Editor’s note: A lawsuit only tells one side of a story.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Less than a month after Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) founder Tim Ballard sued one of his sexual assault accusers for defamation, he filed suit in Utah County against the remainder of his alleged victims.

At the end of September, Ballard sued former Miss Utah Amy Morgan Davis for comments she made in a New York Times article about the sexual assault allegations. This week, he filed a separate suit against six more accusers: Celeste Borys, Sashaleigh Hightower, Mary Hall, Kira Linch, Krista Kasey, and Bree Righter. All seven women filed their suit against Ballard in 2023. Many of them also spoke in the New York Times article, breaking their anonymity.

In his suit filed this week, Ballard’s attorneys claim he is suing the women “reluctantly” in an attempt to get his accusers to “withdraw their false claims against Mr. Ballard and come forward with the truth.”

A large portion of the accusers’ suit claims that Ballard used an undercover technique known as “the couple’s ruse,” in which OUR operatives — generally Ballard, according to court documents — pretended to be in a relationship with the women. The “ruse,” accusers claim, allowed Ballard to take advantage of the women sexually in an attempt to prove to sex traffickers that the operatives were in a relationship.

OUR, which is no longer affiliated with Ballard, claims they no longer use the “ruse.”

“Had Mr. Ballard desired to simply fulfill deviant and perverted sexual desires, there are many in the trafficking underworld eagerly willing to fulfill such desires,” states Ballard’s suit. “There would be no need for Mr. Ballard to employ a complex scheme to avoid sexual relations with traffickers if his true desire was to engage freely and frequently in sexual relations.”

Alan W. Mortensen, who represents the women who have accused Ballard, provided the following statement to ABC4.com:

“The women who Tim Ballard has sued are brave enough that they were willing to go into foreign countries, with no law-enforcement or military training, or foreign language capacity, in an attempt to rescue children from sex traffickers. While Ballard lied to the women about what his claimed rescue missions were, the fact that they are now being sued by their trafficker (Tim Ballard) does not impact their deep desire and bravery to save innocent people from the evil sex trafficker that is Tim Ballard.  They are glad that Ballard will finally undergo depositions where his lies will finally be under oath and cross-examined.  They stand united in their rescue mission to bring sex trafficker Tim Ballard to justice and expose the truth to the State of Utah and to Ballard’s donors worldwide.”

In Ballard’s suit, he provides what he says are instances where his accusers defended him prior to filing their suits. Ballard provided a quote allegedly from Borys:

“I have been working with Tim Ballard for almost one year. I have felt safe being Tim’s partner in every operation I have been on; I have never been taken advantage of,” Boyrs allegedly said. “He has always respected me and all the other operators around me.”

In his suit, Ballard provided videos from Kacey, in which she allegedly said: “We kept all of the boundaries there. I will read them: No kissing on the lips, touching or exposing private parts including breasts and genitalia, and any other thing you can imagine. We kept really strict boundaries.”

Ballard’s entire suit can be read below.