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SALT LAKE CITY — Operation Underground Railroad founder and former CEO Tim Ballard has filed a response to a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault, in which he denies the claims and alleges one of the plaintiffs illegally accessed data that was used in the lawsuit.
Ballard has been accused of grooming and sexual assault by several women in a pair of lawsuits brought by former Operation Underground Railroad staffers earlier this year. Ballard's court motion is the first time he has responded to the allegations in court, though he has previously issued statements denying the claims.
The motion, filed Dec. 20 in 3rd District Court, asks a judge to strike certain evidence from the record — which Ballard says was obtained improperly through a former executive assistant who had access to his email — and asks the court to order the plaintiffs to identify themselves in court.
Several women filed an anonymous complaint on Oct. 9 against Ballard, but have since come forward publicly to speak with the media.
Ballard alleges that one of those women, Celeste Borys — a former executive assistant to Ballard who is a plaintiff in a related case along with her husband — illegally accessed "confidential information" from Ballard's email.
Borys, according to the filing, "appears to have stolen from his private email. ... Plaintiffs' counsel came into possession of this information, some of which is clearly marked on its face as privileged, and instead of returning it, used it in this litigation and published it in the (amended lawsuit)."
While working for Ballard, "Mr. Ballard provided his email login credentials to Ms. Borys so that she could perform her duties. ... Ms. Borys had access to Mr. Ballard's email, and privileged and/or confidential materials within, almost until the day she and plaintiffs sued him," the motion states.
The motion argues that even if the information was not stolen, it is privileged and should not have been disclosed as evidence without Ballard's consent.
Ballard also accuses the plaintiffs of filing the lawsuit "with salacious and irrelevant accusations," and said he and other defendants were not served the suits.
"The handling of these complaints seemed more aimed at smearing Mr. Ballard in the press than about prosecuting the lawsuits," the filing says.
Although some of the women have publicly identified themselves, they were identified in the lawsuit only by pseudonym initials.
"Despite Mr. Ballard's requests, two plaintiffs in this case have refused to reveal their identities," the filing states. "Three plaintiffs revealed their identities only after counsel's request but have refused to correlate their anonymized initials with their names, which would improperly require Mr. Ballard to speculate about which identified person correlates to which allegations."
Ballard also asks the court to give him an extension to respond to the allegations in full because of the anonymity of some of the plaintiffs, saying he "cannot respond to the allegations without knowing who has alleged what factual allegations against him."
A lawsuit by another plaintiff, Suzanne Whitehead, filed in November alleged that Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a longtime friend of Ballard, tried to intimidate a critic of Operation Underground Railroad and engaged in witness tampering.
Reyes announced he would not seek reelection earlier this month. In his announcement video, he said he met with and believes the women accusing Ballard, and promised to recuse himself from a state investigation into allegations against Ballard.
Whitehead dismissed the claims against Reyes on Dec. 19, saying in a court filing that the attorney general "met with the plaintiff and explained his involvement in the matter and apologized to the plaintiff. Plaintiff has accepted his apology."
