Billings man accused of sex trafficking women seeking homeless services

A Billings man sentenced just last year for sex trafficking is now accused of coercing some of the most vulnerable women in Billings into performing sex acts on him.

Brian Irl Ward pleaded not guilty Monday in Yellowstone County District Court to aggravated sex trafficking. The 68-year-old allegedly prowled homeless services in Billings, offering food, clothes, alcohol and drugs to women in exchange for sex. Ward was already on probation after a Missoula County judge gave him a suspended sentence for two counts of sex trafficking.

One witness to the latest allegations against Ward told investigators that Ward “seemed to target Native American women” with severe mental health and addiction issues, court documents said.

In January of this year, an agent with the Montana Department of Criminal Investigation met with Ward’s probation officer. The officer told the agent that he’d discovered texts on Ward’s phone in which his probationer was soliciting sex, according to charging documents. At that time, Ward was just a few months into his suspended sentence out of Missoula County. In November 2025, Missoula County District Judge Jason Marks sentenced Ward to 20 years of probation after he drove a woman to Missoula to have sex with a man in exchange for money.

The DCI agent received a warrant to extract data from Ward’s phone. One conversation from February 2026 allegedly showed Ward agreeing to pick up a woman at the Montana Rescue Mission, a faith-based nonprofit operating in downtown Billings and the city’s only homeless shelter. In the text exchange, court documents said, Ward asked the woman for a “blow job” and whether there were any other women at the shelter with whom he could have sex.

Last month, court documents said, the DCI agent followed up on a tip that Ward had been loitering in his red pickup truck in the parking lot of St. Vincent de Paul, another charitable organization that provides emergency assistance to people in Billings. Witnesses allegedly told the agent they’d seen Ward picking up and dropping off women utilizing St. Vincent de Paul’s outreach services.

On April 29, the DCI agent allegedly tailed Ward, who was driving his red truck, and watched him pick up a woman who was a client at St. Vincent de Paul. Ward, court documents said, drove the woman to the charity’s location on First Avenue South. He ran several red lights along the way, according to charging documents.

A day later, Ward met with the DCI agent at the office of his probation officer. He allegedly agreed to an interview and eventually admitted that he would give women food, money and rides to and from St. Vincent de Paul while asking them for sex.

“He (Ward) agreed that he was providing these women with basic survival necessities and transportation in exchange for the sexual acts he received,” court documents said.

Although police seized Ward’s phone in January, he allegedly obtained another cell phone by the time of the April interview with the DCI agent. When the agent reviewed the new cell phone, according to charging documents, she found messages of Ward again soliciting women for commercial sex. During that same interview, Ward allegedly complained about the women he trafficked not being criminally charged, saying he felt he “got screwed.”

“A commercial sex act is the giving or receiving of anything of value to that victim or to another party in exchange for a sex act,” said Penny Ronning, a local advocate and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force. “It doesn’t have to be money. It can be anything of value.”

Going into the 2027 Montana State Legislature, Ronning said the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force will campaign for lawmakers to adopt legislation known to anti-human trafficking organizations as the “Survivor Model,” also known as the “Equality Model” or “Nordic Model.” The legislative framework criminalizes the purchase of sex while decriminalizing people engaged in prostitution. In 2023, Maine became the first state in the U.S. to adopt such a model.

“In the state of Montana,” Ronning said, “a victim can still be criminalized and arrested on a misdemeanor charge of prostitution, and we don’t think that’s right.”

In 2023, the Montana State Legislature overhauled the language of sex trafficking statutes to offer local prosecutors clear definitions of labor trafficking, child sex trafficking, sex trafficking and aggravated sex trafficking, through which to charge offenders. From 2021 through 2025, the Montana Department of Justice opened 515 cases into human trafficking, according to data from the department’s Division of Criminal Investigation. In that same period, DCI identified 82 adult survivors of human trafficking in Montana and 22 children.

From the start of 2020 through most of 2024, Yellowstone County led the state in the number of human trafficking cases opened by the DOJ, with nearly 250 cases.

On April 30, Ward was booked into Yellowstone County Detention Facility, with county prosecutors filing criminal charges against him a day later. He appeared for his arraignment Monday from YCDF via teleconference. His hearing concluded with his bail set at $100,000. With his most recent charge, Ward is set to appear in Missoula County District Court for parole violation. He is scheduled to appear in Missoula later this month.

In Billings, the YWCA and Tumbleweed offer direct support to survivors of human trafficking. Survivors of human trafficking, or those concerned that someone they know is being trafficked can call the Montana Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-406-STOP (7867).