An Irish boyband called Boyzone sees their bad boy accuse other musicians of doing satanic rituals on stage. In Utah, a bill is advanced to criminalize “ritual abuse of a child” that speaks of animal sacrifice, cannibalism, bestiality, corpse mutilation, bondage, coffins and open graves. Meanwhile, Tim Ballard, the heroic subject of a recent blockbuster biopic is fighting back against accusations that he coerced multiple women into sex in the course of his “missions” to save children in foreign countries. In the house to cover all of this: Julian Feeld, Jake Rockatansky, Travis View, Liv Agar and Annie Kelly.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
Music by Pontus Berghe and Nick Sena. Editing by Corey Klotz.
http://qaapodcast.com
SOURCES:
https://www.premierchristianity.com/features/boyzones-shane-lynch-the-music-industry-is-satanic/16349.article
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjCuoFA08wU
https://www.sundayworld.com/news/irish-news/former-boyzone-star-shane-lynch-claims-taylor-swift-performs-satanic-rituals-in-front-of-fans/a610482285.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/utah-advances-bill-criminalize-ritual-child-abuse-rcna140025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qocBf3_mmic
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaqvn/tim-ballards-departure-from-operation-underground-railroad-followed-sexual-misconduct-investigation
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2024/02/21/should-ritual-child-abuse-be/
https://www.senate.mo.gov/LegislativeLibrary/Panic.html
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2023/10/09/breaking-five-women-have-filed/
https://www.ntd.com/cpac-in-dc-2024-day-3-featuring-donald-trump-kari-lake-peter-navarro-javier-milei-and-more_975372.html
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7ekzx/tim-ballard-sound-of-freedom-grooming-sexual-abuse-undercover-couples-ruse-operation-underground-railroad
https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/tim-ballards-wife-katherine-added-as-defendant-in-sexual-misconduct-lawsuit
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a378p/five-of-tim-ballards-alleged-victims-have-filed-a-lawsuit-against-him
Welcome, listener, to the 270th chapter of the QAA Podcast, the Let There Be Satanic Panic episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Liv Aker, Annie Kelly, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Could it be that our religious institutions cover up systemic sexual and physical violence?
That abuse is most commonly carried out by a child's family or somebody else near to them?
That violence is built into our power structures and continually exported abroad?
That we may, in fact, be the baddies?
No.
Through the smoke and ruins, we can make out the devil's hand at play, attempting to corrupt our virtuous national identity.
It reaches for our children through strangers, foreigners, aliens, eager to sully what we hold most dear, our supposed innocence, embodied in the young.
Unable to countenance reality, we rely on a phantasmagoria to sustain our fugue state, satanic panic.
In Utah, a bill is advanced to criminalize ritual abuse of a child that speaks of animal sacrifice, cannibalism, bestiality, corpse mutilation, bondage, coffins, and open graves.
In the UK, one of the former frontmen of a boy band tells the press that Taylor Swift is performing satanic rituals in front of her fans.
Meanwhile, the heroic subject of a recent blockbuster biopic, A supposed liberator of sex traffic children in foreign countries is fighting back against accusations that he coerced multiple women into sex in the course of his missions.
While the anonymous poster known as QAnon slowly fades from the spotlight, we come to realize the fantasies it embodied have long been in the drinking water.
Even after we've unplugged the machine, high-definition images continue to flash in rapid succession on its incandescent screen.
Our faces illuminated.
The phantasmagoria continues.
And sitting in front of this screen, like the little girl in Poltergeist, we've got a full house here with Liv and Annie and Jake and Travis all putting up with my bullshit.
How's everybody doing?
Both hands firmly planted on the screen.
I am breathing in the static.
I am communicating with lost relatives.
Why are you wearing like a nightgown?
What?
We're great, I think.
Yeah, I've got on a doggy onesie.
It's very comfortable.
As the host can see, there's lots of dogs on here in various positions hanging out.
I'm levitating, one foot above the ground, ready to talk about Satan.
I'm really good.
I went to a cat cafe today.
When I decided to go, I had a look at the cats to see if they were cute enough, obviously.
I noticed that they had one of those hairless Sphinx cats, which I really don't like.
I like cats, but I don't care for those ones.
Yeah, you'll avoid that one.
I went to the cafe and he jumped right on me and would just not leave me alone.
Like he just like sat on me the entire time.
Whenever I like went up to like, he would just like wait for me and then like I would come back and sit and he would sit on me.
And uh, yeah, his name was Khamun.
It was really, I, I felt really bad for, for saying before what I said about hairless cats and how they look like little rats and things like that.
He was really cute.
He changed my mind.
So there's a lesson there for all of us.
Wow.
There really is.
Are the cats ethically sourced?
Yeah, yeah, they're all former shelter cats.
That'd be funny if you were like, and so he wouldn't leave me alone and we adopted him.
Yeah, no, it was one of those things where like I was like stroking him and he was purring and I was like, this is really cute.
But at the same time, it's just like still not a pleasant, a pleasant experience.
Like, you know, I was just stroking a cat's head.
It's just like really nice when they've got fur.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Annie, don't you have a cat at home?
Yeah.
So this is kind of like, you know, you're married, but you're going out to a whorehouse.
We even said that, like, actually, as, as I left, I said to the cat, to our cat, I was like, I'm going to see if there's any better ones to replace you with.
Awesome.
Oh man.
I'm pretty sure everybody missed Liv saying she practices Puri Amri.
So I want to just go back there and really celebrate that moment.
Meanwhile, Travis is looking good, you know, looking, looking fresh, feeling good.
Yeah.
How are we doing over there?
I'm actually, I'm a little sleep deprived.
I'm working through these last couple episodes of Trickle Down, which I think are going to be really fun.
So yeah, that's basically the only thing my mind is occupied with right now.
My family misses me.
I'm right there with you, man.
I stayed up way too late last night.
We did a double feature.
We watched Zoolander, which...
Okay, this is very, this is not that.
And then afterwards we watch Valkyrie, a much better film, about Tom Cruise playing one of the Nazis in the resistance against Hitler.
One of the assassination plots.
I don't know if you guys have seen it, but great movie.
I'm sure Travis relates a lot to why you are sleep deprived.
Hey, the effect is the same.
The material is different, but the effect is similar.
I woke up super early yesterday, so it was easy today because I was going to the ski lift.
I wanted to get there at 8.30.
Yeah, you're a ski person now.
Yeah, I'm extremely sore from yesterday because I decided we're going on Black Diamond runs now.
I'm pretty comfortable with that.
And there was one that was closed, but we went over it via the chairlift and we're like, this is fine.
This closed Black Diamond isn't too bad.
And so I go across the little closed line that they have for it.
And I start to go down and I realize that there is like three feet of powder on this run and it's just like insanely difficult and I'm doing it right above the chairlift so I keep bailing and then falling into like two feet of powder and this at one point this French guy from the top of the chairlift was like, good luck!
That's right, I was out there on the mountain making sure.
Like the guy in Taken who picks up the phone and he's like, I'm gonna block.
As if it's not humiliating enough to get witnessed by a sneering Frenchman as well.
Um, if I can delay the episode for just seven minutes longer, um, this reminds me of something that happened to me when I was probably about 11 or 12.
I was part of like a ski school program where like every couple weekends you would get picked up by a bus at like, I don't know, four in the morning and taken to one of the local Illinois or Michigan, uh, ski mountains.
And I was with a friend of mine and we decided, he was like, let's go down, let's go, let's hit the Moguls.
And I was like, Oh, yeah, sure.
And I was a decent enough skier.
It was a similar situation.
We're going up on the chairlift.
I'm looking down.
I'm like, oh, man, I don't know.
And we get to the top of it, and we start going down the moguls, and within, like, five feet, my buddy, like, decides that it's too hard.
He's like, I don't know.
Wait a minute.
But I'm going way too fast.
I'm going way too fast to stop.
The pizza wedge is not working.
So I basically make the decision.
I'm like, I'm just going to bomb it.
I'm just going to bomb it.
I'm going to go as fast as I can.
I'm going to go as fast as I can and, uh, like just hope that I can slow down at the bottom.
Well, like within the moguls, every like seventh mogul, there's a really big one.
And I just so happened to hit that one basically at full speed.
I probably launched like 20 feet into the air and landed like flat on my chest, like knocked the entire wind out of me.
They had to bring the ambulance ski.
sled thing like they had to have two guys come and like load me onto this stretcher and like bring me down the hill and I spent the rest of the time in like the medical infirmary because they were like not sure like how badly I had injured myself and I also wasn't really wanting to tell them that I was probably okay because I was too scared and embarrassed from the whole ordeal because I was like with my friend and stuff so I just stayed in like the lodge the entire time and like drank hot chocolate.
I think that's what I'd do if I ever went skiing.
What do they call them, like a chalet wife or something like that?
They call them that!
Alright, let's jump right in.
Boyzone is an Irish boy band formed in 1993 by a talent manager looking to create
quote "an Irish take that" which was a successful British boy band at the time.
One of the chosen boys was Shane Lynch, who was clearly coded as the bad one with his eyebrow slit and multiple ear piercings.
Since then, he's gone through a few looks that have included a big golden nose ring, frosted blonde hair, and a soul patch, before landing on tons of tattoos and a shaved head.
Yeah, as someone who was on British playgrounds during the time of Boyzone, I haven't really delved into the research on this, but I'm pretty sure if you did, you would find that fancying Shane from Boyzone was like an indicator of like later criminal deviance.
He was the bad one.
For sure he was.
Before we go further, I thought I'd treat everybody to a single minute of the most popular song Boyzone ever recorded.
1998's No Matter What.
It was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman for their 1996 musical Whistle Down the Wind, itself an adaptation of a 1961 crime drama in which a wanted murderer hiding in a barn is confused for Jesus Christ by a group of local children.
In the movie, the kids get bullied for saying they met Jesus and later protecting him and feeding him, but their belief does not waver.
To be clear, the man is not Jesus and is in fact a murderer who gets arrested by the end of the movie.
So, here is the one minute of that song.
No matter what they tell us No matter what they do No matter what they teach us What we believe is true No matter what they call us However they attack No matter where they take us We'll find our own way back
I can't deny what I believe.
I can't be what I'm not.
I know I'll love forever.
I know no matter what.
Yeah.
It's, uh, it's awesome.
Fascinating.
This is fascinating that they thought that this would be popular in 1998.
They were not wrong.
It was huge.
It was huge.
I've never heard this song and it sounds to me like, not like a, you know, nineties boy, but it's kind of like a Frankie Valli, almost like doo-wop-y kind of tune.
Very strange.
There's a guy on a balloon in the video.
I was kind of confused about that.
Yeah, there's there's a few different weird images in the video.
But basically, the idea is, you know, no matter what they tell us, you know, no matter how many times they attack our beliefs, like our belief is strong and it's kind of our belief in Christianity.
But it's strange considering in this case, it's a fake Jesus who's just a murderer hiding in a barn.
So I don't know.
I think it all makes sense, I think.
It all makes sense.
In the 90s, Shane Lynch cemented his reputation as the bad boy of the group by having several public outbursts, which he calls Shane-anigans.
Oh boy, it's very clever to patent when you get it written up in the tabloids.
One of these was a physical brawl at the 1999 MTV European Music Awards with Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy, which I thought was pretty cool considering P. Diddy is not a great guy.
But then I found out that Puff Daddy, as he was calling himself at the time, sent him flowers and an apology a week later.
That's still pretty cool.
It's like, you start a fight with P Diddy and make P Diddy apologize to you.
This is crazy.
So, like, 1998 was a crazy year for music.
I mean, the number two single was The Boy Is Mine by Brandi and Monica.
Who could forget?
You're Still The One by Shania Twain.
How's It Gonna Be?
Third Eye Blind.
My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.
I mean, this was a stacked year.
Banger after banger.
That was the year I was born.
That was the year I was born!
Oh, kill me!
As Liv was being born, I was, like, standing awkwardly, like, four feet away from my dance partner at, like, a junior high dance while, like, one of these songs came on.
Another shenanigan was an incident in which Lynch vowed to never live in Ireland because the people there were, quote, assholes.
Which is not great if you're, you know, a boy band from Ireland.
In 2008, he looked back at his tumultuous behavior, saying, "Many scenarios led me to the point of trouble. I had
everything in terms of materialistic things, a £1 million house, a Mercedes, a Porsche. I had
everything money could buy. But I wasn't happy.
I was quite lonely and I was searching for something else.
It's true what they say, money can't buy you happiness."
So true.
Very poignant.
In the same Belfast Telegraph article where I got this quote, they also explained,
"Shane's problems escalated in the late 90s when he received visitations from demons appearing in
his troubled, fitful sleep, which he blames on dabbling in witchcraft and the occult."
So, not what I was expecting.
This was 2008.
I think we could have predicted that he would eventually become part of our fun new satanic panic.
This may seem like a strange thing to claim, but it's not entirely surprising when you consider that in 2003, Shane Lynch was baptized a born-again Christian, even later touring the country to tell his conversion story.
Along the years, Lynch has dabbled in many things apart from music, including competitive motocross, acting, and a lot of reality TV.
Indeed, Lynch has appeared on Channel 4's The Games, ITV's Love Island, Sky 1's Cirque de Célébrité, National Geographic's Supercar Megabuild, which sounds made up, Channel 5's Celebrity Big Brother, and the BBC's Celebrity Masterchef.
He was also a judge on the All-Ireland Talent Show for five years, which is its response to Britain's Got Talent, which is their response to America's Got Talent.
Lynch is an entrepreneur as well, having opened a chain of 1920s prohibition-themed barbershops called the Elkin Clipper, started a menswear brand, which we'll get into in a bit, and launched his own vodka-infused energy drink called Vertu Vodka.
One of my favorite stories about Shane Lynch involves his recent participation in a reality TV show called Pilgrimage!
The Road Through Portugal, in which a group of celebrities walk the Pilgrim's Path to the Sanctuary of Fatima.
Lynch quit the show right before they finally got there, however, giving only vague reasons for his departure.
At a screening of the show in April of 2023, the 46-year-old explained to the gathered press, quote, One of the things is you would never get me into that Fatima place with a hundred thousand candles.
That is like death to me.
There are no candles in my house or small flames.
Lighters?
Matches?
Candles?
Nowhere near me or my house.
Which is so funny.
It's so funny to be a bad boy and be scared of like matches.
Yeah.
And I mean, not to stereotype, but I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess, you know, being called Shane Lynch and coming from Ireland, you were raised Catholic.
Like you were probably around a hell of a lot of candles from an early age.
Do you know?
Well, that explains it.
That's his Protestant rebellion against it as a born-again.
Yeah, yeah, I think that might, there might be something to that.
Yeah, some people scared of large fires, inferno, burning infernos.
Others, small flames.
You know, easily extinguishable.
Then in October of 2023, Shane Lynch sat down with Premier, a Christian media company in the UK whose mission is to quote, enable people to put their faith at the heart of daily life and to bring Christ to their communities.
And this is where things took a bit of a turn, putting Shane on my radar.
To understand just how Bible-pilled Lynch is, here he is talking about boyzone in the interview.
We at the moment, me and the boys, we're together a little bit talking about the journey of Boyzone.
We're making a documentary at the minute from the beginning to the end.
And it's fascinating to me.
It is.
I look at it quite biblical in a Matthew, Mark, Luke and John scenario.
We tell the story four different ways of what's happened in the Boyzone journey.
And I love that because they remember it so different.
I remember it so different, but it's the same story.
So, just like the Apostles.
The Four Apostles of Boyzone.
I'm really sure this interview is going to take a turn, given the topic of this, but I'm going to say like, I just, I like him.
He's just likable.
Like getting into fights with Puff Daddy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Talking about like being tormented by demons.
To me, this is, this is a sign of a true artist, which I didn't, I didn't honestly think a member of Boyzone had in them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He seems kind of like a, um, like a less affected, uh, Simon, uh, Cowell is sort of what he looks like.
Simon Cowell.
That's how you become Ulster Scott?
Yeah.
Honestly, I think that's a very Irish opinion actually.
Later in the interview, Lynch starts talking about his former interest in the occult.
It intrigued me.
The world, the darker side of the world, the Ouija boards, Ouija boards, seances, all that kind of spiritual tarot card reading, all that kind of stuff really got a hold of me.
And interestingly, that all came from our very first album launch.
Which you would say, which you would look at very innocently.
Because it was around Halloween.
It was a Halloween party in a big mansion.
But in that was super demonic.
Super demonic.
But for worthless young kids it's a bit of fun.
All the record company are there and all the journalists are there and here we go.
Well when I look at The way the industry has the ruling over music.
Now, of course, not all music is bad.
By all means, it's not.
But majority of it there is to take you away from Christ.
100% take you away from Christ.
I mean, that's a real bad boy.
It's not just messing up hotel rooms, it's summoning the forces of hell.
In terms of the lyrics, is that what you mean?
Or do you mean the industry itself, people, the big players in the industry?
Both, lyrically and both big players.
Both, I've been in rooms at the top of the top, which albums are prayed over demonically.
Music is prayed over demonically.
That goes out to the world, goes out to the radio stations, goes out to the public.
And when you see that stuff and know that stuff, it's frightening.
I like to think all this started because one of the other band members was just fucking with him on a Ouija board.
Yeah, his understanding of the occult is really, really cute.
It's like Oprah-level Ouija boards and séances.
He talks about the music being prayed over, like a rabbi blessing the bread on Friday night.
That's what I was trying to picture.
Do they have one totemic album that they pray over?
To bless all of them, like a really big one.
Lynch soon explains his views on most contemporary pop music.
What do you mean by that, Shane, prayed over demonically?
So, rituals, ceremonies, everything to bring, to give light to the devil, to Satan.
It's a satanic music industry.
That's the majority of what it is.
Do you mean figuratively or do you mean literally?
Literally, yes.
Not figuratively.
Can you share what those albums were?
Were they your albums?
No, they weren't our albums.
They were not Boyzone albums.
So that's what I mean by not every music is that.
But it was on the stepping stone to that.
So you're going back to 1993s into 2000s.
And then if you look at what the music is today, the industry is today, for all your Sam Smiths, to your Dojo Cats, to your Beyoncés, they are so demonic.
It's unbelievable.
And it's in front of us.
And it's something that we kind of go, oh, it's just music.
But it really isn't.
It's absolutely taken over the world, taken over our children, and taken over everything that's come into the times of world crisis.
And are you talking about the messages that are in those, some of those songs, some of those, that some of those artists, you know, share with their fans?
Yeah, messages and a glorification of Satan.
This journalist, I mean, she just, the way she just keeps on trying to like reel him back into saying something like a little bit more kind of sane, a little bit more like palatable than what he is like very clearly saying.
Yeah.
So Shane, you say demonic, you mean like you don't like it?
And she's like a very Christian journalist, you know, but still, she still is like, are you sure, buddy?
Well, they could have fooled me because any like music awards ceremony or interview that I've seen, or most of them at least, you know, a lot of them are wearing crosses on their jewelry.
And, you know, if they win the award, they thank God, but maybe they're talking about Satan.
Yeah, although Sam Smith, I think he brought up the singer Sam Smith and I seem to remember that was a bit of a controversy in the UK conspiracy world because I think they dressed up as the devil for some music award.
And yeah, it kind of feels strange that we've like, I don't know, it feels really emblematic to me of like the way that the right wing over the last Not even 10 years has changed from being, I don't know, going from being this kind of like MAGA, kind of Pepe the Frog, sort of like, yeah, you know, we're kind of libertines, fuck your feelings, anti-PC sort of thing, to kind of having to like pretend to be genuinely scared of devil, of pop stars dressing up as devils and things like that.
Yeah, well, and it's also, I mean, it's a little unsettling that, you know, at least it seems to me that the two that they tend to go after, like Sam Smith and Lil Nas X, both happen to be gay.
So I wonder if it's not just the, you know, the costumes that they wear during their performances.
Well, Doja Cat, Beyonce, they're not gay, but they're still satanic, so you can't win.
Yeah.
True.
In the last year, Shane Lynch has been focused on his men's fashion brand, which is called Amen, and sells discount leather shoes, suits, and perfumes.
In a recent press tour for a physical location opening up in Belfast, Lynch once again made some pretty wild claims, this time singling out Taylor Swift.
This is what he told Sunday World, which sounds like a made-up outlet, but of course is some sort of British tabloid, I think.
I think when you're looking at a lot of the artists out there, a lot of their stage shows are satanic rituals live in front of 20,000 people, without them realising and recognising.
You'll see a lot of hoods up and masks on and fire ceremonies.
Even down to Taylor Swift, one of the biggest artists in the world.
You watch one of her shows, and she has two or three different demonic rituals to do with the pentagrams on the ground, to do with all sorts of stuff on her stage.
But to a lot of people, it's just art, and that's how people are seeing it, unfortunately.
Is Taylor Swift really doing shows with pentagrams and stuff like that?
Like, I'm not, I'm not a big Taylor Swift fan, but that doesn't really seem like her style.
No, not really.
I don't think so.
She's like, I don't know, she isn't, she kind of, she does a sort of like every woman thing.
Like, you know, my, yeah, you know, I'm so mad at my ex-boyfriend kind of thing.
It's not a like rock pentacle thing, right?
Well, have you considered her ex-boyfriend might be Satan?
I had not considered that.
Shane believes these satanic influences are intentional, that there are dark forces at play in the music industry that are attempting to corrupt our kids.
Here's from the Sunday World article.
Shane, who started performing with Boyzone when he was 17, says even the beats of music can have an impact on people.
He has stopped listening to hip-hop and grime for these reasons.
He believes some types of music are damaging society, and children in particular.
When it comes to a lot of the music that's out there at the moment, more on the hip-hop side of things, there's a lot of hidden satanic and a lot of evil within them, including down to the beats.
It's very real.
Music attaches to your emotions.
It has a connection to your spirit and how you feel.
That's why I've stopped listening to those types of music myself, because it doesn't suit my spirit.
It 100% has an effect on society.
I think our society has never been worse in many areas, and it starts from our children.
It's coming in right at our children from the very beginning to get them to sway away from anything godly, anything controlled or disciplined.
It's getting wilder and wilder out there for a reason.
It is getting wilder and wilder out there.
And like, what hip hop is he listening to?
Because I listen to a lot of hip hop music and a pretty central theme is speaking against the devil.
The devil's trying to come for me or, you know, it's my faith in God, you know, that's got me here or whatever.
I mean, a lot of hip hop music has these religious themes that seem to be, you know, pro-Christianity, anti-Satan,
even if it's disguised in metaphor or, you know, analogies.
So I'm not sure exactly.
It sounds like maybe one or two songs, maybe a Lil Nas X song, you know, or something.
It's like, I don't know.
I feel like this is just not the case.
It is kind of just code for, like, LGBT stuff, trans stuff, like, you know, that's really what's happening here is it's part of this bigger panic that they're making our kids gay, they're making our kids worship Satan.
I mean, I would agree that, like, entertainment is figuratively satanic, but the problem is they tried to clarify with Shane and he's like, no, no, no, literally.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, I don't know, if you look back at old newspaper articles about like the Beatles or Elvis or something like that, which will also kind of focus a lot on the rhythm and the beats as this kind of almost hypnotic effect, which kind of takes hold of young people and makes them act Essentially in ways that compromise their purity, do you know?
And I often think, you know, it's obviously a kind of sexual panic on the one hand, but there's also something there about the kind of blurring.
And it's much more obvious when you're reading something from the sixties and fifties.
There's something about the blurring of like racial and ethnic boundaries through music as well, I think.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I'm sure part of this is that, like, he probably did potentially see some bad things going on in the industry, but then, like, probably conservative brain had to connect that with, like, queerness as well existing in there.
And it's just like, oh, it's all bad.
It's kind of funny because it reminds me of, I did a small segment for this podcast a few years ago talking about Robbie Williams doing an interview with the ex-BBC journalist Anna Brees who, it definitely wasn't as pilled as this, it wasn't talking about Satanism and things like that, but Anna Brees has very much styled herself as a kind of protector of children who is uncovering, if not like satanic ritual abuse, is uncovering organised abuse within the BBC and things like that.
So it's kind of, I would say, like the rung above this stuff.
And Robbie Williams from Take That gave her an interview with her over the COVID pandemic.
And it was really interesting because he was talking about how he had been alerted to this kind of stuff through people commenting and saying that his music had secret satanic messages.
And instead of being like, that's nonsense.
He had sort of been like, oh wow, so there is, you know, satanic ritual abuse going on in the music industry, but it's so well hidden that despite being in the music industry myself, I've never seen it.
And it was like, I don't know, a really interesting example, I guess, of somebody almost being like, I don't know, the only word I can think of is like, negged into believing the stuff, even partially.
Wait, I'm Satan?
I just realised this whole time.
Yeah, but it's kind of funny, I guess, because, yeah, Boyzone were, as Julian said, the Irish answer to take that.
And both Robbie and Shane, I think, fulfilled similar roles in those bands as well.
They were both meant to be the one who was a bit cheeky, a bit bad.
So it's kind of interesting that they both have developed these similar interests, if not exactly the same, later in life, too.
Yeah, the bad boys are getting pilled!
Yeah, the bad boys are getting pilled and finding Jesus.
The Devil Does Utah 765109.4 Ritual Abuse of a Child As used in this section, child means an individual who is younger than 18 years old, organic substance or material means human bones, blood, or flesh, or human or animal vomit, saliva, urine, semen, fecal matter, or other bodily secretion.
Ritual means an event or act or series of events or acts marked by specific actions, gestures, or words designed to commemorate, celebrate, or solemnize a particular occasion or significance in a religious, cultural, social, institutional, or other context.
Terms defined in section 761101.5 apply to this section.
An actor commits ritual abuse of a child if the actor is part of a ritual, intentionally or knowingly, causes a child to participate in or witness the torture, mutilation, or sacrifice of an animal, the dissection, mutilation, or incineration of a human corpse, the causing of serious bodily injury to an individual, bestiality, Sadistic or masochistic activities.
The ingestion or external application of an organic substance or material or an activity that would constitute a criminal offense.
Cause as a child to enter a coffin or open grave containing a human corpse or remains.
Participate in a mock, unauthorized, or unlawful marriage ceremony as an individual being married to another individual or a fictional representative or ingest, inject, or otherwise intake a chemical compound, narcotic, drug, hallucinogen, or anesthetic.
This passage is part of House Bill 196 in Utah, sponsored by Republican State Representative Ken Ivory.
A recent article by Brandi Zadrosny for NBC News details a hearing that occurred in February.
At the hearing on Wednesday.
Several adults who described themselves as survivors of ritualistic child sex abuse urged lawmakers in the State House Judiciary Committee to support the bill.
Their testimony included the stuff of nightmares, devil worship, animal torture, forced bondage, rape, cannibalism, child prostitution, and mind control.
Assaults so physically and emotionally traumatic that the victims said they repressed memories of their abuse.
Always the repressed memory thing, of course.
It's like, oh, this person led me to believe that I actually remembered this bad thing happening to me.
As Hadrosny explains in her article, the bill would have been the first in decades to enact a law codifying ritual abuse, and it harkens back to the 80s and 90s, a peak moment for satanic panic in the United States.
Her article explains.
"Since then, federal law enforcement agencies, scholars, and historians have pointed to the scarcity of evidence for
the claims of widespread ritual abuse, and warned of the lasting legacies of the national panic,
including false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, and wasted law enforcement resources."
Utah seems to be a state particularly prone to satanic panic.
The bill, in fact, was preceded by a call for tips by the Utah County Sheriff's Office in a press release dated May 31, 2022.
It was titled, Sheriff's Office Investigating Ritualistic Child Sexual Abuse and urged anybody with information to come forward and contact them, quote, so they can be offered all the assistance possible.
Here's from Zadrozny's article again.
Utah's proposed bill and the county sheriff's investigation have attracted national interest from conservative media and an online network of conspiracy theorists who believe this case will prove that the allegations that fueled the 1980s satanic panic were true all along, and that cabals of satanists are still sexually abusing, murdering, and cannibalizing children.
Several self-described internet investigators have, in blogs, videos, and podcasts, Accused hundreds of Utahns of participating in satanic ritual abuse rings.
Just a few months ago, in October of 2023, a text message was making the rounds in Utah claiming that the police were warning that a satanic group might attack women and children during the eclipse.
The Millard County Sheriff's Office responded to the claims that people should stay inside during the event to avoid the satanic group.
Quote, This is not true.
We have received no such information about any groups like this and have issued no such advisory.
The Beaver County Sheriff's Office also responded, explaining that these were quote, absolutely ridiculous rumors.
This is nothing new for Utah.
Here's from Zdrozny's article.
Utah's role in the 1980s panic was significant.
Many of the first well-known cases of alleged ritual abuse originated in the state, as did the movement's central figures.
Fear-mongering about satanic ritual abuse was rife on a national level during that period as well.
In 1988, NBC, which is funny because it's, you know, the article from Zdrozny, which is very good, is on NBC.
scholars who made some of the earliest claims of widespread satanic ritual abuse. Local
media promoted the claims.
Fear-mongering about satanic ritual abuse was rife on a national level during that period
as well. In 1988, NBC, which is funny because it's, you know, the article from Zdrozny,
which is very good, is on NBC. But in 1988, this is what they were doing instead, airing
a special hosted by Geraldo Rivera titled "Devil Warship."
Exposing Satan's Underground.
The investigative news group presents the Geraldo Rivera special.
Devil Worship!
Exposing Satan's Underground.
Whether a Satan exists is a matter of belief.
But we are certain that Satanism exists.
To some, it's a religion.
To others, it's the practice of evil in the devil's name.
It exists and it's flourishing.
Members of our studio audience tonight will attest to that.
They are friends and foes of Satanism.
Devil worshippers and law enforcers.
Experts and victims.
They'll help us understand this force that exalts evil and darkness.
We'll be asking why.
Why does it exist?
And why does it appeal to so many vulnerable people, especially the young?
Now, the very young and the impressionable should definitely not be watching this program tonight.
This is not a Halloween fable.
This is a real-life horror story, and it will give small children bad dreams.
As for teenagers and their parents, we hope you are watching because it's teenagers who are most likely to fall under the spell of this jumble of dark, violent emotions called Satanism, and in some cases to be driven into committing terrible deeds.
The intro to that is incredible.
I know.
They're touching kids.
This is how, like, most, most sort of news specials were in that time period.
This is not out of the ordinary.
We were always being either, you know, invaded by Satan or, you know, aliens or unknown mysteries.
I mean, this was standard practice at the time.
I mean, what I find so funny about, like, the contrast between the way Satanism is discussed in these old 1980s and 1990s TV specials compared to, I guess, now where it's actually really easy to find, like, self-proclaimed Satanists online and the Church of Satan has a Twitter account and things like that.
And then, like, I don't know, it's all just so actually corny compared to, like, how dangerous and, like, evil it's made to look.
Like, you find, like, satanists online and they're just like, yeah, satanism is actually just about having fun and being true to yourself and, you know, like, expressing your- expressing yourself and things like that.
It's like, yeah, it's- I mean, maybe they wouldn't- just wouldn't publicize all of the goat sacrifices and- and what have you, but I don't know.
They don't really seem like that kind of people when you actually encounter them.
Yeah, it seems like broadly like a cultural response to like Christian, American Christian conservativism.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
There's like this, this kind of made the news recently, but there's like an after school Satanism club, and they basically made a statement.
They're like, well, we're only ever going to open an after school Satanism club in places that have after school religious activities.
Like, we will not be coming to your school unless, like, another religious practice decides to do, like, an after-school thing, in which case we'll show up.
And that's really it.
I mean, the majority of Satanists are, like, ex-religious people or people protesting, like, you know, the kind of prevalence of Christianity in all facets of American life.
Anyways.
During this primetime special, Rivera claimed that thousands of children were being sacrificed by satanic cults in the United States every year.
It received higher ratings than any other documentary, that's in quotes, aired on television until that point.
The following year, in 1989, Oprah Winfrey hosted two women on her show who claimed to be satanic ritual abuse survivors, warning parents about the danger satanic cults posed to their kids.
Sidrosni explains how things developed in Utah at the time.
In 1990, the state's governor formed a task force that spent $250,000 in state funds to address pervasive ritual abuse.
Investigators interviewed hundreds of victims in more than 125 alleged cases, only one of which ended in prosecution.
A final report from the state's attorney general in 1995 suggested that there was evidence of isolated instances of abuse involving rituals, but not a widespread plot to abuse children in this way.
What hasn't been corroborated, the report said, is the multitude of reports by abuse quote-unquote survivors claiming to have been party to human sacrifices, sexual abuse of young children, torture, and other atrocities committed by well-organized groups which pervade every level of government, every social status, and every state in the country.
The hearing for the bill included testimony by Kimberly with an I, Raya Cohen, a 53-year-old described in the NBC article as, quote, an activist who heads a non-profit and leads local summits on ritual abuse.
On her website, in the resources section, the third recommended organization, after 911 and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, is Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR.
The infamous anti-child trafficking organization created by Tim Ballard, who we'll be touching on later in this episode.
On the same website, Cohen claims to be a volunteer for the organization.
Although the House bill refrains from using the word satanic, Cohen does not.
In the Her Story section of her website, she writes, I was tortured into forgetting my identity as a child of God and into believing I was Satan's bride, demon child, a tool meant for him to use and suffered greatly as a result.
There were literally hundreds of people who would rape and torture me as the years went on.
Through the years of abuse and torture, I was sold and traded within a vast community of abusers.
At times, I would be raped as many as 50 times in an evening.
I was electrocuted and held in ungodly places and ways.
Rarely would questions be asked in my daily life regarding bruises and cuts, so they showed little restraint.
There was no safety for me.
Now, Cohen's website claims her abuse was carried out by her father, which I am not putting into question.
But the satanic and ritual nature of the abuse, she claims, came to her in memories she recovered when she was 19 in a therapist's office.
That would place the time that she recovered these memories in 1990, right in the middle of the satanic panic.
During the hearing, Cohen claimed to have experienced everything listed in the bill, which we read earlier, during the time that she was abused.
So there's a lot of extremely wild claims, like 50 occurrences of abuse in a night, you know, hundreds of people across a wide network, and I guess, you know, coffins, animal remains, human sacrifice.
I mean, it's pretty wild.
Yeah, I remember doing a bit of research into this and yeah, essentially this kind of understanding of recovered memories, it's obviously, it is something that happens, traumatised people can suppress memories.
I think what is often controversial in the psychological research community is the claim that when you recover these memories, They come back sort of perfectly preserved, exactly as things were, and that they can't be tampered with or damaged or changed over the course of your recovering them.
Do you know they're not a photograph or a film or something like that, which just comes back to you perfectly formed?
It's still influenced by all of the stuff around you.
So yeah, I think it's often completely ignored by people who claim to be activists against satanic ritual abuse.
And it's kind of treated as Yeah, they're kind of treated as these kind of perfect artifacts, essentially, that prove what happened.
But actually, they should be, I think, viewed kind of with a bit more caution.
Brandy Zadrozny's article, relevantly, explains that So, what's next for Utah?
studies from the Department of Justice and the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect
found no evidence to support claims of widespread ritual abuse. Child sexual abuse, however,
is staggeringly common. About one in four girls and one in 20 boys in the United States
are victims, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
So what's next for Utah? Here's from a February 21, 2024 article by Jessica Miller
for the Salt Lake Tribune.
Representative Brian King noted that physical and sexual abuse are already illegal and questioned
whether the legislation was needed.
He said that he wanted more quantification and data that showed ritual abuse was a widespread problem before he could support the bill.
Quote, I am not there on the ritual abuse angle, he said.
I'm not saying I'm never going to get there, but I want more information.
But King was the only dissenting vote.
Representative Ken Ivory's bill passed out of the committee favorably and now goes to the full House for a vote.
As Representative Kara Birkeland made the motion to move the bill to the full House, she began to cry.
She told the alleged victims who spoke that she had no idea this type of abuse was happening in Utah.
Quote, we believe you, she told them, and we see you.
I reached out to Brandi Zadrozny to see if she had any updates on the bill and it turned out that she did.
Quote, basically the bill is dead because it didn't get through appropriations in time for a vote before the leg session ended.
So that's for me, that's a foreign language, but I guess the bill is dead.
And I looked into this guy, Ken Ivory, and he is a.
He's a bit of a mess.
Like, he did one good thing that I could see, which was he extended the time that victims can bring forth claims of child abuse, the statute of limitations.
But then he has a bunch of other bills that he's put forward that are so, so stupid.
Like, he had one about banning books that have, like, basically anything LGBT in them, as pornography.
And then, unfortunately, that bill passed, and then somebody used it to get the Bible pulled.
from schools and then he was complaining about that.
He also had a bill in 2019, I don't think it passed but he tried to make it pass, where he was going to allow churches to apologize to victims of abuse without that being legally binding, like without that actually making them liable.
It wouldn't have like blocked people from suing the church for it but he like He reasoned that the victims would get comfort from the apology, even though nothing concrete would come of it.
So kind of perverse view of the whole thing.
And this was in the middle of both the Mormon church and the Catholic church in Utah being embroiled in sex scandals.
So Utah.
There's this type of guy in like every like state senate who just like puts forward the most ridiculous, absurd bills because like you can.
Yeah, but this one almost passed.
I mean, yeah, this one was, yeah.
You know, it went on, but then it got something about the leg session and etc.
So here's what I think is going on.
I think that actually what's happening is that Mormons in Utah are trying to find a way to get around First Amendment protections of freedom of religion to ban Catholic communion because they're talking about a ritual involving children involving blood and flesh.
Well, that's just through the magic of transubstantiation, Catholic communion.
Yeah.
Oh boy.
Well, you heard it here first.
This is the last time that you'll be hearing the voice of Travis View.
He was murdered shortly after this episode aired by a shadowy, unknown group of Mormons.
You're saying this is the start of the second Thirty Years' War?
The next bill will be the anti-candles bill.
Travis View the face that launched 1,000 ships.
We're also very happy to say that we were sent flesh of Travis View and we will all be eating it.
It's fine because the bill didn't pass.
Yeah the bill didn't pass.
In the middle of this bill someone brought up the fact that like You know isn't this a bit like that Mormon ritual where you like don't like feed kids like you make them not eat and then they have to go on this big walk like there's there's a bunch of rituals that could be confused for ritual abuse because like starving a child or withholding food was part of this to which they were like no
It seems maybe like these religious institutions should be looked at a little bit closer and maybe held to account before we try to hold to account Satanists in hoods that are, you know, imaginary.
I had to participate in a horrifying ritual when I was 12 going on 13.
Every week I would have to go to the cantor's house, the local cantor, and learn Hebrew for my bar mitzvah.
And the worst part of the ritual is that he served RC Cola totally flat.
No carbonation in this soda whatsoever.
It was flat and I drank it because it was soda and I didn't want to be rude and that carried on for the better part of a year honestly and I'm not quite sure how I've recovered.
I will say that I enjoy my sodas very carbonated now.
Yes.
Jake is, this is a repressed memory that Jake has.
It's not, it didn't actually happen.
It's also obviously ritual abuse that Jake, who, although he is 40, has the mind of a child, is forced to come and record this podcast, ritualistically, twice a week.
Yeah, twice today, actually.
We got another recording after this.
The sound of Tim Ballard's freedom.
We've extensively covered Tim Ballard in previous episodes, but for those who may not know the man, here's a quick primer.
Ballard is the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR, an anti-child trafficking organization known for misrepresenting their achievements and employing questionable tactics.
The movie Sound of Freedom was based on him, but since its release, he's been accused by seven different women of sexual misconduct, stepped down from his place at the head of the organization, and was even denounced by the Mormon Church.
Here's from some excellent reporting by Anna Merlin and Tim Marchman for Vice.
Sources familiar with the situation said that the self-styled anti-slavery activist, who appears to be prepared for a Senate run, invited women to act as his quote-unquote wife on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking.
He would then allegedly coerce these women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers.
This is, like, the most evil, like, caricature of, like, a fake, like, sex trafficking, like, fighter.
It's got to be believable.
We should practice kissing.
A Salt Lake Tribune article by Robert Gerke detailed the subsequent October 2023 lawsuit, which included five female plaintiffs.
The lawsuit, filed in Utah's 3rd District Court, alleges that Ballard would, in some instances, fly women who would be posing as his wife or partner from across the country to Utah because he wanted to hone their sexual chemistry for the so-called couple's ruse.
See, I was joking about the kissing, but, um...
Okay, that's real.
The women allege Ballard would ask them to perform lap dances and join him for couples'
massages.
Ballard also would frequent Salt Lake Valley strip clubs, the lawsuit alleges, where he
would pay for lap dances, drink alcohol, and take pills, all of which was paid for with
OUR funds.
Through the ruses, the suit alleges, Ballard coerced the women to engage in various sexual
acts short of penetration, supposedly in order to maintain the appearance that they were
The suit also alleges that Ballard would encourage the women to get a Brazilian wax of their pubic area.
Each time, it is alleged, Ballard would ask the women, quote, is there anything you wouldn't do to save a child?
He also played on their faith, the suit alleged.
Almost all of the women accusing Ballard are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Quote, Ballard began to claim that President M. Russell Ballard, who is the acting president of the Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had given Ballard permission to do the couple's ruse as long as there was no sexual intercourse or kissing on the lips.
"special priesthood blessing as such," the suit alleges.
Asked previously and specifically about the allegations that Tim Ballard had suggested
that President Ballard, the two are not related, condoned his sexual activities, the church
referred to the earlier statement that Tim Ballard had made, "unauthorized use of President
Ballard's name for Tim Ballard's personal advantage and activity regarded as morally
unacceptable."
The suit also alleges that Janet Russon, a psychic that was on OUR's payroll, would
tell the women that they had been married to Ballard in a previous life, "so their
conduct was acceptable."
The women filed the lawsuit under pseudonyms to protect their identities.
Each provided lengthy statements detailing their alleged encounters with Ballard.
Two of the women said their marriages have broken up as a result of Ballard's actions.
The Tribune has reached out to a spokesperson for Ballard for comment, but had not immediately heard back.
Small note here, Tim Ballard's spokesperson's name is Chad Colton, which just sounds so made up.
Hello, Operation Underground Railroad, this is Chad speaking.
The woman's lawsuit also claims Ballard would receive ketamine treatments and dictate prophecies where he would speak to Nephi, a prophet mentioned in the Book of Mormon, and would dictate prophecies of his future as a U.S.
Senator, President of the United States, and ultimately a Latter-day Saint prophet, where he could usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Wow, okay, that's new information to me.
I did not know that he was, you know, going into K-holes and claiming that he could see the future.
Yeah, I did do some of this ketamine legally prescribed, and I also definitely spoke to Neffy, so I think this checks out.
It just sounds like what happens when you do that, yeah.
Yeah, Neffy just shows up, dude.
Yeah, he makes the text on your computer screen unreadable so you cannot exit the stream.
That's what I remember.
I mean, here's the difference.
It's like, Tim Ballard is doing Ketamine and he's like, I will become the future of the president.
Julian did Ketamine and he was like, oh man, I really gotta like, I did the recommended dose and it was way too much.
I gotta like dial back and not stream during that and like follow the instructions better.
Two very different outcomes.
But I did go careening down the infinite twinkling hallway.
Well, who hasn't?
None of this has mattered to CPAC organizers, apparently, because they invited him to speak at the conference in late February 2024.
This is not entirely surprising because the chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference is Matt Schlapp, who is also accused of sexual assault and misconduct, in his case by multiple Republican male staffers.
And similarly, he's also being defended by his wife.
That's solidarity for you.
Oh, dude, being a Republican or right-wing wife is a whole-ass job, man.
My heart goes out to them.
Tim Ballard was joined on the CPAC stage by Eduardo Verastegui, the producer of Sound of Freedom, and their host and interviewer, Nancy Ross, who's introduced as an investigative journalist.
Now, I checked her Twitter, and within, like, five tweets, there was a retweet of, where we go one, we go all.
And she doesn't seem to have I wish we could pull up a chair for President Trump, right?
But yeah, she does like her QAnon hashtags and general right-wing grievances.
So here's one of the first things that she said from the stage.
-I wish we could pull up a chair from President Trump, right?
Because nobody has done more to fight human trafficking and child sex trafficking than President Trump.
-So that's very QAnon belief that President Trump is fighting the evil sex traffickers.
Tim Ballard, when he got a chance to speak, immediately complained about being associated with QAnon by critics of the movie.
Once it got out, immediately we're being told lies about the film, that it's QAnon adjacent, whatever that means.
You know, the film was made and done before the term QAnon was ever even published or
out there. So that, you know, they lost that debate really fast, but they'll come up,
they'll just keep coming up to stop the information from getting out there. One thing I noticed
about his appearance at CPAC is that his hands are just trembling, and this might make the rumors
that he's doing amphetamines check out.
He does not look healthy these days.
I'll put it that way.
Ballard went on to explain that under Biden's orders, the border agents had become enablers of child sex trafficking.
You know, there's a war on children right now.
From our southern border to our classrooms, education, so many things that children are being attacked.
It's a spiritual battle as well.
And that's the thing I think they didn't want to talk about.
And the Sound of Freedom would force a conversation that they didn't want to have, especially about the southern border, where, you know, tens of thousands of kids have disappeared into the belly of the United States, which is the number one consumer of child rape videos in the world.
So this is not the place you want to be, a child, you know, unaccompanied in our country.
And they're given no respect, no regard.
They just come in, you know, don't vet the people, claiming to be sponsors, and they let them ride in.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that, unwittingly, our own agencies on the border, again, not because they want to, because they're being told by the administration, they have become a child sex trafficking delivery service.
They're doing it by accident.
They're accidentally putting the kids in the coffins.
Biden's forcing them to do this.
This is like this bizarre gymnastics that these guys will do where it's like, we care about these immigrant children, which is why we want We want, like, more border securities.
We want a wall.
So, like, we want to starve them before they even get here.
We want them to be dying, like, on the way, essentially.
But then once they get here, it turns out that this country's a shithole that's full of, like, people that are doing child rape.
And so then they get disappeared.
It's just this really weird thing where they also have to be like, well, but we love the border security guys, but Biden's making them bad.
It's like, it's just a fucking disaster.
Yeah.
All full of contradictions and holes.
And it furthers the idea that like, stranger danger is this immediate thing in that like,
if you're an upper middle class white, like suburban mom, that like your kids are under
immediate threat of being trafficked by some random person and just disappearing forever,
which statistically is like so far from the truth.
So it's like, yeah, we're actually protecting the immigrant children from being trafficked by not letting them get here.
What if you didn't separate these kids or put them in camps when they came to the border?
Like, which is being, you know, the policy under both Trump and Biden.
Maybe they would have, you know, less of a chance of becoming in precarious, dangerous situations.
But no, obviously that's not something they want because they also want us to be more tough on the border.
So just a chaotic approach that doesn't help anybody.
Now, Eduardo Verastegui, who was with Ballard on stage, went on to reveal that he's running for president in Mexico with the goal to remove the, quote, communist regime that has, quote, been raping this country for decades.
So there's just, it's all the anti-communist stuff mixed with the child trafficking stuff all at CPAC.
Very cool, fun place to be and a fun place to get information.
Tim has also been collaborating with Troy Ables, this very strange man who runs a Mormon right-wing YouTube channel called The Last Dispensation, which is a reference in Mormon theology to the final period before the second coming of Christ.
The intro video for his channel is titled, Behold, I Come Quickly, which is a reference to Jesus.
I guess Jesus is saying that.
He's about to, he's coming back.
No, Jesus is not.
Jesus is edging.
It's been a long time.
You notice the video is only one minute, 14 seconds.
In December, Ables put out a two-hour interview with Janet Russon, who he presents as, quote, a key figure in the case who courageously breaks her silence and shares her side of the story.
In the interview, she defends Tim Ballard and the couple's ruse, but fails to mention that she claims to be a psychic medium and has guided several Operation Underground railroad missions based on her visions.
She also fails to disclose that she was on OUR's payroll.
In February of 2024, Ables released Episode 1 of what he's calling a docuseries dubbed, Unfounded, The Truth About the Ballard Case, and is designed to refute the allegations against Ballard as well as raise money on Give, Send, Go for his legal defense.
Now, if you were expecting an impartial journalistic approach, which is what Ables claims this is, I've got very bad news for you.
Here's how it opens.
In a world where innocence is stolen and hope seems a distant dream,
there are those who dare to fight against the darkness.
Tim and Catherine Ballard stood as beacons of light, venturing where few would dare to rescue the voiceless.
But now, these heroes face their most unexpected and harrowing battle yet.
Not in the shadows of a trafficker's den, But in the glaring spotlight of a courtroom.
Tim Ballard reported sexual misconduct allegations.
The suit described the couple's ruse.
Ballard's wife is now being included in a lawsuit.
Their mission, their family, their very legacy hangs in the balance.
Imagine dedicating your life to the noblest cause, rescuing thousands of children from the clutches of evil.
Only to find yourself in a web of what seems to be unfounded accusations and outright lies.
In the darkest hours, when heroes fall, will we stand by and watch?
Or will we rise to lift them, as they have lifted so many?
The fate of the Ballard family, and the countless lives they've touched, now rests in our hands.
The countless lives they've touched.
These people are so evil.
I hate this shit so much.
I know.
It's not a great sign that his own propaganda video calls them what seems to be unfounded allegations.
The opening of the episode, titled Lie Detector, goes on to praise Tim and his wife Catherine Ballard for founding Operation Underground Railroad, saving quote 7,000 women and children, and doing God's work.
But this is all a setup for the real subject here.
The evil allegations levied against Tim Ballard.
Not by traffickers, or even Biden stooges, but by women who've worked with him, most of whom are also members of his church.
Tim and Catherine, once hailed as heroes, now find themselves in the eye of a legal and public relations hurricane.
The irony is bitter.
A family that has fought tirelessly against abuse and exploitation now stands accused of the very acts they've dedicated their lives to eradicating.
It is.
I feel like a lot of religious institutions are set up in this way where it's just surprisingly easy to just be like, oh, these women are ruining such a respected member of the community by saying the bad things he did to them.
Yeah.
And also, I guess it reminds me a little bit of the Russell Brand defense as well, where you're sort of saying, you know, it's because my mission is so important that this is, this has all come out now.
Yeah.
It's kind of a conspiracy to silence me against, you know, by the powerful, which, yeah, I think, yeah, I can't remember.
It was Brand, I think you said something like, I can't help but wonder, like, is there another agenda at play here?
And yeah, it's kind of interesting how, yeah, even this kind of conspiracist language kind of creeps in, yeah, even to allegations of sexual misconduct.
I also wouldn't bring up, if I were them, the irony of him saying he's fighting abuse and then carrying it out.
I don't think that plays quite the way they think it does.
Yeah, because that's exactly what the women are alleging.
The women are saying that they were lured into these kind of compromising situations because of the significance of the mission and because of the importance of the mission to protect children.
Do you know?
It's kind of, yeah, when they're sort of, you know, saying like, oh, it's so unbelievable that he would be, he would dedicate his life to stopping sexual abuse and also perform acts of sexual abuse.
It's like, well, that was, that was what these women are alleging was that the trap was the hook, essentially.
That was why they trusted him.
Some are calling it the perfect cover.
Like, yeah, we know.
The video goes on to claim that the money they have to spend on defending Ballard in court is money that would have gone to saving children, and the whole ordeal is threatening to bankrupt them.
That's great to hear.
They call it, quote, a direct hit to the heart of their life-saving operations, despite Ballard no longer being the head of OUR in the wake of the accusations.
So, doesn't even really make sense.
The topic then shifts to the so-called couple's ruse, which is portrayed as a way to avoid Ballard being forced to have sex with children or adult sex workers to maintain cover.
Two women who've participated in operations and been Ballard's undercover girlfriends then give their testimonies anonymously.
So here's one of them.
We devised this plan that Tim and I were business partners and my character was in the process of trafficking young girls and looking to get into children from Ukraine.
Hey there, my name is ******.
I have been an undercover operator with OUR for over a year.
I've worked on various missions with Tim Ballard, specifically ranging from different countries, different continents.
And during my time working with Tim, There has been zero inappropriate behavior, any sexual contact, any inappropriate sexual contact whatsoever before, during, or after admission.
Everything was kept very respectful, very professional.
In fact, I think the OER team went above and beyond to make sure the safety of both the operators and the victims and anybody involved in admission.
During my time in our different missions, we had to deploy different tactics depending on the scenarios, one of which was the Couples Rouge, which involved us posing as a couple.
during those missions specifically there was again absolutely zero sexual contact, touching,
anything inappropriate of that nature. Everything was very much professional and respectful through
and through from start to finish. This is like the worst censoring of a person ever as well.
I feel like I know what she looks like.
Like if I met her, I'd be like, yeah, that's the lady in the video.
I don't know.
They show some footage of Tim like undercover and he's wearing like long hair and stuff it's they put on his little wig and stuff oh my god it's it's extremely embarrassing calling themselves operators.
Also the proof of like yeah I was I was put in a position like I was put in those similar positions but Tim just didn't decide to do anything sexual to me throughout as of yet.
Yeah, this is just so straight out of the like, having been Me Too'd playbook where someone's just like, well, I noticed all these sneaky journalists haven't interviewed all the women I didn't abuse.
The video goes on to attempt to discredit Ballard's accusers by finding contradictions in the ways they've depicted him in emails or text messages.
This is followed by a reflection on how they could be heroes, but instead these evil women have decided to lie about Ballard to make money.
This whole thing breaks my heart.
I'm watching these women, these accusers.
They were my friends.
Saying we didn't rescue any kids.
They were there.
We did take down traffickers.
We did rescue kids.
Now it's important to note that two of them didn't even make it on operations.
They were cut for extremely inappropriate behavior.
One of them was kicked out of a training by another person that I asked to kick him out because they invited me, this person invited me, to go up to her hotel room in a way that was extremely inappropriate.
Another one was blocked by me Because she was being very inappropriate, way outside of the lines.
And she kept trying to get a hold of me multiple times.
This has all come out.
One of the people suing me, I've never even met.
Never been in the same room.
Now the few that actually went on operations, I mean, we rescued kids together.
We risked our lives together.
We cried with victims together.
And they're acting like nothing ever happened.
So it's heartbreaking to me because I still hold them as heroes, but I can't stand by and let them attack this cause and lie about real life operations where real kids' lives are at stake.
And my family is at stake.
I can't.
I've got to stand up and tell the truth.
And it hurts because at the same time, I still respect and hold them as heroes.
This guy should really f**k himself.
Here we go.
Doing my work for me.
Yeah, it is exhausting.
It is all the classic stuff.
It's like, they're saying we didn't save children.
No, they're saying you sexually assaulted them.
That's what they're saying.
They're not saying your cause is bad.
They're saying you did a bad thing.
Arguing that they were like in love with you or that they you know I mean yeah like you fucking basically Groomed them like you you coaxed them in to this situation and then probably made them feel like they were very very special You know this got the psychic telling them that they were your wives in previous lives I mean the whole thing is super insidious and then to be like well, they also were kind of positive about me It's like yeah when you were like leading them on you know and I'd like to stick around.
I'd like to continue these rescue efforts.
Well, actually, we would like to continue in this fight.
from them, and the video closes out with a plea for financial support from the viewer,
a segment that starts with a very weird display of affection between Ballard and his wife.
I wouldn't even be able to have any fight left in me.
He looks so bad.
Very bloated.
Very weird.
Wife comes in.
It's very strange.
It's also worth noting that the reason his wife, Catherine, is now a co-defendant in the lawsuit against Tim Ballard is that she went on various radio shows to defend the couple's ruse after the accusations were first levied.
So she was basically out there claiming that the victims knew what they were doing and all this stuff.
So now, of course, she's named in it.
So now he can be like, oh, they're going after my family.
It's like, you're using your family as a defense, you know?
Like, you're raising money through a thing called, like, the Ballard Family Defense Fund.
You're putting your kids front and center in your propaganda.
You're using your wife for cover, and then you're like, they're coming for them!
It's like, yeah, because you are using them as your shield.
Uh, this is really just about you, buddy, and you could have kept it just about you, but nah, it's about your cause, it's about your wife, it's about your family, you know?
Et cetera, et cetera.
It's kind of just like in the Sound of Freedom movie where they bring in the wife for about, I don't know, 11 minutes of screen time just to sort of remind you that he has one.
Yeah.
I got in touch with Anna Merlen, a repeat guest on this podcast and journalist that's been covering Ballard for a while now, breaking stories with her colleague, Tim Marchman.
This was the statement she gave me about the video.
This is presented as an ostensibly independent documentary, but it closely mirrors a lot of the Ballad's claims.
Specifically, it presents some of the accusers as being irrationally in love with Ballad, uses testimony from other anonymous women who say they weren't assaulted, implies that the women are simply resentful due to the success of Sound of Freedom, and suggests that the accusers weren't clear that Ballad was just playing a role in his interactions with them.
In some parts of what I've seen, the timeline seems a bit muddled.
Ballard had already left Operation Underground Railroad by the time Sound of Freedom premiered in July, after OUR's board and an independent law firm are said to have begun investigating the allegations against him.
This documentary series is premiering as the lawsuits against Ballard are still active.
I'm curious if they become something that's discussed in court.
So, we'll see how this develops, whether there's an episode two and, you know, where things go.
But, yeah, I'd like to refer to Liv Agar's previous statement.
What we recommend as next steps for Tim.
So, to finish off the episode, in conclusion, it's Satan's world.
We just live in it.
Esteemed co-hosts, what job do you think you'll have in our new demonic society?
Exactly the same job as I've had before, podcasting.
Yeah, I think I'll have a job as keeper of the candles.
Obviously candles are very important in satanic rituals, so it's important that somebody looks after them and controls them.
On the other hand, as we've heard from Shane Lynch, they can also be very dangerous and frightening things.
So it's important I think they're left in the hand of a responsible adult.
Yeah, always keep a couple candles around if you want to keep the shanes away.
Yeah, that's my own personal ritual.
Jake, Travis, what are your jobs going to be under the new satanic regime?
Yeah, you know, I've always wanted to get into more tangible craft, so I think we can get into the robe making.
I think I could drape a good robe.
I want, like, a classic Satanic deal.
Like, I want to be able to play guitar really well.
Like, just, I'll meet him, I'll meet him wherever, you know, at, like, Dave & Buster's or whatever, and then, like, I'll come out actually being able to, you know, create guitar solos and, you know, and then become, you know, like, the next John Mayer, Satanic, Taylor boyfriend.
Hey, alright.
I think I'm just going to be an exotic dancer.
I've always wanted to shake it for Satan.
Yeah, you could be a backup dancer in a Sam Smith video.
I would prefer a better artist.
Beyonce, perhaps?
Beyonce?
What's up?
What's up?
Beyonce and Jay?
That'd be cool.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast.
We've got a Patreon.
It's at patreon.com slash QAA.
You can go and sign up for five bucks a month.
You'll get access to all of our mini series.
We are almost done with season two of Trickle Down.
And we've got all the other ones up there fully completed.
It's a treasure trove of content.
And of course, there are all the premium episodes.
We've got like two, I think 200 plus of those.
So go and go and get it for just five bucks a month.
Liv, Annie, would you guys like to plug anything?
Um, I have a newsletter where I talk about politics, philosophy, um, culture, just liveaigo.com.
I also stream on Twitch sometimes, twitch.tv slash liveaigo.
And you can follow me on the website formerly known as Twitter, um, at Annie K and K, but also I guess I should mention that it's going to be a little while until I'm on next on the QAA podcast because I am going on maternity leave for a little bit, but I will be back.
So watch this space.
National Baby has a National Baby of her own.
Exactly, it's National Baby-ception.
It's Russian, uh, it's a Russian doll of National Babies over there in the UK.
They're opening the National Baby to reveal another National Baby!
A smaller, and then in that baby, a smaller baby!
Okay, we'll open that baby up, you get a teeny tiny, the cutest one!
I regret breaking it up in this fashion.
Now that things have gotten weird.
Jake, what you got to plug?
Maybe like... Just this.
Yeah, just this podcast.
This is what I do.
This is all I do.
Yeah, that's it.
Travis, you got anything you want to bring attention to?
You know, spring starts this month.
So again, go outside, enjoy the sunshine.
It's a beautiful time to see the flowers start blooming.
I guess it's as good a time as any to announce that we will be rebranding soon.
Oh yes.
2.0, baby.
We've got a new intro and outro track.
We've got, uh, the name is QAA, which already is the case.
And then we've got a new cover art to unveil.
Cannot wait.
All fire, by the way.
Absolutely.
The Rakitansky seal of approval.
Let's fucking go.
And for everything else, we have a website.
QAApodcast.com.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact.
And now, today's Auto Q. I mean, your autobiography talks about, you know, all kinds of things, being locked into your body, having demons come and breathe in your ear, levitating beds, I mean, it's pretty out there.
But you experienced that, so when people kind of say to you, surely not, like, that's nonsense, or maybe that's in your mind, or maybe that, you know, what do you say to them?
I say the devil's doing a great job of diverting your truths and Hollywood is doing a great job of
it too.
Because that's what it's there to do, is to make you think it's all nonsense.
Of course. And if you think it's all nonsense, then the devil's laughing.
And it's very real.
And, you know, if you're a Christian and you understand the Bible,
The Bible talks about demons.
That means it's real.
If you understand the Bible is real, you know, all of that's not in there for no reason.
So just because you've never seen it, and I wish you never do, if you've never been a part of it, you still have to understand it's biblical.
And luckily for me, it was biblical.
And luckily for me, it's how I found God, because I knew the dark so well.
