[3] The group claims to have conducted multiple sting operations, some outside the United States, and donated technological and monetary resources to law-enforcement agencies that combat sex trafficking.

In a December 2023 statement posted on its website, the organization said an independent law firm reached the conclusion that Ballard had "engaged in unprofessional behavior that violated OUR's policies and values.

[1][6] Ballard has said that, prior to founding O.U.R., he served 12 years as a U.S. Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security, on the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) and the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team.

"[7] According to Ballard, he was frustrated with the lack of strategies employed to rescue kidnapped and trafficked children in underdeveloped nations, and the inability to prosecute offenders in non-U.S. related cases.

's role in the rescue of a trafficked woman, stating that they did not find "outright falsehoods but a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading".

's practices, including using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its jump team, a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.

in the Dominican Republic, which was filmed live by a camera crew to use in a proposed reality TV show, saying that it was likely to have traumatized the trafficked children.

had an "alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal trafficking networks must be approached and dismantled" and called the work of O.U.R "arrogant, unethical and illegal".

[19] O.U.R released a statement that the apparent mix up was due to their advertising agency informing them of the deal with American Airlines, which was not finalized yet.

[20] In the summer of 2023, Ballard stepped away from the organization after an internal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations made against him by multiple employees.

In a statement in the lawsuit, the husband alleged that Ballard wanted his wife to help O.U.R., despite her having "no training in any sort of undercover work."

[21] On February 26, 2024, Tammy Lee, a corporate executive with experience at Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, and the University of Minnesota Foundation, took over as the new CEO.

"[11] Sergeant Carlos Rodriguez, the initiator of the sting program arranged positive media coverage for O.U.R.,[11] solicited donations for them,[40] and, upon his retirement in 2019, was employed by O.U.R.

says it runs a non-profit aftercare program,[43] providing medical and psychological services, education, and vocational opportunities to survivors.

paid for an adopted Wisconsin woman to visit her biological parents after she discovered that she had been stolen from them as a baby and trafficked through orphanage fraud.

After using the DNA test to trace her heritage back to India and Israel, the woman found her ethnic minority Roma family that lived in Romania and had since moved to Italy.

[46] According to Foreign Policy, in 2014, "after OUR's first operation in the Dominican Republic, a local organization called the National Council for Children and Adolescents (CONANI when abbreviated in Spanish) quickly discovered it didn't have the capacity to handle the 26 girls rescued.

partnered with a Ft. Myers, Florida, Harley-Davidson dealership in organizing a "freedom ride to raise awareness about child sex trafficking.