About the Podcast
Prepare to be captivated as Paul Hutchinson delves into the crucial mission of bringing darkness to light, drawing from his decade-long experience as an undercover operative and Founder of the Child Liberation Foundation.
With unwavering determination, Paul has embarked on over 70 daring missions, risking his own safety to rescue countless children from the horrors of trafficking, a testament to his unwavering commitment to the cause.
As Executive Producer of “Sound Of Freedom,” Paul brings his passion for justice to the screen, offering audiences a powerful glimpse into the fight against exploitation and the triumph of hope.
Get ready to be moved and inspired by this episode, and consider supporting the cause by purchasing tickets to “Sound Of Freedom” or paying it forward to aid in the ongoing battle against child trafficking.
Link to our resources here.
Transcript
Paul Hutchinson [00:00:01]
We have to get this guy. This guy was selling 19 year old kids, he has to go down, he has to come to the party, he has to come to this thing so he can take him down. So I went back out into the dark area and I’m talking around and asking some people and all of a sudden out of the blue ten officers, full automatic weapons, on the ground, on the ground, on the ground. We’re like crap! you know now we’re getting handcuffed, now I would rather spend three days in an international prison than to lose those 48 kids right, we don’t want to blow our cover too soon, we’re trying to figure out are these good cops or bad cops. They pick us up and they put us in the back of a police pickup truck. You know, those ones that got the benches on the side, those guys are holding their guns and we’re laying there on the ground and I’m thinking okay, they’re going to take us to jail. The federal officers, they’ve got a tracker on my phone, they’re going to see that we’re there, they’re going to come and say, hey there’s a federal case, they’ll get us out, where we’re going to be fine. Well they don’t take us to the jail, they start taking us out of the city into the desert. Okay, this is where bad things happen, super bad. Now at this point yeah I’m scared for our lives.
Erik Allen [00:01:40]
Paul you’re a husband, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re the founder of Child Liberation Foundation, you’ve personally been on the ground and rescued children from [ _ ] [ _ ]. Your story is part of the movie sound of freedom and so much more man. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
Paul Hutchinson [00:01:51]
Thank you Eric, excited to be on your show.
Erik Allen [00:01:53]
I like to kick things off by going back a bit like, where did you grow up and what was childhood like for you?
Paul Hutchinson [00:01:58]
I grew up in Salt Lake City Utah. Okay, I had a beautiful beautiful life, had four sisters, they’re all younger than me. I loved them to death and how I just visited with him today next door because I’m here at my parents house doing this recording. I had a special needs, a handicapped boy that was about eight years older than me, that was my best friend when I was three years old and four years old, five, six, seven years old because you know mentally we were about the same at the time and just learned how to love from the heart and see the world from that degree of Innocence.
Erik Allen [00:02:38]
Come on, that is beautiful man. I want to get right into it because I know that there’s a lot to unpack here but you’re the founder of Child Liberation foundation for those who don’t know, what is Child Liberation foundation? And how can folks support you in this?
Paul Hutchinson [00:02:52]
Child Liberation Foundation was originally put together focused on solely eradicating child trafficking. It helped fund a lot of the undercover rescue missions that I was on and some of the other operators. You could go to liberateachild.org or liberatechildren.org and find some more information on the Child Liberation Foundation. We’ve expanded it over the last few months to not only focus on the rescue of the children but on the rehabilitation of the reuniting of their families of the healing as a whole in this fight against child trafficking because I believe that the solution is more than just a bunch of Navy SEALs going in and rescuing these kids. The solution is figuring out how to heal people who have dealt with these challenges as a child before they ever get to the point where they can pass on that trauma.
Erik Allen [00:02:52]
Oh man. That’s so important. What are the latest statistics on human and [ _ ] trafficking and forced child labor?
Paul Hutchinson [00:03:52]
I’ll tell you this Eric. There’s more today and I’m not talking about just children being abused at home which is horrible, I’m talking sold human beings, there’s more today than all 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade put together. There’s people who think that slavery disappeared at the time of Abraham Lincoln. It’s bigger and more prolific today than ever and the movie The Sound of Freedom, there’s one line in there in which Jim Caviezel says, there’s over 2 million children a year that are being sucked into the deepest recesses of hell, that’s just new children that are being brought into this. There’s an estimated somewhere between 8 to 10 million children in child [ _ ] slavery today and that doesn’t include the hundreds of millions that are underage workers in other countries and whatnot. Again, this is sold human beings, it’s a serious problem and good people don’t even know that it’s happening. It’s surpassed the illegal arms trade that is the most profitable criminal Enterprise in the world and is soon going to surpass the drug trade that is now the second most profitable and in fact human trafficking last year netted more profit than all of the airlines of the world combined. It’s a big problem but it’s a dark subject. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and the rescue and rehabilitation and reuniting of these children with their families is a beautiful light but even more beautiful than that are the progress that we’re making in helping people heal their own childhood trauma and whatnot before they ever pass that trauma on to somebody else that’s going to save millions of children.
Erik Allen [00:05:52]
Yeah. Now I know you’ve gone on a lot of missions and I heard you talk about some of the missions when I met you at prosperity camp with Greg Reed a few years back there. I know that every mission impacts you in some way and you can go as deep as you want or stay as high level as you want but I’m just curious like of all the missions you’ve been on, which one really stood out to you as being kind of that scariest moment for you and how did that impact you?
Paul Hutchinson [00:05:54]
Well scariest moment, there’s two or three of them that were pretty pretty sketchy and one was when we were arrested for real by some police officers in this country. We didn’t know if they were good or bad, we didn’t know. When we go into a country the president knows we’re the head of the federal, the police know that we’re there but very seldom do we let anybody else know because we don’t know who’s in it, we don’t know who’s on the payroll of the traffickers etc. So we had gone into this country, I had been there personally four times in one city, followed the leads over eight different times in this new city. Found 48 children and we were just a few days away from the sting. I didn’t trust any of the local police officers, so we flew two federal officers from another city that we trusted. They were helping us set up this thing. I called all the traffickers and there was one I couldn’t get a hold of them and super Batman, he was selling eight, nine-year-old kids and it went right to his voicemail and I told the federal agents they said, listen, we have to get this guy, this guy was selling 19 year old kids, he has to go down, he has to come to the party, he has to come to this thing so he can take him down. So I went back out into the dark area and I’m talking around and asking some people and all of a sudden out of the blue ten officers had full automatic weapons, on the ground, on the ground, on the ground we’re like crap you know. Now we’re getting handcuffed, now I would rather spend three days in an international prison than to lose those 48 kids right, we don’t want to blow our cover too soon. We’re trying to figure out if these are good cops or bad cops. They pick us up and they put us in the back of a police pickup truck you know. Those ones that got the benches on the side, those guys are holding their guns and they’re laying there on the ground and I’m thinking, okay they’re going to take us to the jail the federal officers, they’ve got a tracker on my phone, they’re going to see that we’re there, they’re going to come and say, hey there’s a federal case, they’ll get us out, we’re going to be fine. Well they don’t take us to the jail, they start taking us out of the city into the desert. Okay this is where bad things happen, super bad. Now at this point I’m scared for our lives. I’m actually scared for the police as well and here’s why, have you ever heard of Krav Maga? So regular martial arts you know, karate and others like they’re good, about your Sensei three points when you kick him in the leg. Crav is Brick to their head, go home to your family. It’s Israeli Special Forces hand-to-hand combat training, it’s the most lethal on Earth and every move they don’t breathe, they don’t see, they don’t walk, they don’t you know. It’s boom and my trainer for a very long time is Joseph and Joseph was one of my undercover operators on this mission with us. Joseph had three tequilas at dinner that night and he was a little bit tipsy, so when the cops threw us on the ground and we’re getting handcuffed really hard, he’s laying next to me, he turns his head and he goes, I’m gonna F and kill him. I’m like bro, you can’t kill him all right, they’re good cops. He goes, no and then when they throw us in the back of the pickup truck and they start going out of the city he’s getting more angry. I said, well just shut up, just shut up. This is dangerous right and then finally they pull out and they’re getting out of the cars, they have their guns out, they have their batons out and one of them asked me he says, you’ve been asking for he says the name of this trafficker and I said yeah, he said, I arrested him myself for selling children and you’re going to be with them but you’re gonna tell me everything. These guys baton out and Joseph is going, oh it’s going down. I said, bro they’re good cops right because this told me he was a good police officer because he had just arrested one of the traffickers. I said, I’m really happy you said that. Now I can tell you who we really are, I got two federal officers at my hotel room. He goes, BS. You know I said, no give me my phone, we’ll call him right now. He says, no you’re not getting your phone, you’re telling me everything. Finally I said, listen guys before anything, I’m handcuffed right super hard I said, before anything happens, I had it in my undercover pants I had a secret part pocket I said, something needs to fold that thing back and pull out there’s a card in there, it was signed by the head of the federal police, it had my picture on there and was land dominated, basically it said in Spanish that they didn’t give me their guns and their cars they could go to jail, he takes it to the head of the police in front, he comes out they’re all shaking they on handcuffed us faster than we were handcuffed all 10 of them. lo siento lo siento we’re so sorry, we’re so sorry. I said no, this is how you should treat people who are buying children in your country but here’s the deal, I don’t know who to trust so if anybody says anything that I just showed you that card your entire Department’s under investigation do you understand? I know this is all in Spanish, I had a translator there working with us but four days later, the largest Child Rescue Mission in that country’s history was 48 children. Yeah that was super scary.
Erki Allen [00:10:45]
Yeah. gosh I can’t even imagine being in that position. On the flip side of that, was there a mission that you went on that had the biggest impact for you? That wasn’t as scary but the most kind of like, satisfying and maybe that was the same mission.
Paul Hutchinson [00:10:59]
No no there’s so many. I will say that the most impactful was the very first one. The one that the Sound of Freedom movie is made out of. In The Sound of Freedom movie that’s coming out July 4th, it starts out with the story of a Homeland Security agent who leaves his job and we took two or three different stories and merged them all together into one story line but he had found some children in Cartagena Colombia and needed some money to help rescue them. He had this plan: he thought there were only 20 children, and found out that there was more than 50 in Cartagena, more than 100 children in the surrounding areas. He had this plan to rescue all of those children on the same day at the same time. Here’s what had happened: one of the traffickers had a piece of property, he wanted to develop it into a child brothel [ _ ] resource, something like a Jeffrey Epstein Island. He needed eight million dollars to build this out and so Tim had this idea, hey what if I bring you somebody that can fund, that can build it all out. He said, if I bring you that guy would you be willing to show him that you can be successful at it by having a party for him and his buddies in a couple weeks and this party you’re going to bring 50 to 100 children to this party and then he calls me up and he said, Paul I think we can rescue over 100 children on the same day at the same time but I need your help in a big way. And I said well, how much do you need? He said, I need you, can you be in Colombia in two days? And he told me this plan and two days later I’m face to face with the most evil people and that the child that changed my life was one that one of the traffickers showed me on his phone. In the movie we call her Rocio, the trafficker called her princess right and he says this is Princess, she’s only 11 and he’d start telling me about these horrible things, he was being sold as a virgin and during the operation they brought out these little kids, these virgins, this little 11 year old boy that they had given cocaine to and these other girls and this little girl standing in front of me with her makeup smeared because she had been crying, scared to death and her hands are shaking. I could feel her energy and she was looking at me like I was the man who was going to defile her. She was so scared and Eric I made a commitment to myself to God and to that little girl at that moment that I would do everything in my power to eradicate that evil from the face of the Earth. There was nothing worse than I could think of selling this child to a stranger. Unbelievable, unbelievable this was even happening. When I found out that it was so prolific the fastest growing criminal Enterprise in the world I said, you know what, I’ve spent my whole life making rich people richer, it’s time to make a difference, it’s time to really make a difference and so that’s when I said, what can I do? How can I help? And one of the guys that was there he said Paul, he said let me tell you this he said, I can’t teach my Navy Seals how to wear a four thousand dollar suit and a fifty thousand dollar watch and negotiate a multi-million dollar deal. He said, I don’t know of any ultra successful business owners who have had the training that you’ve had he said, if you’re willing to be the bait, I’ll change your whole life. That was the beginning. I’ve now been a key part or LED over 70 undercover rescue missions in 15 countries and has been truly transformational to my life, to the lives of those children, to the lives of my operators, really really good men and women willing to risk their lives to bring these kids home.
Erik Allen [00:14:48]
Wow. I can’t wait for this movie to come out and kind of hear and see this story. Sometimes movies kind of fib the truth there with this movie. How realistic is the movie to the real life missions you were going on?
Paul Hutchinson [00:14:58]
It is very real. I will say this, there’s a lot of unsung heroes that were part of those missions that we had to take a lot of different roles and a lot of different people and put them all into just a few characters to make the movie happen. So yeah every bad guy is a real bad guy. Every operation we took a number of different operations and put them together in that one film you know. In real life that little girl that he showed me on that phone that was standing in front of me there, she was there at the rescue, in the movie she wasn’t there at the rescue, they wanted to push it out and bring some other stories in and have this jungle scene and some other things, those happened in some different areas at the time that we were filming. We told them some stories that we did in Haiti. I actually went to Haiti posing as a doctor. I’ve got pictures of me and my scrubs and we went into this super dangerous area between the border of Haiti and Dominican Republic where these traffickers had a bunch of the children that were Milling their drugs and growing some things in there Etc. Some really good operators, one that was there with me was named Jim Patote. I probably messing his last name, he was from Haiti, amazing operator Jim, passed away about five and a half years ago who we believe that Foul Play was involved because we were at some very very high level people in the government that was being taken down at the time, some corrupt judges that let the traffickers out Etc. It’s a dangerous world we had. One of our operators got stabbed 27 times in the Dominican Republic, so he ended up living, you know but it’s a dangerous world but on that very first rescue, my business partner called me and he said, Paulie , have you thought through this? ” He said, this is really dangerous what you’re doing.” And he said, “Paul, you’re set, you could sell out today, buy an island, buy a yacht, and be happy for the rest of your life.” I said, John, would I really be happy if I bought a yacht? If I bought a Jet, if I bought an island, would that make me happy? I said, tell me this if I was doing something else dangerous, if I was climbing Everest tomorrow you and I would have the same conversation. He goes, yeah we probably would. I said, when I’m 95 years old and I’m looking back on my life and I say, I climbed this mountain and I help build this multi-billion dollar company and they helped rescue this many children from slavery, which one matters at all?
Erik Allen [00:17:44]
Wow, I recently saw a post that you talked about where you said, [ _ ] violence just doesn’t happen to women and children right like men experiences too and you talked about this number of men that actually experience [ _ ] violence, the number blew my mind. Can you deep dive into that a little bit?
Paul Hutchinson [00:17:59]
Yeah. The reason I decided to go public Eric, after 10 years of undercover work with my goal in the beginning being to eradicate this problem, I looked at the numbers at the end of last year and realized there’s more children being sold today than there was 10 years ago. I thought Paul you’re not doing a very good job if that’s what your goal is. So I took a step back and I realized that, yes it’s important to rescue these kids, yes it’s important to pull these pedophiles out however if you’re not doing enough to fix the demand side, every single time you pull 20 children out of hell, another 20 will get sucked back in because there’s still a demand there and so I thought okay where’s the demand coming from and for a long time I thought, okay it’s a pornography you know, people are a little addicted to hardcore pornography you know. It’s real gross stuff and they need something harder to have that same fix and for some of them, harder is more rape videos and horrible stuff, other guys it’s a little bit younger, a little bit young, pretty soon they’re fantasizing about things they wouldn’t have thought was attractive five years ago. I’d come to an understanding that even that is a symptom of a much deeper problem. So I started doing some research and trying to understand where the mindset was and I came to an understanding that yes, 10 million children being sold for [ _ ] is a huge number but it’s tiny compared to the real numbers. The real number is over a billion women, one in every four women on this planet have been a victim of [ _ ] violence as a child. Now for men, it’s a smaller number, it’s about 20 percent of all men at some time in their life but of those 20 percent that 800 million men somewhere around 25 percent of them, 200 million men were under the age of 10 years old, most of them in their own homes. So here’s what’s happening, two-thirds of people who experience child [ _ ] abuse in some way, two-thirds of them are God bless them, they work through it, they become good husbands, good fathers, they were able to shed that trauma and and not let it affect other people however, one-third of victims of child [ _ ] abuse become contact offenders in some way in verbal abuse, in physical abuse, in [ _ ] abuse and when that happens when they cross that line of [ _ ] abusing a child when they’ve crossed that line then it becomes consuming where it’s not just one victim, it’s five, it’s ten, it’s twenty, it’s a hundred, it’s as much as 150 victims from one person that crosses that line. So I took a step back and because of the fact that when I’m there undercover and I’m looking at these traffickers, they’re going to jail. I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure they never ever hurt another child again however more than anything I wish that I had a time machine and I could go back a year five years or ten years before they ever pass their trauma on to somebody else what if, what if we could give them the help that they need to shed their own childhood trauma to become a good husband, good father, good mother whatever it is before they ever pass what if, we could do that. Well we don’t have time machines but the world is going on and 10 years from now there are people today that are adolescents, that are young adults, that are dealing with all kinds of [ __ ] from their childhood that someday are going to pass that trauma on. What if we could have them, what if we could have some compassion and help them overcome their challenges. That’s what my focus is in Liberating Humanity. We do that, we save millions of children before they’re ever traumatized in the first place, not only in Colombia and Honduras and Ecuador but in your own homes. You look up and down the street outside your front door, one out of every four of those doors is a dangerous place for children, we need to fix that problem and in doing so we’ll fix the child [ _ ] problem.
Erik Allen [00:22:02]
That is huge. Man I know that a lot of people go through struggles and trauma and I’ve had to deal with my own childhood trauma and at times even at 43 years old it tends to creep up on me and I still kind of like deal with that sometimes but like, what’s that starting point for someone that just needs to help get past those wounds and pass the trauma?
Paul Hutchinson [00:22:23]
Number one is admitting that it’s there. The average age of somebody who verbally comes out and says I was abused as a child, the average age is 52 years old, that’s my age, my children are grown, I’ve got grandchildren right. So people have lived most of their adult life dealing with this stuff wondering why anxiety comes up and PTSD and depression issues or low self-esteem and they’re just dealing with this stuff, anger issues all the time and if they can get calm, get to a place of deep meditation. I believe that step one is this, I truly believe that step one for healing Humanity comes with a recognition of, I’m going to call it an expansion of spirituality and in the Alcoholics Anonymous program, one of the most vital Parts about that is admitting that there is a God, that I’m powerless to overcome this on my own but with the divine power of God I can overcome all things, that is so important and unfortunately we as a society are pulling away from that source of divinity within us, we’re pulling away from that listening to that still Small Voice of truth. In fact I have a book that’ll be coming out, I have a book that’s going to be talking about the undercover rescues but one on close on its heels is called “Are you listening? not are you listening with my hand on my ear but are you listening with my hand on my heart because every single Rescue Mission I wasn’t following logic and protocol. I was listening, I was being led, I was being guided to places that would keep us safe. I was being guided to where those children were being held, every single time and I’ve used that ability, that intuition, that ability to feel and recognize that Spirit of Truth. I’ve used that to guide me on the right partners and business to expand, to create this world of abundance that I’m blessed with. All of these things can come from learning to listen and from controlling your thought processes. We can talk about that. My next book after that is going to be talking about the power of manifestation and realizing that it’s not just the Law of Attraction. It’s the law of creation where our actions, our words and even our thoughts are creating this beautiful or horrendous pathway in front of us and so by learning to listen From The Heart by guiding our lives in a place that we’re connected with a higher power then that is the first step to healing and to shedding all of that stuff that doesn’t belong to us anymore, that the key in the word forgiveness, forgiving yourself for all the stupid things that weren’t in alignment with who you are today, completely forgiving, forgetting that and letting go of that negative energy of blame for anybody else. They were in their own trauma yes, that was a horrible thing, they did but allowing them to traumatize you for the rest of your life is your decision right and so figuring out how to not define you by what happened in the past or to your choices of the past or other people’s choices in the past releasing that and coming to a place of deep meditation, a prayer of appreciation, of gratitude and of forgiveness is the first step in healing.
Erik Allen [00:24:39]
Wow man that is super powerful right there. Unbelievable Paul. Thank you so much for jumping on here and sharing your story. I’m excited for the movie. I’m excited for this new book, a couple new books coming out for you here and man what you are doing today is changing so many lives and I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you for being a world changer man. I appreciate your time.
Paul Hutchinson [00:24:39]
Thank you Eric.
Erik Allen [00:26:14]
Thank you so much for checking out the show today. I really appreciate it. I hope that my guest was able to bring you some amazing wisdom and knowledge to help you continue to fight for your goals, your dreams and your purpose. If you could do me one big favor and just hit that subscribe button. I would appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. Keep changing the world. I believe in you. Have an amazing day.