A reader's guide for Latter-day Saints · September 2026 · Part 2: Fellow Travelers →

The SRA Loop

If your feed has told you that Church leaders are involved in satanic ritual abuse (SRA), that claim is coming from a small circle of online voices who quote, repost and promote one another. This page shows who they are, how one story moved between them last week, and what is actually documented.

Everything below comes from the speakers' own videos, captions and posts, quoted directly. A claim is labeled as a claim. Nothing here asks you to think less of anyone's faith. It asks you to look at where an accusation comes from before you accept it.

The voices

Tim Ballard · 503K Facebook followers

Former DHS agent, Sound of Freedom subject, excommunicated in 2023. Now promotes his series Backfire and reposts other people's accounts of Church discipline.

Jason & Alexia Preston · We Are The People Utah

Podcast hosts. Received a Church Security Department trespass letter dated February 9, 2026. Named by an SRA-focused Substack for their “Shadows of Power” series.

Latter Day Chad · Instagram, Zion Media

Commentator who appears on the Zion Media channel, run with Shane Baldwin. Says his temple recommend was taken after he spoke about SRA. Publicly promoted by Ballard.

The wider circle

An SRA Substack, Investigations in Ritual Abuse, lists Latter Day Chad, the Prestons, Brett Henry (“the Bearded Realtor”), Shaun Attwood and Jacob K. Johnson as having “taken the topic and run with it.” Candace Owens has since picked it up.

How one story traveled in five days

The story: that the Prestons' stake president was excommunicated for refusing to excommunicate them. Watch who says it, and who repeats whom.

  1. About Sep 17–18

    Ballard posts on Instagram that another stake president told him about it. This is second-hand. (As described by Latter Day Chad; we don't hold the original post.)

  2. Shortly after

    Jason Preston denies it in the comments on Ballard's post, then checks and finds his stake president is “no longer a stake president,” but says he doesn't know whether he was excommunicated.

  3. Sep 19

    Ballard posts a 3:01 Facebook reel. The voice isn't his: it's Latter Day Chad reacting to Preston's video and describing his own SRA-related discipline. Ballard's caption: “It's not a rumor about Preston's Stake President… Everybody please follow @LatterDayChad.” 27.7K views.

  4. Sep 21

    We Are The People Utah posts a short episode. Now Preston says his stake president “was excommunicated himself.”

  5. Sep 21–22

    Ballard posts a 2:53 Facebook reel that simply plays Preston's segment, captioned “This is pure EVIL!” 61.5K views, his most-watched video of the week.

  6. Sep 22

    Latter Day Chad goes live on Zion Media, replays the same Preston segment, and ties it to SRA.

From a second-hand report to “excommunicated” in about five days, carried by three accounts quoting each other. The only step that changed the facts is the one where “no longer a stake president” became “excommunicated.”

In their own frames

Tim Ballard's 2:53 Facebook reel, showing Jason Preston on the We Are The People set
Ballard's 2:53 reel. The speaker is Jason Preston, lifted from his own show.
Tim Ballard's 3:01 Facebook reel, showing Latter Day Chad speaking to camera
Ballard's 3:01 reel. The speaker is Latter Day Chad; the caption says to follow him.
Latter Day Chad's own Instagram reel: 'Why are the leaders of the Church hanging out with…'
@latterdaychad, Sep 4. The same speaker on his own account.
Zion Media livestream, Latter Day Chad at a desk
Zion Media livestream, Sep 22. Same speaker again, 77 minutes, replaying the Preston clip.
Church Security Department letter dated February 9, 2026, shown on We Are The People Utah
We Are The People Utah, Sep 21. Preston shows his February 9 trespass letter on air: the one fully documented item in this story.
Instagram Collaborators sheet listing timballard89, latterdaychad, nauvoolegion, transcendental_mormon_mystic, mount_of_oliveslds and latterdayavenger
Screenshot, April 12, 2026. One Instagram post, six co-authors: Ballard and Latter Day Chad among them. The partnership predates last week's story.
Brett Henry Facebook reel titled 'Ritual Abuse Utah — Documents only'
Brett Henry, Salt Lake City. “Ritual Ab*se in Utah. Documents only…” The on-screen caption at this moment reads “There's no evidence,” out of context, so we don't know how the sentence ends.

What each says about SRA

“The Department of Justice released files publicly admitting that leaders of our world were engaging in this sort of SRA behavior… There are evil people who run our society. And if you don't believe that, then you don't believe in the Book of Mormon…”

Latter Day Chad, Zion Media livestream, Sep 22

“I don't know if it's going down to the extent that Jason Preston and his guests seem to talk about, but it's certainly going down 100%, and it is 100% being covered up. To what degree? I don't know.”

Latter Day Chad, same stream

“About a year ago after I first went on about SRA… my bishop and stake president were contacted by a lawyer who is also a member of the Seventy… as soon as we mentioned SRA, boom.”

Latter Day Chad, in Ballard's 3:01 reel, Sep 19

“…Latter Day Chad on Instagram, and Jacob K. Johnson of Rise to Liberty, as well as our old frenemy Jason Preston of We Are the People Utah, have all taken the topic and run with it.”

Investigations in Ritual Abuse (Substack), Sep 15. Opening of the sentence omitted.

“They have… blocked and/or covered up child sex abuse for well over a decade… Everybody please follow @LatterDayChad.”

Tim Ballard, Facebook caption, Sep 19. His posts in this set don't say “SRA”; he promotes the people who do. In Backfire itself (11:13) he calls it a “strawman” that his case is about “making up lies about SRA.”

Documented, claimed, unknown

StatementStatusBasis
The Prestons received a Church Security trespass letterDocumentedLetter dated Feb 9, 2026, shown on their own show
Ballard reposted Preston's and Chad's videos and told followers to follow ChadDocumentedBallard's Facebook reels, Sep 19 and 21–22
Ballard and Latter Day Chad co-authored an Instagram postDocumentedCollaborators sheet, Apr 12, 2026
The Prestons' stake president was releasedClaimedJason Preston, after checking; not independently confirmed
…and was excommunicated for refusing to excommunicate themClaimedStarted second-hand with Ballard; Preston first denied it, then repeated it
A Seventy / Church lawyer pressured Chad's local leaders over SRAClaimedLatter Day Chad's own account only
Church leaders take part in or cover up satanic ritual abuseClaimedAsserted in these videos and posts; no evidence presented in any of them
These accounts coordinate with each otherUnclearThey repost and promote each other; Chad says they “aren't really coordinating together, except for me and Shane a little bit”

Checking Backfire itself

Backfire: The Excommunication Story of Tim Ballard is the video Ballard keeps pointing people to. It runs over three hours and is streaming on his YouTube channel. The Backfire tracking repository on GitHub is a working archive for it: a full timestamped transcript, the corrections made to it, and claim-by-claim checks of what the video says. Start here:

Before you share

Utah has been here before. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, SRA accusations spread across the United States, including in Utah. Law enforcement looked hard: the FBI's Kenneth Lanning reported in 1992 that investigators had not corroborated the organized satanic-cult abuse being described, and a multi-year Utah investigation in the 1990s likewise reported no physical evidence of it.

That history doesn't mean abuse isn't real. It is, and it deserves a real report to people who can act on it, not a repost. If a child may be in danger in Utah, call the DCFS child abuse hotline:

1-855-323-3237

Or dial 911 in an emergency. Outside Utah, contact your local police or child protective services.

Sources