- Feb 5, 2002
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- and how he's haunted by his failure to find a two-year-old boy kidnapped a decade ago
- The movie 'Sound of Freedom' follows a federal agent, who quit his job and journeys into the Colombian jungle to save a child from sex traffickers
- The film was inspired by Tim Ballard's life work, which first began when he organized a raid on a fake Haitian orphanage to rescue an American boy
- The following is Ballard's TRUE story...
I didn't choose to spend my life in hell chasing child sex traffickers, but hell is where you find them.
In 2014, I stood outside an unassuming concrete compound in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
There was no way to be prepared for the human misery that I witnessed inside.
I was on a mission to find a kidnapped two-year-old Haitian American boy named Gardy Mardy.
He had been snatched in broad daylight from the parking lot of a church and sold to sex traffickers.
A few back alley turns in the bustling city center had led me to the front door of a dilapidated building with 13-foot cement walls.
Inside, the conditions were heinous. Newborn babies lay in urine and feces. The fetid air reeked of excrement. Kids sustained on meager bowls of mush displayed bloated bellies.
There was an outhouse in the yard and a menacing guard, who carried a whip on his shoulder.
The children called him 'teacher.'
A woman lined up the kids like animals at a livestock auction.
'Take your pick,' she said. 'They're $15,000-a-piece.'
Continued below.
TIM BALLARD: True horror of the story that inspired Sound of Freedom
BALLARD: In 2014, I was on a mission to find a kidnapped two-year-old Haitian American boy named Gardy Mardy. who had been sold to sex traffickers.
