy with that. Well, I need you to be. So this is, this is the best part. So when we conclude this. So he convinces her that attraction is important and she needs to be attracted to him and to show that she's attracted to him.

And so she finally agrees. And again, I'm reading from the victim's same here, page six, quote, WW approached Ballard in the hallway outside of Ballard's office and put her hand on his chest and spoke to him seductively, saying she could turn it on as she needed to and then pull back immediately. But at that point, Ballard got excited and said, quote, oh good, okay, you can do this.

So in other words, she doesn't find him initially attractive. he convinces her that she will or that she can. So she does this. She's just out of the blue. She approaches him in the hallway. She is in this instance. She initiates the physical contact. And that excites him, right?

He's thinking, oh, man, yeah, okay, she is. Now she is attracted to me, even though she admits like she's just doing this as an actress. But that's what sells him on bringing. bringing her on and up is that she actually performs this physical act or this touching moment. And he believes now that she's attracted to him and that she can do it. Yeah, Kathleen, I agree. It's predatory behavior.

Right. Yeah, I agree. It's very predatory. It's predatory and opportunistic. He's extremely. opportunistic. John, and if you have somewhere you're going, I don't want to interrupt you,

but you've worked with many, many sex offenders. That's more than any other type of criminal. This is what you do. Yeah. I'm just, I'm curious as, I'm curious what you make of this. I think there's so many

different types of motivations that sex offenders have, like any criminal. And to me, when I look at this, you know, the question I'm asking here is, what are some of the motives? You know, what's driving Tim Bauer to do this? And I think somebody just mentioned this predatory component, one of our viewers. And I agree. I think there really is sort of this predatory component.

And I think that so the underline, from what I can tell, it appears to me. that there's a big component of power and power and control. And typically you would see that in a sex offender, you would see that with sex offenders that engage in assault particularly. That a lot of times assault, and I have to be careful, I'm not using the terms I would normally use because of YouTube. Right. We're not trying to ever minimize anything.

We just get over. I'm trying to be careful with my words here because if I use one word, YouTube will take this video. down. So I think there's, I think there's this underlying component of power and control, which as somebody just, as we just talked about, has a predatory component. And the goal is fantasy fulfillment. So it's, the goal is to the fantasy fulfillment of the sexual deviance. And I think the sexual deviance is really about dominating women. So if you look at sex offenders in general, there's so many motivations.

and most of them are quite different, but I think this kind of fits in the category. And again, I should point out, he hasn't been charged criminally. It's mentioned in the civil suit that these are criminal-like offenses, and I agree with that. But whether criminal charges are coming, I don't know.

Sean Reyes, the Attorney General of Utah, is a friend of Tim Bauer. So you tell me if criminal charges would ever be coming. I don't know. Anyway. this feels a lot like a sexual offender that would be most concerned with assault and specifically sexual assault. And so I think in some ways, in these types of situations,

the goal isn't really, yes, there is a deviance component, but oftentimes the goal isn't even necessarily sexual. I mean, it is, but it's also about domination. And it's about having power over someone else. So I think that's sort of how I perceive these particular crimes or alleged crimes. Okay. Thank you. I was curious, yeah, how you perceive this.

And if this were all accurate, this was a pattern and this is, you know, all true. risk factor wise. Oh yeah, he definitely has a clear MO. I think that he tends to, in terms of criminal acts, I think a lot of this is what we would call lewdness. So lewdness would be, I think a lot of people think, you know, one thing that's interesting about this civil suit is that the lawyer who authors it says, well, there were certain rules.

Like there couldn't be any penetration. and there was no kissing, right? And so some people might read that and think, oh, wait a minute, those aren't sex crimes. But the reality is that if you fondle someone, even if you fondle them over the clothes, which means if you touch someone over the clothes, that's a sexual offense. That's called lewdness. And Tim Ballard was doing way more than that. Tim Ballard was, in many cases, he was getting very aggressive.

There are moments in these statements that are just, you know, in some ways, they're just I don't know. For somebody who claims to be saving children from human trafficking, it's unimaginable that that that person would engage in this type of behavior because there's there's instances in here where he pushes the victim against a door, pins them against a door. He pushes them down on the bed multiple times. He pins a victim against the wall. He grinds on them.

the victims. He gropes them. He fondles them. That's all either lewdness or assault, depending on how it gets interpreted and depends on the state. But, you know, it's, and the reason that's true is because it's not consensual. So if any of that was consensual in the sense that if you pin someone up against the wall, and in one case, he, he pinned someone up against the wall and he pulled up their shirt and he started kissing their stomach. Like, if that's consensual, that's one thing. But it wasn't consensual. The victim did not want that act to occur.

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Use that with happy mammoth.com for 15% off today. Yeah. I hope. I hope that criminal charges come down in the situation. I do. Yeah, it's pretty serious. and I guess it's very serious. In fact, I don't know if I'm going to read it,

but in the victim statement by HDT, if you read the last part where there's an assault occurring, the language is, it's really horrendous that she tells him to stop multiple times. He doesn't stop. She says she's terrified. It's very hard to read. And it's entirely consistent with the criminal app

that would be considered a word I can't say. Let's call it a song. Yeah. Someone wrote a little bit ago with a question, they said, you know, they watched an interview with him. They felt uneasy about him from the very, very beginning. Yet everybody else, you know, so many other people didn't see it. This is according to a question far back.

And they wanted to know what it is. And I think that maybe I should just simply ask. ask you, you see this again and again. People really, really trusted him or still trust him. And, and yet other people see through him and, you know, just the controversy of the movie, Sound of Freedom, shows that some people have always been wary of him while other people see him as a hero. what is it? What can we look for? What is it that you see again and again? I know that you saw red flags with him.

I know that you and I have been talking about him for a long time. As a psychologist, what do you see? I think if someone is making claims that are preposterous, if somebody is saying that something is too good to be true, it usually is. So if you're claiming that you're going to save all the children in the world from human trafficking, that's preposterous. Nobody's going to do that.

Human trafficking is a real problem. I totally agree with that. It's a problem. We need a lot of help to help victims. We talked about our last show. Most of them are right here in our backyard. They're not in foreign countries. There are some in foreign countries, of course.

But I think the reason you can see through someone like this is because he's promising something that he's not going to deliver. And there's something that it's right, that he's, his version of utopia. So in any cult, they'll promise you utopia. Chad DeBow is going to promise the New Jerusalem. The victims actually talk about the new covenant. He's promising that, the new covenant. That's a world where sin is erased.

And we could just go up to the, you know, I guess the new Jerusalem. And so I think you have someone here who's, you know, we talk, again, we talked about this last time about being kind of the Messiah or Savior complex. When somebody is promising you something that you know is false or untrue or it can't be delivered, then they're probably misleading you. They're probably there's something off. At the very least, the grandiosity there is excessive, right? Like be wary of people that are grandiose. In other words, the snake oil salesman. Yeah, like the grifter. To learn, yeah, like a snake oil salesman back in the day,

I can solve all of your physical problems. You can't walk. I'll give you this potion and you'll be able to walk. You know, that's right. Exactly. It's too good to be true. And it's a version of that. Oh, there's a problem.

There's a human trafficking problem. I'm going to go solve it. I'm going to rescue thousands of kids because let's be honest. Like, it's not like, numerous undercover officers haven't been trying to do this for forever. If anybody's been paying attention, we just don't publicize it because that doesn't help human trafficking victims all the time. And going back to what the victim A.A. said.

There was never a real plan. Right? Like you can't, if you're planning is that you take out a psychic to tell you where the missing kids are or you take out of psychic to give you intel, then, you know, I mean, that's not real yeah yeah someone's saying to me lord are you asking why some people have a BS detector that operates alongside hero worshippers uh that's a good question i don't know if that's exactly what i was asking i think i was more asking about signs where we can all improve our a BS detector but that is an interesting question um do some people have a better BS detector along with people that are more prone to hero worshippers.

I don't know if that's a thing you want to get into, but I am grateful that you're sharing signs we can look for. This is an age-old question. You know, why are people attracted to cult leaders? Colts are universal and they've existed throughout human history. And there's a reason why. It's because we want that hero to solve all our problems. We want that magic bullet.

We want that pill that's going to give us the fountain of you. right we all like that's what these people are selling it could be a politician it could be tim ballard it could be chad daybell but i think that's what to be that's what we need to be larry of it could be someone you're dating right you're just looking to have a relationship with them and maybe they're going to tell you that they're going to solve all your problems and all your childhood wounds are going to go away right that's what chad dable did that with lorry those are all red flags I think all red flags.

You want someone who's grounded, someone who knows who they are or has a sense of self, someone with some humility, right? All of those, there's, there's all these qualities that would kind of buffer this type of grandiosity.

Zanzer says, because he's using God and an emotionally charged moral cause like this, like so many do, to gain trust, and so no one questions him. Somebody else writes, you know,

that sometimes, when people, oh, brilliant trash rights, I do think that a lot of people, once they hear what they want to hear, they stop asking questions. And that brings up an issue that, that brings up one of the more appalling issues and all of this, and that is,

and this blew me away. So this is in both civil suits. This absolutely blew me away. But the couple's ruse was a policy In other words, as the lawyer says in the suit, the couple's rules was instituted. They know about it. They sanctioned it. They supported it.

They affirmed it. And especially people at the top, the board, the upper administrators, they all knew about the couple's route. In fact, they knew about it to such a degree that they wrote it into their policies and procedures. Right? That's amazing. So not only do you have Tim Bollinger. now are doing these horrible things to his employees and these victims,

but you have this whole infrastructure at OUR. So last time we asked what OUR knew, and now we know. You have this whole infrastructure, administrative infrastructure, and OUR supporting this and condoning it and being complicit. That's extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah. And that, by the way, that by the way is why,

there's so many defendants named in the lawsuit because the lawyer is arguing that all these people knew and they did nothing to stop it and that for the most part, I mean, there's a lot of charges in there, but for the most part they have what's called a fiduciary duty to their clients, especially a nonprofit. And the fiduciary duty is to protect their employees and to work in their best interests. And that's completely the opposite of what they were doing. Somebody should have stepped in somewhere and said, this is enough. There's, there's, I'm not going to mention their names, but there are multiple people named by the victims who not only knew about it, they saw what was going on, and they knew firsthand.

And I'm pretty sure you're probably going to see them at trial, but I think some of them are defendants, so you may not. They'll be at their own trials, but still, it's. Yeah. Elizabeth is saying there's a mass hysteria going on where these narcissists are encouraging each other to believe their own BS as in their visions and dreams. This must be further investigated. Go, Lauren, go John. I want to point out something else that, thank you, Elizabeth. I want to point out something else with that, where they're encouraging each other to believe their own BS. Not only was

OUR, like, OUR was a very, I've been talking to a lot of people, a lot of people. OUR very rarely hired someone that was not LDS. One of the victims in the lawsuit is not LDS. But Tim Ballard really, really wanted to keep this in his faith family, if that makes sense. And to me, that's also a red flag. If you're not willing to hire people outside of your political or religious realm or to be open to other people's ideas, to me, that's also a sign of a close. of someone that's afraid of outside voices and they do encourage one another

to believe, as you say Elizabeth on their own bullshit. Exactly. I think that's a warning sign I want to throw out there. If they're not willing, again, and he did a, you know, Tim Ballard was into political divides into religious divides.

If you're not open to other people and other people's experiences and opinions and thoughts and what they can bring to the table, that's a concern. You might be in a cult. Yeah. Thank you, Kathleen. And we are.

We are here. In fact, as far as, and going on with Elizabeth's comment, I just want to say, I'm here in Utah. I've already met with John Dillin earlier today with Mormon stories. We've been on several phone calls. I'm going to be talking to more people after this live is over. And on Tuesday, we plan to do something on Tuesday. But there are a lot of the same players. When we've been seeing similar cases in the news,

from Chad Deba, Lori Valo, Jody Hildebrand, Tim Ballard, there are some, as you say, the same people over and over again in all these stories. and we're going to tackle that Tuesday because I'm so sick of seeing this again and again and again. And John and I would like to branch out and cover other crimes too. But we did last week. Yeah, we did last week. Yes.

Let me, so there's a couple other things that stood out. I mean, there's a lot of these victim statements that are really interesting and give us a better picture of Tim Bauer. but one of the other components I thought that was, so let me back up a little bit and talk about this institutional component for the couple's ruse, knowing what it was and supporting it at OUR. You know, when I saw that in the civil complaint, I actually thought it kind of reminded me a little bit of what CPS calls failure to protect. In the sense that, so failure of protect is a charge when, for example,

house, there might be some type of abuse, and one of the parents knows about the abuse, but they don't do anything to protect the child. In other words, they don't report it or they don't respond to the abuse in any way. In some ways, what you had them was an institutional version of failure to protect. And it's also interesting that on several of these trips, these foreign human trafficking rescue operations, that the victims were in these situations where they were in these brothels and escorts would enter the room. And so Tim Ballard's main, his main goal was to get information. He targeted escorts because he saw them as his main source of information to get the names

of traffickers and therefore to get the names of children. So they're in, they always seem to gravitate towards these, these brothels with escorts. And they're in these rooms. And some of the escorts basically are starting to assault the victims. And there was one case where one of the victims was in there playing the couple, playing the right, the wife, playing the role of the wife. And she's being assaulted. And she says, I need to leave. I have a meeting.

And Tim Bauer says, what meeting? You don't have a meeting, right? Like, in other words, multiple, there's multiple instances where these assaults were taking place. And Tim Bowerd was in the same room, and he did nothing. He did nothing to protect them. He did nothing to protect the victims, right? He just watched it. And, you know, those moments to me were really important and disgusting in a way because,

at the very least he should have been protecting them. And they had, you know, he had a code word, which we can't say, but he had a code word to get out of the room and to protect the victims. And oftentimes he didn't use the code word. In fact, the victims would use the code word, the safe word, and he would do nothing, right? And so there's, and this gets me to the final component. There's almost the sadistic component here in the sense that Tim Howard is not only is there kind of a voyeuristic component to these types of behavior.

Like, you know, he's a voyeur in the sense of he's watching this, these assaults occur. He's not doing anything. In fact, you could argue that he's becoming more aroused. But he's actually relishing it. There's something sadistic about what's going on in those rooms in the sense that not only is he setting those situations up, he knows what's going to occur. but he's not doing anything to intervene or protect the victims.

So I think, you know, I think you see the sense in which he's almost enjoying some of these victims being harmed. And I think that's what's really, that's what's really disturbing here. You know, the manipulant, the Machiavellianism, the potential narcissism,

right, the, if you throw in kind of the sadistic element, this is someone who potentially could hurt a lot of people. It seems like he already has. But when you throw in that component, now you're talking about a next level criminal psyche. You're talking about actually enjoying when people were being harmed. Yeah, those stories were really disturbing to me.

And then the code word that we won't share here, the code word added to it. The code word was not a fun word for these women to say. The code word was part of the fantasy. It was an upsetting thing that they had to say. It was a demeaning thing that they had to say. It all showed that it was like some act. Yeah.

That he wanted to watch. So they're saying something demeaning while being in a situation that is frightening and he looks and watches. Right. And not once, not twice, many, many times. Yeah. And then if they choose to leave or save themselves, he says,

oh, why'd you do that? We were so close to getting phone numbers of traffickers. And he would know Spanish and the women would not. So they would not know what he was saying. Add that to it too. They just had to truly trust him. Well, there was one instance with one of the victims where, right, where the victim didn't see Spanish.

He was actually making sexual jokes. with the escorts. And I can't give details because again, YouTube, but he was making reference. He was kind of joking about certain sexual things. And the escorts took that as a signal to engage or to assault

the woman, the victim in the room who didn't speak Spanish. And they did. And he thought it was funny. And when I say assault, I mean like full on sexual assault. Question by Cici. She did read.

out to me before the show and wanted us to expand on the code word. It was a demeaning code word. Why did he choose that? I think it goes back to the, if the word was involved in it. If the underlying issue is domination or, you know, power and domination, I think it has to do with that. I think the code word reflects this desire to kind of humiliate and don't. dominate these victims, not just the victims, but the women in these countries that he's interacting with.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard from several people. I want to point out one warning sign that I think is always overlooked when it comes to spiritual manipulation and spiritual manipulation is definitely part of the couple's ruse. And I think that's why the majority of his victims shared his same faith. You know, it's much more easily. he's much more easily able to manipulate them spiritually.

But, you know, so he is always talking about his wife, Catherine, who seems, you know, very innocent in all this and believing of her husband. And he's always sharing how amazing Catherine is in his speeches, how she is more spiritual than he is, how she is just wonderful, how she has sacrificed so much that she's a widow, you know, that she's amazing. And someone else wrote me. And their family member also was an O-U-R employee. And they said it was very similar in that this person was a man,

but that he was always on the phone. And when they were at family functions, when he would finally get time off of work, he would be pulled by Tim personally and have to talk to Tim. And then Tim would tell the wife, she was a saint. You are a saint. you are so spiritual and then people would kind of respond to or oh you are sacrificing so much so

your husband can do such good that's like a really great way i just want to say this in my opinion calling someone a saint is a really great way to get them to dismiss poor behavior so like for example someone acts poorly towards someone rather than holding that person accountable and saying you know what you should be with your family and you should stop working you just like call the other person that's dealing with the bad behavior a saint. You know, Catherine is a saint. She's so spiritual because she's dealing with shit, you know. So rather than holding Tim Ballard accountable,

oh, just call the person who's dealing with it a spiritual saint. That is something I see again and again in spiritual manipulation, and I just want to point that out. My grandmother, you know, stayed with an abusive man because people called her a saint. like stop the sainthood start calling the person out doing you know who is who has poor behavior

rather than calling the people who are being affected by the poor behavior a wonderful person for dealing with it is something I want to point out to I see this with Tim Ballard it's it's more manipulation yeah so sorry but that's what I want to point out with

spiritual manipulation. Right. If someone calls you a saint again and again and again for putting up with poor behavior, it's probably to get you from calling the person out for their poor behavior. Thank you. Haba. Haba is asking, Dr. John Lohen, can you talk about how visions of glory tied into Tim Ballard's manipulations and abuse or if it did it all?

Well, I mean, did you see where Tom Harrison has mentioned, John, in the docs? Yes. Yeah. Visions of glory. Yeah. That's a big topic that maybe we should refer the person to your upcoming discussion this week. Yes. Yes.

This Tuesday, we're going to deep dive into this. How is Visions of Glory and Spencer, Visions of Glory, tied into Ballard's, manipulations, and abuse? Or if it did it all. I believe it did tie into it, absolutely. And I believe it ties into Chad DeBelle and Lori Vall. And I believe it ties into Jody Hildebrand. I believe it's tied into a lot of things that we're seeing recently. I'm always, you know, I've been looking for the common denominator.

Because as someone put it out, it's been 2023 has been a heck of a year for Mormons and crime. We don't want to change, we don't want to turn into a Mormon channel here. We're a true crime channel, but we need to figure out what's going on. And that's what I'm here in Utah and we're going to talk about it more. But I am curious, though, John, separate from that, what you thought about. the visions and the spiritual stuff going on with Tim Ballard. Yeah. Well, I mean, it puts some, I think there's, there are relevant analogies with Chad Daybell.

It, it, it moves this from being, from having to do, the, from being kind of a, an organization to help victims of human trafficking into something else, into more of a cult. or a spiritual endeavor, right? It changes the playing field a little bit. And it certainly moves Tim Bauer from being kind of this action-adventure hero into being something else. A cult leader, a prophet, he says he's going to be the next Mormon prophet.

Obviously, he's not now because he's been excommunicated. So apparently he didn't see that coming. But all of the same elements that you see with Chad Daybell, that he sees angels. He believes that he's been married and passed lives. He tells one of the victims we were married in her past live, therefore it's okay if I do this.

He's going to be a future profit. He's going to be a senator. He's going to be president of the United States. He has visions and dreams. It's all the same stuff. But I think it's definitely what kind of changes the context here from, you know, maybe a, I don't know, a secular or maybe a normal organization that's on the ground trying to deal with human trafficking to something else. Yeah, agree.

Thank you. It does become wild. Anything else you'd like to talk about, John, I love the quote that the lawsuits start with, the Carl Sagan quote, about being bamboozled. Any thoughts on that quote that they decided to start the lawsuit out with? Yeah, I think it's great. I want to, are we about to wrap here in a little bit? We are. We're wrapping up. And so that's why we are officially wrapping up. Let me just read this quote from Paula Marie, friend of the program, how we strive to live a deeply faith-filled life for some to have, in quotes, a man doing the Lord's work and tells us that we are saints that lead some to believe giving up their partner is a service to be saccharacterial.

sacrifice. Exactly. Thank you for explaining it better than I could, Paula. And thank you so much, Reb. Thank you for all you do as well. Thank you for your support. We are wrapping up, babe. Yes. Okay. Yeah, because I just want to wrap up with a few thoughts. And then I want to read a little a little case study from a book that I, on fantasy that I think is relevant. But the other thing I want to mention that's in the victim statements that I think was really interesting is Tim Ballard's problems with drugs and alcohol. That Tim Ballard has a substance abuse problem. It seems to be very severe.

And I think that's interesting too, right? Because clearly for someone who claims to be a spiritual leader and drug-free, right, especially in the Mormon faith, that the word of wisdom, wisdom, you're not supposed to drink alcohol or engage in drug use. And Tim Bauer, if he wants to be the next prophet of the Mormon church, certainly can't do those things. But he is doing drugs. He's doing alcohol. He's taking pills.

I don't know what those are. He does ketamine, which is essentially a horse tranquilizer, but it's also used for to treat depression. And he uses ketamine. And so did you read that part? Yes. took ketamine and he brought in a scribe to record his visions for yeah yeah right but right that I mean think about that too that think of how grandiose that is too I'm going on I'm going to do some

ketamine and I need a scribe because it's truth serum and I need everyone to be here for this moment because it's so profound so I bring up the substance abuse issue because I think it shows not only kind of this double life that he's living like Brian Black apparently this alter ego can do drugs and that's fine because he's doing it in foreign countries or in strip clubs or wherever. But so again, you have kind of this split personality or this Jekyll Hyde situation. I think it also shows that this is a troubled human being. And this is a person with mental health issues and many of the victims recognize that. They talk about it quite openly.

they attribute some of his mental health issues to his operations and stress. And I think they sort of see it as maybe some version of PTSD or trauma. And so I think interestingly enough, I think they're willing to kind of excuse some of his behavior because they see that they believe that all these operations he's going on are creating a lot of trauma. And therefore it's impacting his mental health. I'm not sure if that's accurate, but that's how some of the victims see it. So my point is that this is someone with, you know, this is someone who's troubled. This is not someone that you want to be the next prophet of any church.

Little Timmy's not going to be the prophet. Well, he'd have to do some real fast talking and manipulating to get back in the church's good graces, I'm sure. President of the United States, I don't know. I guess I wouldn't rule that out. Anything seems possible there. So maybe he can still achieve that. But here, a couple, so I want to read a little bit from HDT is a victim.

And you guys can all read this in this victim's statement. But towards the end of the statement, there's really some remarkable stuff about Tim Bauer that's worth, if you want to understand Tim Ballard, some of that, you can you can see, you can gain some real insight into Tim Bauer in this statement. So he's trying, a couple of moments in here, I think are kind of worth revisiting that he's, so the HDT has his friend, I won't mention the name of the friend, but he wants to, he wants to help Tim. And so the victim agreed to kind of get up, set up a meeting with this person. And he comes over, Tim comes over to meet this person, this guy, and to talk about, you know, what it's like to go on operations.

And Tim Ballard just kind of loses it. So this is, I'm going to read a little bit from this statement. Tim started telling him that if he wanted to be an operator, that it's a crazy, horrible job. He started being very, very vulgar, talking about things that they have to say to trafficker. in order to get them to believe that they are there to buy children. He was saying horrible, awful things about things he would want to do to kids. And his face changed. His demeanor changed.

But not only that, it was like he kind of couldn't get out of the mode. He couldn't change back. He became vulgar and I didn't recognize him. And that's when Tim started freaking out. He was opening my cupboards and slamming them. So the victim leaves the room. she says, I went upstairs and I could still hear Tim yelling. I shut my bedroom door.

I was honestly afraid. He was yelling. And I could hear doors slamming and my cupboards opening and shutting again. I mean, so, you know, why is that an important moment? Number one, Tim Ballard has this real streak of aggression and violence, right? Like, that's not a normal. So the purpose of this meeting was to convince the. friend or talk to the friend about getting into trafficking, and it becomes this out of control

over the top, aggressive door slam. And this isn't Tim Ballard's house, by the way. This is at someone else's home. He's slamming. He's slamming cupboards. And she feels afraid because he's so out of control. So this isn't some docile, you know, patient. right, kind guy who's just going to listen and give some feedback. He just absolutely loses it in a moment when he shouldn't lose it, right? And so I think this gives you a little picture. Again, let's go back to the analogies we started with about Brian Black. This is a guy who is showing us right here that he can be extremely aggressive

and that he has a lot of inner rage. I don't know exactly where that comes from, but it's there. So here's another moment from the same statement by HDT. This is really important. I'll just throw this thing because we're talking about it. Tim Ballard believed that he and I had been married in a different life. That is why he was so physically attracted to me and emotionally attached to me. I'm going to be careful.

I'm going to edit some of this because I don't, you know, because of YouTube. Tim put his hands underneath my shirt in the back, and he started to pull up my shirt. But about a month before, I had just had surgery. So I told him to stop. I said, Tim, that hurts. He said he'd be careful. I was nervous. I didn't want to hurt myself, but I didn't want him to hurt me.

I was really nervous about the situation. I was trembling. I asked him multiple times to stop. He kept saying to me, just trust me. You could just trust me right now. All I could think to say was just stop and ask him what's going on. And he still had his hands underneath my shirt. And he pulled it off the top of my head.

He said, I just want to see. I just want to see you. I was trying to get off the couch. I told him it was hurting me. I wanted to get up. He was standing over me. So I'm having a hard time standing up. I turn over on my stomach and finally stand up.

up. As I'm standing up, he takes his shirt off, and he grabs me, and he just hugs me. He said, I just need to fill you. I just need to be skin to skin. The victim says, I'm honestly terrified. I'm not sure what to do. I felt scared. I felt nervous. I said to Tim, this isn't you. He yelled a little bit, and he said, quote, I don't even know who I am. I caught that too. Wow. And so that's a fascinating moment to me because there's an admission from Tim Bauer. Tim Bauer, quote, I don't even know who I am.

Is Tim Bauer Brian Black? Is he the man in the black from Westworld? Is he Tim Bauer? Who is this guy? So he's engaging in this assault. The victim is screaming. Don't stop, please. I'm hurting.

The victim's terrified. He continues. He doesn't, it doesn't matter what she says. He continues. And he says, and this isn't going to help, by the way, like I'm sure it's not going to help her fear to say to someone you're assaulting, I don't even know who I am. But what a moment, what an honest moment of, right, of, what a revelation by Tim Bowerd

about him not really even knowing who he is. I felt that was a real moment, too. He was out of control. And he said, I don't even know who I am. And I think that's sort of the crux of this. If you think about the story of narcissus, the story of narcissus is that he looks in the pond and he only sees his image and he sees how beautiful it is

and he only loves himself. And the problem with narcissus is because narcissus can't see anyone else or get any feedback from the environment or from other people in the environment, he can't possibly know who he is. And that's where the diagnosis of narcissism comes from, that when you only see yourself

and you only reflect on yourself, you really can't learn who you are and you really can't gain any insight into who you are. And so that moment is amazing. I mean, it's a terrifying moment because you can just, you can feel HDT's pain in fear and yet here you get this kind of unfiltered confession from Tim Ballard about

who he is and he doesn't know who he is. And so if you don't know who you are, you're more likely to engage in criminal behavior and you're more likely to hurt people and you're right that in some ways you have no core, you have no moral compass. And that's how I think you can, you can, you can, move into the territory of someone engaging in these types of behaviors and maybe stealing millions of dollars from a nonprofit and becoming completely self-serving. So, you know, ironically, if I go back to my original thoughts about the man in black from

Westworld, there's a difference in the sense of the man in black in Westworld in the sense of the man in black in Westroote, he knows who he is. He acknowledges it. He says, essentially, I shed my skin and I recognize that the darkness was in me all along. Right. And so, I think in a way, Tim Ballard is in some ways even more frightening because he doesn't see the darkness and he doesn't recognize the darkness. Even though the darkness is overtaking, him, right? And that's why I think there's also this distrust of people that talk about how wonderful they are and all the wonderful work they're doing. And yet there's this kind of underlying menacing, I don't know, what's call it, darkness that's sort of taking over their lives. And

maybe perhaps we sense that. Yes. When you've convinced yourself, you're the good guy, then how can anything you do possibly be bad? I like that. clearly. Yes. Exactly. Let me just, so maybe I'll just wrap with this. This is so I'm reading from this book is called By Force of Fantasy, How We Make Our Lives. It's by Ethel Person, P-E-R-S-O-N. It was published in 1995. It's not a new book, but it's a fascinating book about the role of fantasy in our lives. she actually talks about a case. She has a case study here of a middle-aged man who had a neglectful childhood and he had an undiagnosed learning disorder.

So he struggled in school. Now at this point in his life, he was highly successful. And he entered into treatment for two reasons. Number one, he was involved in excessive extramarital affairs, which does that sound familiar? Yes. And two, he had a fear of professional failure. So I think both of those to me sound like Tim Bauer. Yes.

And he's having, so this client that she's seen is having this fantasy. And not unlike Tim Bauer, and that's why it's relevant. So I'm just going to read this and we can close with this. But she says, this is page 90. The patient had enjoyed the fantasy. of being a leader on a white horse surrounded by chairing masses. As a variation of this fantasy,

he sometimes envisioned leading his people in a successful battle against an enemy and establishing a peaceful society. I understood this fantasy as a defense against the patient's inner reality, covering up feelings of weakness and inadequacy and his resulting rage. The fantasy was elite motif in the patient's psyche

needed to reinforce his inhibition against his own aggression and to reverse his self-image from victim to charismatic leader. Beginning in his student days, when he had been punished and ridiculed for his poor performance in school, the daydream had assuades to shameful feelings of powerlessness, comforting him and providing narcissistic gratification. So I remembered that case. I don't know why, but I remembered that case.

the last time I read this book, and for some reason, I thought that you have the same dynamics there with Tim Bowerd, that the fantasy is the same. It's this fantasy of, right, this fantasy of being the leader on a white horse and leading people successfully into battle, right? And the purpose of the fantasy

is to cover up feelings of weakness and inadequacy. And the dream is that, he can get rid of his shameful feelings of powerlessness, and he can find comfort in his narcissistic gratification. I think I would say the exact same things for Tim Ballard. I think the same dynamics apply. So Tim Bowers' fantasies obviously are that he's going to rescue all these kids from harm and in doing so apparently save the world and that he'll become a profit.

it. But I think those underlying issues of power and powerlessness are really what's driving this story. And because Tim Bauer doesn't have any awareness of those issues, I think you end up with this kind of predatory, opportunistic behavior. And really the underlying basis for it is domination. Yes. Anything else? Nope. That's it. Okay. Good. I never want to. cut you off. That's why I ask. End of story. Thank you, everyone. End of story. Done. Thank you, everyone, for being

here tonight. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for liking our channel. Thank you for joining Patreon. Patreon.com slash shouldn't you crime, a place where if you appreciate our content, it means a lot to us for you to join

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Patreon.com slash hidden true crime. Right, guys, I'm going to take off. And we'll see you guys all later this week. We'll see you guys later. Have a great night. All right. Good night. Good night.

Hello, Hidden Gems. It's Lauren with Hidden a True Crime podcast. As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True Crime, to watch these interviews. Hit the subscribe button for surprise lives and breaking news. And for exclusive content, things Dr. John and I only dare say behind a paywall, become a Patreon member at patreon.com slash hidden,

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