Modern Wisdom - #672 - Paul Hutchinson - The Untold Story Behind The Sound of Freedom

Episode Date: August 26, 2023

Paul Hutchinson is an entrepreneur, former fund manager and undercover operative known for his role in rescuing trafficked children depicted in the film the Sound of Freedom. Paul has had a non-typical journey. Transitioning from a career in real estate asset management to dismantling some of the world’s largest child sex trafficking rings, he's sacrificed and risked an awful lot to try and stop some of the most evil people on the planet. Expect to learn what it was like to find an Epstein Island copycat, just how big of a problem global child trafficking is, who are the biggest consumers of child sex trafficking and material, how Paul got involved in operation underground railroad, the most dangerous situations he found himself in, why the movie the Sound of Freedom was so controversial for a non-political movie and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on Bubs Naturals at https://www.bubsnaturals.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% OFF with our code MODERNWISDOM at https://calderalab.com/modernwisdom to unlock your youthful glow and be ready for summer with Caldera + Lab!  Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Paul Hutchinson. He's an entrepreneur, former fund manager, and an undercover operative, known for his role in rescuing traffic children depicted in the film The Sound of Freedom. Paul has had a non-typical journey, transitioning from a career in real estate asset management to dismantling some of the world's largest child sex trafficking rings. He's sacrificed and risked an awful lot to try and stop some of the world's largest child sex trafficking rings. He sacrificed and risked an awful lot to try and stop some of the most evil people on the planet. And today, we get to hear his story. Expect to learn what it was like to find an Epstein Island copycat, just how big of a

problem global child trafficking is, who are the biggest consumers of child sex trafficking and material, how Paul got involved in Operation Underground Railroad, the most dangerous situations he found himself in, why the sound of freedom was so controversial for a non-political movie, and much more. This Monday, seven time Mr. Olympia Phil Heath joined me on Modern Wisdom for an over two hour long episode that I recorded in LA, and it was very, very fun. And we talk about so much stuff that he's never spoken about before, including his drug use during his Olympia career, his rivalry with Kai Green, and an awful lot more.

So make sure that you've hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss that one. In other news, this episode is brought to you by ManScape. If you're a gentleman who needs to trim your body hair, there is only one tool for the job, and that is Manscaped lawn mower. 4.0. It is designed to be the greatest ball and body hair trimmer ever created, featuring a cutting edge ceramic blade to reduce grooming accidents and 90 minute battery so that you can take a longer shave, waterproof technology, which allows you to groom in the shower, and an LED light,

which illuminates grooming areas for a closer and more precise trim. It's got a 7000 rpm motor with quiet stroke technology and a wireless charging system that helps the battery last even longer. Altogether it's just the device that you should be using to trim your body hair and you and your partner. Well thank you. Head to manskaped.com slash modern wisdom and use the code modern wisdom at checkout to get 20% off and free shipping plus their ship internationally. Head to manscaped.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout.

In other, other news this episode is brought to you by Bubbs Naturals. When I ruptured my Achilles three years ago, I used collagen protein very aggressively to help me regrow it. It is an unbelievably important fundamental building block for your hair, your skin, your nails, and also the ligaments and tendons that make up your joints. So if you are trying to recover from an injury, if you are struggling at the moment, if you want to get into using a collagen protein, Bubbs Naturals is the best place to start. They've got 20 grams of protein,

all made with one single ingredient, and it is the purest form of protein that you can find on the market. Head to bubsnaturals.com slash modern wisdom, and use the code modern wisdom, a checkout for 20% off your first order. That's bubsnaturals.com slash modern wisdom, and modern wisdom.

A checkout. And in final news, this episode is brought to you by Caldera Lab. Caldera Lab is here to save the day when it comes to your skin. It is backed by a leading clinical trial where nine out of ten men experience healthier and visibly improved skin. Caldera Lab has the tools to unlock your best first impression and confidence. Your future self will thank you for taking care of your skin. Even if you are the most grizzled Alex Hormosi looking plaid shirt wearing guy out there,

you do want to try and avoid having wrinkles arriving before they need to. And that means that you need to have a skincare routine. And Caldera Lab has taken the guesswork out of what you need. It creates high performance men's skin care product by combining pharmaceutical grade science along with nature's purest and most potent ingredients you just follow, the set that they give you, where you wash your face, and you moisturize your face, and there's no overnight serum, and you will wake up looking beautiful the next day. Head to calderaLab.com slash modern wisdom and use the code modern wisdom, a checkout for 20% off. That's calderaLab.com slash modern wisdom and use the code modern wisdom, a checkout for 20% off. That's calderalab.com slash modern wisdom

and modern wisdom, a checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Paul Hutchinson. What is your background? Who are you? Well, I'm somewhat of serial entrepreneur. I had a few lots of failures and a few successes. And the founder, co-founder of Bridge Investment Group, 48 billion dollars assets under management. So it grew pretty well. Give all the credit to the team. People call me all the time. They say, Paul, I have a question about real estate. I say, I don't know anything about

real estate. They're like, well, you're the founder of a multi-billion dollar real estate fund. I said, no, I know how to build teams. And I know how to have the vision from the beginning to create it. Fast forward, got recruited about 10 years ago to Help on an undercover rescue mission the one that is featured in the sound of freedom movie My character is played by Eduardo Varastigui. I'm Pablo. I'm the fund manager who gets recruited to help fund the operation and Play a role and we can go deep into that since time, I have led or played a key part in over 70, undercover rascumissions in 15 countries, retired from my job, focused full time on philanthropy.

Zero social media for 10 years came out just four months ago to share the stories and inspire people. Talk to me about how a fund manager ends up becoming an operative for a anti-child sex trafficking ring sting couple. Well, I have a special set of skills from previous life that makes me somewhat safe in a dangerous place, but what had happened is our attorney general called me about 10 years ago. And he, I'm like, what's up, A.G.

And he's like, what's up, Pudge. And and he said, Hey, I got to talk to you about some. It's pretty dark. He said, I know you're really involved with child related charities. I was on the make a wish board of directors for 10 years, a bunch of things. And he said, he said, this is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. And good people don't know that it's happening. I'm like, well, what is it?

He says it's, it's human like, well, what is it? He says it's human trafficking and this situation is child trafficking. And I'm like, what? Like children being sold for what? I mean, how does that work? And he says for sex. And I'm like, well, no, that isn't happening. He said, no, he says there's this homeland security agent.

He's in Columbia. He's identified some children down there. I want to introduce you to them. And fast forward, I end up helping to raise some money and fund the what he thought was going to be 20 children that were in Cartagena. But then he called me and he said, Paul, he said, I'm here in Cartagena. There's not just 20 children. There's more than 50. There's more than 100. And what I didn't know is that that he had already had some conversations with Sean, Reyes, the attorney general, and we're specifically looking for somebody who could play a role, like a Jeffrey Epstein. Somebody who was well off, that had this Playboy background,

so to speak, that also could handle himself in a dangerous place. And so he called me and he said, Paul, he says there's more than a hundred children that are tied to these different rings. I think we can rescue all of them on the same day at the same time, but I need your help in a big way. And I'm like, well, how much do you need? And he said, I need you.

Can you be in Colombia in two days? And I was sitting there. I was in in Atlanta, Georgia. I was at a conference. I was raising money from billionaire families for the fund. And I hung up the phone with my business partners like, did you really just commit to that? I'm like, yeah, if I can, if there's something about me that they can use to help rescue these kids. And now or later, the co-founder of my fund, John, calls me up. He's like, Paul, Don called me. Told me what you're doing. Have you thought through this?

He says, this is really dangerous. He said, you're set. You can sell out today, buy an island, be happy the rest of your life. I'm like, what I really be happy, John. If I bought an island, if I bought a yacht, and whatever, I said, I said, tell me this, if I was doing something else dangerous tomorrow, if I was climbing Everest, you and I had the same conversation, goes, yeah, we probably would. I said, and when I'm

95 years old and I look back upon my life, and I say, I climbed this mountain and I built this multi-billion dollar company and I helped rescue this many children from slavery, from being trafficked, which of them matters at all? He's like, yeah, you're right, you've got to do this. Just a big of a problem is child trafficking because I thought this was some middle ages shit. I didn't think that this was the sort of thing that happened and certainly not in relatively developed countries.

Yeah. Yeah, it's human trafficking as a whole. It's the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, and the second most profitable. Surpass the illegal arms trade, and many think it's going to surpass the drug trade within the next couple of years. And, you know, a quote out of the movie is that we had Jim Cavizel say, because you can sell a bag of Coke once. You can sell a child, a 5-10-year-old child.

You can sell them 5-10, 15 times a day for the next 5-10 years. And it's a big problem. Now, I will say this, what's depicted in the Sound of Freedom movie? Those things happened. Those children, those stories that we pulled from all these rescue missions, we compiled a bunch of those stories together to create the narrative for the movie itself. So yes, children are taken just like that. There's all kinds of different ways that these kids are brought in, but the majority of child trafficking is right under our noses. Over 70% of children that are being sold for sex, sleep in their own beds at night.

And people are surprised at that. They're like, oh, that's not traffic. No, they're being sold by their uncle. They're being sold by their cousin or their babysitter, even by their parents. And it happens a lot where the parents were involved. And so, as we're trying to really fix this problem, yes, sending in some Navy SEALs and going undercover

and finding these kids and pulling them out, yeah, that's all big and Rambo and everybody gets behind it, yeah, let's go fix this problem. But the reality is every one of us needs to look in our own backyard, in our own basement and our own homes and say what kind of things are potentially dangerous for my own children in the relationships that they have and the people

that they go over to, et cetera. Literally one in every four women on the planet has been a victim of sexual violence as a child and most of them in their own homes. The number of men is smaller, but it's still a serious problem. Yeah, I've seen Tim Kennedy has shared videos like this where it's some car circles the outside of a playground where it's a Saturday morning and the kids are playing tennis or something and someone comes over and says, oh, I've here to pick you up and mum's not here or whatever.

Like that almost like taken Liam Neeson, daughter's style, cartel stuff, is the more outrageous, the more kind of attention grabbing, but as you've suggested there, a lot of the time, the problem is actually a lot closer to home. It really is. And as people leave the movie studio, Matt is hell saying, okay, I wanna do something.

I wanna do something. I want to do something. What do I do? The worst thing they can do is try to go be a Rambo and go into some other country and find these kids. You know, you're gonna get killed, you're gonna get arrested, that doesn't work, right? The best thing you can do is actually go home and hug your kids.

People are like, well, how's that gonna fix it? No, the children that are being brought into this are from foster programs, broken families, runaways. Those are the ones that are being brought into this are from foster programs, broken families, runaways. Those are the ones that are being actually traffic, traffic, like that. The kids that are being abused and traffic from their own homes, these are ones who have super low self-esteem. They don't have a relationship with you as their father, such that where they can come in and say, hey, dad, you know what, I'm really uncomfortable when I have to hug Uncle

Harry or when I go over to someone's house, whatever. Those are things that we need to have that relationship with our kids to keep them safe. Absolutely. Who are the biggest consumers of human trafficking, child trafficking, and sort of trafficking related material? Americans. Americans. North Americans. Yeah, North American. The United States is the number one producer and consumer of child pornography. And the number one consumer of pedophilia, especially traveling abroad. So one of the reasons why I was recruited was that a lot of these traffickers were used to wealthy, well-spoken, financially secure, connected businessmen who had big ass egos that, guys like Jeffrey Epstein, that decide they want to go and have this big sex party in this foreign country.

And so it wasn't an odd thing for me to come down saying, yeah, I'll fund your sex hotel. I'll put eight million bucks in two. What does it say? But what does it say that they looked at you and said, yeah, that guy reminds me of a pedophile. Like what? Okay, this is funny as shit right here. Are you ready for this story?

So, so, Sean Ray, I wasn't there for this meeting, but I was told that the Homeland Security agent that Jim Kovisel plays in the movie, he was trying to find somebody could play this role. And I was told that the Homeland Security agent, that Jim Kovisal plays in the movie, he was trying to find somebody who could play this role. He was in a meeting and he had Josh Romney, Mitt Romney's son, was there. And Sean Ray, a sea attorney general, a couple of others, and he says, you know, this is what I need. I need somebody who can play this role that would be safe in this dangerous place in

whatever. And Sean says, well, have you ever met Paul Hutchinson? And Josh Romney said, well, Paul'd be safe in the stages, place in whatever, and Sean says, well, have you ever met Paul Hutchinson? And Josh, Josh Romney said, well, Paul would be perfect. And later I told him, I says, I don't think that's a compliment. I said, you know.

Yeah. So, okay, you mentioned about the America thing, which is terrifying and mind blowing. How interconnected and global is this? Are we, are people children from South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, are they being flown over? The children and human traffickers tend to stay within a particular sort of geographic net? Here's what we found is in most of these rescue operations that about half or more of the children were from that country. We're brought in from super poor areas,

the parents were duped, whatever they were brought in. Half of them know that we're brought from other places. In fact, that first rescue that was depicted in the sound of freedom, I was sitting there on this chair and these traffickers brought out these four virgins scared to death. One of them was an 11 year old-old boy brought in from Haiti. They gave him cocaine that morning because he was so scared.

I mean, what kind of effed up monster thinks that that's attractive, right? It's sickening to me, but these children, there were children from Asia, there were children from Dominican Republic, children from Haiti, children from all over there. In fact, the last one that I did before I came out from being undercover, I was in Ecuador. And most of the kids that they brought were trafficked in from Venezuela because there was a lot of upheaval in the country and there's poverty that's there. And it's super easy for these traffickers to go in and bring these kids into other countries, promising them a job,

and of course, their job is being trafficked. Yeah, when everyone's starving, and we'll do anything for food, the vigilance that you're going to have against your child being trafficked is gonna go through the floor when you're trying to keep food on the table. Okay, so you get this phone call, your business partners think that you're a crazy person,

you decide that you're going to go to Columbia two days hence. Actually, first off, you mentioned that you had a background that predisposed you to be able to be in kinetic or high-pressure situations. What's that background? A couple things. We found that our best undercover operators are not... we had special forces guys with a lot of them, which is great. But the best ones were ones that were highly trained in hand-to-hand combat. Are you familiar with Krav Maga? I am.

Yeah, so for your listeners, you don't know that other martial arts, karate, and whatnot, bow to your sensei, three points when you kick them in the leg, Krav is brick to their head and go home to your family. It's his really special forces, hand-to-hand combat. And it's the most lethal on earth. Every move, they don't breathe, they don't see, they don't walk, I can take away a gun faster than they can pull a trigger every single time.

And it's that kind of training that you have to have when you're in that situation. You don't have guns and night vision goggles and a spotter, You just don't. You're face to face with guys selling you eight-year-old children that would kill you in a heartbeat if they knew who you really were. And so being able to be super,

and a lot of it, we never had, I served on 70 undercover estimations. Not once did I have to use my mind. I was gonna say, did anything ever get kinetic? Oh, things got super dangerous, super dangerous a couple times. But not to the point, now we had four traffickers that actually ended up dying on missions, but they were killed by each other, by other traffickers and, yeah, that's exactly right.

That's all right, we'll take care of that. But there were some super dangerous situations, but never to the point where we had to be involved. I was sitting and talking, I was standing on a sidewalk, talking to one trafficker in Latin America. We called him Diablo. He had devil horns that were tattooed on his forehead. And there was another trafficker we had connected with earlier. We called him the Candyman.

He had a candy shop and he was selling, he was making his big money selling kids, but that's how he's connecting with people and customers. Well, candy man saw me talking with, with the oblo, and I've got video of this. He, he, he walks right up to him, and I kind of step away and boom, the clocks him, throws him out in the middle of the street, they're beating the shit out of each other right there in front of us over this turf war because candy man was like, no, these guys are going to, they're going to, when

we go into a city, we want to make sure we connect with every single traffic or this there. So we don't just take out one or two and the others feel in. So we're in there long enough and they always start fighting with each other. Okay. So you've got this background in a hand-to-hand combat. That means that you're going to be able to at least control yourself, powermpathetically when the confrontation perhaps happens. But like, I just wonder how many decades of Israeli special forces fighting practice you've done, you're not trained. Like you're not trained for this.

I'm sure that you've had some coaching to deal with mergers and acquisitions and hostile takeovers and stuff for your business, which is also, you know, I got some communication and I've spent time in boardrooms and blah, blah, blah. But none of these things are anything close to special forces, information, technology, surveillance, counterterrorism, none of this. And they've given me 48 hours and during that time, you need to get yourself over there. So talk us through the story. You're on the plane, you're heading down there, you arrive, what happens next? Actually, I was supposed to fly right into Cartagena. Well, there was a layover in Bogota.

And during the layover, I was supposed to get in Cartagena at that night, and the meeting with the traffickers was the next morning. Well, I get into Bogota and something happened, they counseled the flight going into Cartagena and everybody was pissed like we're in the airport. Now, realize this, I had come from a wealth conference, right? I had, I had a thousand dollar cufflinks on my, on my cuffs, right?

I was a target. And at the time, at the time, Bogota, Columbia, it was twenty five dollars is what you needed to pay somebody to knock somebody off, right? So, so if, if I looked like I was worth any more than twenty five dollars, I was a target. So I'm in a I'm in a custom suit. I've got I've got a custom cufflinks. I've got a my Gucci bag. I was going down there on purpose dressed as this wealthy guy that was going to pay for this thing, right? And they counsel the plane. Everybody's pissed and throwing things in mad that they counseled it. I'm like, okay, this airport's not safe. And if it's not going out, I need to go get a taxi. I go outside. I get this taxi, and he looked like he was legit.

I says, hey, take me to the Marriott. Boom, he passes the Marriott. I'm like, what, what, what, the next exit, next exit? I'm like, the Marriott, a key. He goes, no, no, hotel, hotel. Right? He takes another exit, and this is a shitty part of town. I'm talking, there's prostitutes, and I'm dressed like the biggest target on the planet.

And there's big thugs that are saying he goes, oh tell, oh tell, tell me to get out. I'm like, no, there's no way in hell I'm getting out. He had to, I'm sure he had to deal with those guys. Fortunately, I had donated a bunch of money to the police department and helped them with some things. And I got an honorary colonel badge, right? He's a freaking badge badge, right? I'm digging through my bag, I pull it out,

and I'm like, Policia, Mariat, Ora, Ora, now my shitty Spanish, right? They'll take me to the Mariat and he's like, okay, so, so that was my first experience in Columbia, dressed like a target. Of course, that next morning, and we get to the Mariat, there's guys with full automatic weapons

out in front as guards. I mean, this is a serious place. In front of the elevator going up, there's guys with automatic weapons. And so the next morning, I get back to the airport, fly in, and I'm thinking the whole time. I'm thinking John was right. You know, my business partner, have you thought through this? I'm thinking, yeah, that was that maybe I should have thought through this. That was that was super dangerous already in, in being this position. And the reality is they didn't have time to set up on that first operation. Now, the 60 plus after that, I was Paul Stone, Paul Black, Paul, you know,

all of Paul Steele undercover profiles, everything set up. They didn't have time for that. We had 24 hours from the time that he was showing the traffickers. This is the guy that's going to come and fund this. I went down his Paul Hutchinson. That by itself was dangerous, right? Super dangerous. And so, you know, they pick me up at the airport. These two Navy SEALs big ass dudes, you know, they're my show bodyguards and my real bodyguards. And a fully armored car. I'm like, damn, this is a sketch. And we pull into this restaurant. And there's this balcony that's overlooking the beach,

and we're parked there on the beach. And these guys are, you know, show they're going out looking around, but the traffickers are looking from the top with the undercover CSI agents and whatnot that are up there. And so I get out, I walk in, and these guys are they're pissing themselves.

They're like, yeah, this is the guy, this kind of fun, our missions, and whatever else. But I'm like, I'm in a dangerous place. If, if, if, if they, the only thing that really kept it going was the fact that they thought that their whole world was going to be made right by me, you know, there's, there's no reason to take me out there because I'm going to fund their project and they're going to be making tens of millions of dollars a year off these Americans that were coming down. So that's the only thing that really kept me safe in that situation. Negotiated with them, sat there halfway through the meeting, one of them in the movie, this is depicted with me and the Mercedes where my driver

gives me a picture of this 11 year old girl. In real life, I was already there. I was sitting across from the traffickers and this one he was so I was willing to take a look at the project, he goes, Pablo, I have a gift for you. I said, really, what's your gift? And he hands me his phone. And there's a picture of this little 11 year old girl. He said, this is princess. She's still a virgin. She's 11. And start talking about these horrific things I could do this little girl. And that galvanized my commitment to, to, in fact, the Navy sealed it with standing right behind me. He's like, I need to go take a look at the restaurant, whatever, make sure everything

was all safe. Later on in our debriefing, he's like, you know, I almost unholstered my weapon right there and shot him in the head because that little girl looks like my little girl at home. And I realized that if I broke my undercover, we could lose the rest of those kids. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's what we want. And then he's like, yeah, we just took delivery of someone.

I realized if we can get these kids out before they're ever raped the first time, that would be a miracle. And I said, Fuego, I said, you have more virgins. You go, yeah, I got three or four more. I said, you have to bring those to the party too. He goes on and on, they're too expensive. Too expensive.

I'm already paying $25,000 for this party. I'm paying $500 per child for 50 children just for two hours in the afternoon with them. He goes, hey, you already paid $25,000. You want to F the other virgins and can't cost you extra $2,000, maybe $5,000 for that little one, is you can cost you maybe $10,000 more.

I was so pissed. I mean, I'm in a really expensive suit. And I'm like, and I'm like, you don't think I can afford an extra $10,000? He's like, oh, no, have faith. No, I said, I want every one of those virgins at my party. They down well better be virgins when they get there. They're not for you.

They're for me and my guys. You understand? He goes, oh, yeah, have faith. I understand this stupid smile in his face. So two weeks later, we fly back in, they guys meet with the US Embassy, the Columbia Federal agents, and that's where this thing happened. So were you involved? Did you need to be back there at all when stuff was going on?

Yeah, yeah. So two weeks later, I flew back in because I'm having the party and they need to see that I'm there with my guys and they're going to bring the kids. So we rented this island. There was this private island out away and we told the traffickers, meet on the bank area, on the mainland with all the kids. They showed up with 54 children.

Almost every one of them were under the age of 16 years old, many of them were kidnapped from other countries. And I'm sitting there, you know, pretending like this is my big party. Now my buddies from my party are all former special forces guys and stuff that are all hanging around. But I'm sitting there, these guys showed up with these kids. We put the kids in a safe place

and it's kind of a cabana area in the house and we have this table outside and we're sitting there negotiating with these guys. And we have undercover cameras to be able to catch everything they're saying because we don't want the children to ever have to stand trial and testify. We need to, and that was a dark conversation. Super dark because we have to get them to say, how old the kids were, what they were willing to do, where they got them, all of this stuff in that conversation. So we could, and it was really, really dark.

In fact, we had a situation that was super dangerous. We were supposed to order tequila. Once we had all the information, we're like, order tequila, and that was the sign where, you know, we had, they have 40 federal agents that were on this case. Four of them were posing as their maids and their waiters and our cooks. The rest of them were there to storm the party.

They weren't very good cooks, but they're armed, right? We're supposed to give this signal to them, and they're supposed to come out and call and two, three minutes later, they're supposed to storm it all. So, soon as we have all the information, we're like, okay, Kekela, sort of, Kekela, let's get the party started. Boom, we ordered Kekela, two minutes past five, ten, fifteen. It was forty-five minutes. Now, in the movie, we depicted it like they were waiting for the other kids. The, in reality, the kids were already there, but forty-five minutes later, before the agents actually, we, we, we, we,

we found out later that it was, it was somebody from the child protective services, the boss of all of them that slept through her alarm and missed the boat coming out. And she's like, no, we cannot do the sting without me there. Where's the problem was we had just started the party to Kila. It's time to bring out cocaine and the kids and everything else. And we have to figure out how to delay for 45 minutes. So what did you do? Well, this was, now I don't know what toot my own horn, but this is where it was a damn good thing that I had done a bunch of mergers and acquisitions and business stuff, right? Because they get up and one says, oh, I'm going to go get the kids, I'm going to go get the cocaine,

I'm like, shit, we can't do that. So I said, guys, guys, guys, you know what? If you bring out the kids in the cocaine, I'm gonna get fucked up for the next two days. I'm not gonna be able to think, I'm gonna have a such great time. But you've proven to me what you said you could do. Our deal was this, we're gonna have a party. You show up with the inventory you have,

if I'm happy with that inventory, I'm gonna fund your project. So let's figure that out right now. Somebody bring me a notebook and a pen. Boom, they bring me notebook and pen. And I start drawing out this business plan. Chris, this is where it got dark, right? Because this business plan penciled. And it was, it was horrific. I'm like, okay. So with this business plan, we drew out what the, what the resort was going to look like. I'm still delay, delay, delay. Where's the freaking agents, right? And then I'm like, okay, let's put together a spreadsheet here. Let's talk about the cost of goods.

What is it going to, what is it cost for you to bring in a little Colombian girl? Oh, $2,500. We can get one. Okay. What is it cost for an American, little blonde girl? What was that going to cost? 25,000. I'm writing these numbers down, right? And then, I don't know how dark you want me to go, but, but,000? I'm writing these numbers down, right? And then I don't know how dark you want me to go, but, but okay, I'm going there. I'm like, okay, so you're charging me 2000 to $5,000 for these virgins, right? Are you just fucking me over or is that really what you're

charging? They're like, yeah, yeah, that's what really charged time. Write these numbers down. I say, okay, after you rent them out the first time, then how much does the cost go down? And then the female trafficker, the one that in the movie was the one that was running the modeling agency, she says, oh no, she said, we can rent them out more than once as a virgin. And I'm like, well, I'm like, I got my pants, I'm like, what do you mean? She said about $200 for an operation

to sew back their high, man. And I'm like, what? I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I mean, not only are they selling these children like their cattle, they're talking about things like that. And I thought, what is the world come to where any person on the planet thinks that that's okay? Any person on the planet.

And so I'm like, okay, that's getting heavy. So I'd change the subject. I'm like, okay, I'm still delaying. I'm like, okay, I'll fund your modeling agency. Let's talk about that. Tell me the details. And a lot of the stuff that went into the movie was from that conversation.

The details that we got of where they were getting the kids and how they brought them in. Finally, I mean, it was half an hour into and I still hadn't, agents hadn't come. Finally, I said, guys, you know what, I like what you're, where you're going with this. You've proven that you can do it all. Anything I invest in, I want control. I'm taking 55%.

I'll give you the money. I said, there's another 45% and I pointed at one of the guys. His name was Eduardo. I said, you get, you've done most of the work. I think you should get 35. The other guys can split the other 10. And then I'm like, ah, I says, you know what, once you guys figure it out, I want to I said, you've done most of the work. I think you should get 35. The other guys can split the other 10. And then I'm like, oh, I says, you know what, once you guys figured out,

I want to pencil this right here. I want to put document, whatever it is where, and they argued, boom, these traffickers against each other for the next 15 minutes until the agents came, whoo, arrested everybody and threw us all on the ground. But that was sketch. And it was a damn good thing that I knew what I was doing

when it came to writing out business plans. What is it like when the armed forces finally get there and blast through, like is it just the highest adrenaline that you've ever felt? Chaos, chaos, because they've got live rounds, right? And they're pointing them at all of us. And the bad guys have to think that we were arrested and taken to the US to stand trial, right?

They can't think that we were even involved. And so we had Sean, the attorney general, this was before he actually became a G. He was standing right behind me. He was up, we call them in the sombra, the shadow, right? He was really my translator because my Spanish sucks. And as soon as he all came in, he takes me to the ground to protect me,

you know, as my protector, whatever, and we're laying there on the ground in the sand, ants crawling over the top of us. They're throwing all the traffickers down. Everybody's getting handcuffed, and we're laying there as they're interrogating them, and it's going on and on. Now, they take the traffickers off the island,

and but the traffickers see us being laid down. And then the child protective service that people are in with the children, and then they were able to get up, and I went into the side part of the house where some of our bags were. And I'm getting one of the bags. One of my operators was there. And because it had a grass roof on this building, you could hear what was going on in the other rooms. And you could hear the kids in there. And they were laughing. And they were

you know joking with the child protective service that we're trying to call them down and that sound of freedom versus the crying that I heard half an hour before that was the most beautiful sound that I ever heard and I started crying and I turned to the operator and I said wow I spent my whole life making rich people richer. I want to make a difference. whole life making rich people richer, I want to make it difference. Obviously, what's happened with these young children is that they've been psychologically manipulated in a variety of ways to get them to collaborate or at least not protest. How do you or the child protective services people get past that level of manipulation

when trying to convince the kids to now trust you was not someone that's again, this is just the next set of traffickers that are going to sell me to some other awful person. Well, first of all, the kids in all the missions that I've done, the kids don't know that we were the good guys, you know? And we have a whole separate team that goes and helps them with the rehabilitation and working through that. I will say that's where the real rescue is. Pulling them out of hell is the easy part.

Pulling the hell out of them, that's the hard part, you know, and helping them heal. And I will say that you put these kids in a healthy home that has the love that they need. We have a wonderful organization that we partner with. So my foundation is the Child Liberation Foundation. You can go to liberatechildren.org and find us there. But we partner with a number of other ones. And there's one I love. It's out of Guatemala called the Hope of Life Foundation. And they've helped over 30,000 victims recover. And their model is beautiful. They have this property that's way away from the city. And they have this farm and this ranch area. And then they they have poor families, a mom and a dad and maybe one child or whatever that can afford

Living where they were and then they have wealthy donors that will come down and say okay I'm gonna build a house something and cost 10 grand for a beautiful two or three bedroom house there And they bring this family in and they say okay, here's the deal We're gonna give you a house and we're gonna give you a job and we're gonna give you three more children Right, and so there's these children that have been taken from these horrible situations. And instead of just putting them into a foster home or something that's going to be perpetuating the problem,

they put them into a healthy home with a healthy family that can give them the love they need. And then of course, you've got the therapy and the psychology and everything else as part of it. The hard ones, Chris, are the ones that, that here in the US, this is the hardest ones. The ones that were abused by their uncle, by their dad, or were sold by their mom when they were younger.

And then their entire life, they've had to hold this in. And they've built these layers and layers and layers of protection around themselves. And then finally, they get to the point where they're talking about in 10 years of therapy. They're still having a hard time breaking through it. In fact, the average age of somebody that talks about child abuse that they went through, the average age is 52 years old.

That's my age. You know, I have grandkids. They've spent their entire life dealing with that kind of trauma. So helping them work through that, that's a whole different ballgame. You put these children in a healthy home. It's amazing how fast they can bounce back. That's crazy. So, okay, you do this first one and that seems like a real baptism of fire to be the first mission that you go on. Why or how do you decide that you're going to continue to do this? I understand the motivation, right? Like, I'm all in and this thing's terrible and I can enact change and so on and so forth.

But you're supposed to be a businessman. You're supposed to have responsibilities, you have family, kids, you know, other shit to do. And now you've got to what, like just Bruce Wayne Batman your life in half and go off and do this stuff. How does how do you fit it in? How does it all that integration work? So I'll tell you a quick story. I bad a year or two into doing the rescues a few years into it. I I I got into divorce. I was with I was dating a girl that I ended up marrying later, but I was dating her and and she had we're getting pretty serious and she had a little nine year old and 11 year old boy of her own.

And she said, I'd come back from one of the pre-ops and a week later I was going down for the actual sting the operation. And she said, you know what, Paul? I've been thinking about this a lot. And if we're going to make this work, we've got to change that. As is this, I have so much anxiety every time you go.

I just can't do it. And I felt compassion for where she was coming from because yeah, I'm sure that was super difficult. But her two boys had a little girl that was from the neighborhood that was playing. And I think your name was Jessica. And I said, she was in the other room. I said, Hey, Jessica, come in here for a minute. She comes in.

I said, Hold her, you. She said on 10, almost 11. I said, What do you do for fun? She goes, Well, I ride my bike. I like to sing. I like to dance. I said, what do you want to be when you grow up? She said maybe be a dancer, maybe be a nurse. Beautiful dreams for 11-year-old child, right? I had her go play in the other room and I turned to my girlfriend and I said, the children that those traffickers showed me yesterday were her age. And if I don't go back down, somebody very likely is going

to buy them. And can you imagine the lives that they live? They deserve to want to enjoy writing their bikes. They deserve to want to grow up to be a dancer or a nurse. And just because those kids, maybe their parents don't have the resources I do or the background, doesn't mean they love them any less. Or even if the kids' parents were involved, which happens, it doesn't mean that that child is worth any less than any of the other ones. So you had to make a lot of sacrifices personally in order to be able to keep this thing going. Okay, so what were the most dangerous situations

that you found yourself in? I mean, it doesn't sound like that first one was completely undangeless, you're being thrown on the ground. There's live ammunition, there's a lot of problems and complications, but was there something where you thought this could really, really go nuclear, pretty quickly? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So the first year and a half, I was going in as Paul Stone, right? Paul Stone is a wealthy playboy. I've got pictures of Lamborghini's, for whatever else. And that was actually fairly safe. Because once I showed up,

the undercover guys were already with the guys, they said, listen, Paul Stone's coming with his party, no knives, no guns, no problem, you know. And it is pretty controlled. We've got a lot of guys there. After about a year and a half, I was asked to start doing deep cover. And this dangerous for the wealthy guy to do deep cover.

So I had to change my profile. Instead, I'm working for a rich guy, right? And so I'm now Paul Steele. And Paul Steele is working for a guy with money named Mateo. And he's, so I then, because I had done enough of these things, I then started going in two in the morning, downtown, Port of Prince Hady, connecting I had done enough of these things, I then started going to in the morning, downtown, Port-a-Prince Haiti, connecting with the worst part of humanity that are selling it, your kids, and finding where they're holding.

Because our goal is to get to where they're holding them. If it's not just taking down the pedophiles, not just taking down the pims, but we've got to get to their suppliers that are physically controlling the kids. Because then I can geotag the location of where they're keeping them or they bring the children out so that we can then do the sting and rescue them from there. So that's the goal is to get to the boss's boss. And I was in Latin America. I met with this guy, super dangerous man.

He's six foot three, killed lots of people. And everybody coward to him, everybody. Everybody, all the drug dealers, they say, yeah, this guy is the boss, this guy is the boss. Well, connected with him, told him, listen, I'll pay you a couple hundred bucks each time you, I can't, my boss will kill me if I taste the candy, but I have to verify you have the candy.

So I'll pay you if you show me where they are. Well, he showed us some kids. We knew that he was legit. The next morning he calls, Pablo, I have to show you something, after me, after me. I said, okay, so we meet, he says, he jumps in the car.

He said, all right, we gotta go somewhere, we gotta go. I said, we're gonna go see some more kids, I'll pay you some more money if you show me where you're keeping the other ones. He goes, no, he says, you know I'm the boss. He says, you know I'm the king, right? I said, what?

He goes, I'm the boss. I said, oh yeah, it's very obvious you're the boss of this whole city. He goes, every boss has a boss. And I'm gonna take you to see my boss. He's in charge of, and this guy was man in charge, right? I get out of the car. And this guy's talking back and forth, super dangerous conversation. He says, he says, he said, give me your business card. I pull out my business card, my undercover one, Paul Steele. He looks at it. He says, tell me your

phone number. Now, if I didn't have, now we saw at least three, and this one I met with him later, there was eight of these guys that were watching us that were at guns behind that, that building everything else. And he says, he says, tell me your phone number. And I had a memorize just like that. And he says, tell me your address. And then he says, show me your phone. And I pulled out my phone. He says, show it to me. So I've, I've shown my phone to him. And he dials the phone number that's on my undercover to make sure it's ringing to my phone. And it rang. And he smiles. He says, I like you. He ended up bringing 24 children. He was he was the king. He was the boss of that whole area. The federal police said that they had been trying to get

in touch with him for three years. And I got his phone number in 24 hours. So, but that was super dangerous. If I didn't have that number memorized, if I didn't have all of the things set up properly where my undercover phone was ringing to that, we would have been done right there. What would the places you went to? You mentioned an area of Haiti there, but I imagine it's been like a world tour of the most destitute awful locations for this stuff. What are some of the others that stand out? More than half the children that were rescued in Thailand were sold

by their own families. Super just poverty there and feeling like you know what? If you're going to be better off in a brothel and we can now have enough money to be able to pay for the food for our kids, that was super sad. There were a lot of children, a lot of children, and the island of Haiti is also shared with the Dominican Republic. And the DR, there was, we did a lot of operations that were there in the Dominican Republic. And there was a lot of very, very young kids, very, very sad situation there.

All over Latin America, some of the best law enforcement I've ever worked with as the guys in the Federal Police in Mexico. We followed a bunch of leads there in Mexico from different areas and trafficking to other beach areas for the Americans. We've been in Nicaragua, in Costa Rica. We've been a lot of areas of Latin America down in Peru.

How did you avoid getting into it? It just seems like you do the 70 times, you you do anything 70 times things are going to go wrong You know the first one that you ever did it's 45 minutes waiting given The people are doing this aren't exactly going to be the most balanced in the world They're not they're not they haven't got to the position that they're in because they're reasonable It just seems Surprising to me that you managed to get through so many operations

without, like, beyond someone getting punched in the face. We had one of our operators got stabbed 27 times. We had another, he lived through it and he was in Dominican Republic. He was just fighting out. They count every single little poke as a stab, you know, when they're doing the Taking the hospital afterwards, but we had another one in Who we had we had got to pretty high level Political leaders in this country that were involved

I'm not gonna say the country but pretty high level political leaders that were involved and had taken down some corrupt judges and whatnot. And our top operator there that was working in the federal police ended up dying of a heart attack the same week that three other political enemies were died of a heart attack. And so, you know, I count that as a tragedy of one of our operators as well. How much of an emotional toll did all of this take on you? That's heavy. It's heavy.

When you're in that level of darkness, it's super heavy. And I'll just tell you what happened. And about seven years ago, I had been doing operations for three and a half years, about six, six and a half years ago. And one of my operators came to me and he said, Paul, do you trust me? I said, yeah, I trust you 100%. And I mean, we're doing this. Now, I was living in this, I was still Paul Stone.

You know, I wasn't Paul Fuck, I wasn't Paul Hutchins. I was Paul Fuck, I was still Paul Stone. I wasn't Paul Hutchinson, I was Paul Fucking Hutchinson. I had this huge lifestyle. I had the best stories on the planet. You know, it was just that energy, right? And it was cool. I was just using this big ego to help go rescue kids. But from a heart standpoint, I had dysfunctional relationships.

I was halfway through my second marriage on the way out. I mean, it was just super just dysfunctional relationships. I was on my halfway through my second marriage on the way out. I mean, it was just super just dysfunctional as a whole. And it was that toll was taking place on some of my operators as well. And one of them came in and he said, Paul, he said, I know that you've been searching for something that can help a lot of these trauma victims, especially the adult ones who have been holding it in for a long time. He said, we found something, and I think it's gonna help you as well. I'm like, I don't need help.

I'm Paul F. and Hutchinson. No, it will. And I was invited into my first guided meditation, plant medicine journey experience, and it changed everything for me, everything. It transformed my life. It helped me. I had all of these just negative emotion that was just bound up inside me and I was able to let it go, let go of stuff for my own childhood, let go of stuff that was created from my own air against

my own ego and let go of a lot of that negative energy of being in the pit of hell. Did that make you less effective at your job afterwards? The more I did, the more I couldn't do it. Yeah. You know, I just, yeah, I've now, you know, I did some Rescumitions last year, but that was almost a three- high-iness from the time that I had my last ones before that. I was in Ecuador last year and I had changed so much from the man that I was six years

ago that being in that darkness and seeing that, I thought, this is a reason why I decided to go public. I thought, there's got to be a better way. There's something that I can do to use my resources, my voice, my experiences to end child trafficking that doesn't take me into that. I can, I can, for the rest of my life, I can share these stories of being in the pit of hell, but I don't have to go back there. And I can fix it from this angle instead. Yeah. If, if the likeortem on going and doing an operation

is that you need a course of I began in Iawaska to be able to get through it, then I don't know. I feel like, yeah, it's a high personal price to pay. One of the things that's obviously very interesting about the sound of freedom is how controversial its release has been. It's called an awful lot of press. Why do you think it is that it was so controversial for what is a relatively non-political movie? Yeah. We had pushback from the beginning, Chris. We went in right from the beginning, we went into guys like Paramount and Sony and Lionsgate and had the story of that rescue.

And they were interested, but they came with conditions where they wanted full control. They could have had one of my operators touching a child in the middle of the operation and just make it, you know, it's stuff like that. No, that's not what it's about. You know, we wanted to have it from the heart. So we knew that it had to be self-funded.

And so I put the first money in to do all the script and then even after that from a creation of the movie itself, we knew that those guys wouldn't do the work that we needed to have done. So we painstakingly found the very best guys to do it. And then the movie was finished five years ago, five years ago, and we were ready for distribution. And we ended up getting pushback everywhere at the traditional distribution models. The only way we were able to bring it to the world is to go around the existing system, right? The existing system of control that is put in place by big media, big tech, and big Hollywood to control what kind of stuff is being put into your mind

and your kids' mind, we have to go around that. And so going through angel studios was something where we could go from the people for the people, right? Where it was supported with this grassroots movement and this pay-up-forward type of a thing is what really worked. And so I will say this, there have been things

where some of the actors have been very, very political in the last few years. You know, Jim Kovisol is an amazing, amazing actor. But in terms of taking a broad swath through the population, say, this is something we can all get behind, it doesn't work if you're talking about a drain of chrome and QAnne and things and whatever else, right? And so my answer to that is this. I see myself as a conservative. And now I've voted that way most of my life.

But this is not a political issue. This isn't a rich versus poor. This isn't a black versus white. This isn't a right versus left. This is about the children. And until we can come together on that, then we're going to continue to have these problems. And so it shouldn't be political, but unfortunately some people see in this. Is it a red flag given Hollywood's history with people like Jeffrey Epstein and stuff

like that? Obviously, the conspiracy theories almost write themselves with a film like this about a topic like this, not being greenlit. And yet, you know, for every conspiracy theory, there's probably a perfectly legitimate reason for why this film wouldn't be able to be worked for whatever reason. Well, well, have you got a grander conspiracy in your head? Yeah. So, so pre-launch, I could probably get behind the, the notion that, hey, I don't think this is what the public really wants.

And so this is, so pre-launch, I could understand that some of them were turning us down, because maybe it wasn't something. So, I could maybe look at that, but now post-launch with the massive success and the fact that the masses are wanting to go to it, and it's gaining so much momentum. With these guys now blatantly coming out against it, you have to ask yourself why, okay? And I'll tell you this, it's not just the children in Colombia that are in slavery, it's you and I, it's the average adult that allows themselves

to be controlled by this mass psychosis that a very few people have decided this is the agenda, this is what's going to be fed to you, this is what's going to be fed to your kids, and this is the road that you're going to slowly be led down until we get to this point. And as soon as we take a step back and say, no, we're not interested in that. We're not interested in movies that are promoting things that are not in line with my core values. Yet we've spent so many years quietly stepping back, saying, oh, it's not that bad, it's not that bad.

And every time we say it's not that bad, it gets a little bit worse. And so now this is coming out blatantly in their face. No, this is something that we can all get behind and they're like, Oh, no, we can't we can't have that message out. What? What do you think is the road that people are trying to be walked down here? Obviously you've spent not only before you started doing this because of your wealth level that to a lot of high level individuals. Actually, let's ask this first. Outside of your time working with the child trafficking stuff, what are the sorts of people that you've met

at the wealth level that you're at and above? Have you met any people who you've been scared of having the sort of resources that they do? People that achieve very, very extreme wealth have done it for a particular reason. One of the things that is often a limiting factor for people with nefarious ideologies or views about the world or plans that they want to enact is that they don't have the resources to be able to make it happen. And as you get toward the multi, multi, multi billion dollar network individual, you end up with somebody who might very well have the psychopathology and essentially unlimited

ability to make things happen. Have you met people in business meetings or at these conferences or at dinners that are terrifying to sit across from? What's that like? Absolutely. I'll tell you a story. 2012. I had just surpassed $2 billion in assets under management. I was the number one performing real estate investment fund in the US and started getting invited to different conferences with the ultra elite. And I got invited to a very special one, the top of the top of the top. We're talking multi-generational billion dollar families

that are really pulling the strings. And now, I know a lot of wealthy families that are really good people, but we're in this room. And I was there supposing to, I was gonna speak about some of our investment strategies because we were in this room. And I was there supposing to, I was going to speak about some of our investment strategies because we were doing really well. I mean, high double digit returns. And so, but I was sitting there and this guy came up before I did and he had a spreadsheet

and he posted up on the wall and it was population. He says that this, you know, we're at this population here, we're going to hit 8 billion people by 2024 and 9 billion here, et cetera, et cetera. And then he said, he said the problem is, he said, the baby boomerage, we've known about it our whole life, the starting in 2016, the percentage of people that are over 65 years old and aging out of the workforce, he says it will become completely unsustainable. And there's no way that we can sustain financially. The people moving out of the workforce, he says it will become completely unsustainable. And there's no way that we can sustain financially. The people moving out of the workforce, the population, he said, and it was

a pitch, an absolute pitch for population control, right there in front of these guys. And I was sought with my own eyes right there. And he talked about how with the new medical advancements, He talked about how with the new medical advancements, how literally, if you have enough money, 20 years from now, and you're relatively good help, you can live to 200 years old, right? With the medical advancements taking off like they are, et cetera. And then he says something about how the ideal population for this earth is about 500 million,

a seven billion people less than we had at the time, right? And so I'm sitting there thinking, is everybody getting started throwing up here? No, he got a standing ovation, right? That scared the shit out of me. Realizing that there are people in that ultra elite mindset that truly think they see us just like that female trafficker was seeing those kids that could be sold

a second time. You know, as absolute non-human, how can you feel that way about your fellow man? That's exactly what I saw firsthand. Yeah, I have a friend, Daniel, who sat opposite somebody, not too dissimilar, and this person was overtly talking about being an Apex predator. He said, when you're an Apex predator, you don't care about the prey. And he was being sort of very callous about the externalities

of whatever his business practices were or whatever his plans were for what he was doing professionally or personally or whatever it might be. And yeah, it's interesting to consider what happens to the human psyche when you you have such a long ladder that we're not evolved to have, right? You know, we're in small groups within a tribe of 150, small groups of, you know, between 30 and 40, little little little pockets. And then to be able to go, okay, I can no longer be first out of 40, I can be like 100 out of 7.8

billion people. It's almost like a vertigo, but status vertigo. And I wonder what it does to the psyche of someone that wasn't built to well in a well-balanced manner, be able to deal with that. Yeah. Well, it's one of the reasons why I was recruited to do the undercover work is, unfortunately, you take guys who have had a shitty childhood and they got low self-esteem and a huge ego and a big checkbook and they pretty much conquered everything and they've gotten to the point where they are effing everybody and that doesn't really do it for them anymore and so it's this apex predator type of a mindset and it grows and grows into this point where

they think it's okay if I rape a 12 year old I was right to 12 years old what is that man you know and that's that's that that that energy that unfortunately is the type of guys that are going down paying 50 or $100,000 for one of these sex parties with kids in Columbia. That's why I was chosen. That's why it wasn't so strange for traffickers in multiple countries for the operators to come in and say, Hey, there's this this profile of this Paul Stone and it's got all this stuff and he's coming down. Yeah, of course, yeah, we met with guys just like that. That's who's, that's who our clients are. So now, I'm not saying that it's just a rich guy through the clients, but I, but I am saying that, that arrogance tied together with unresolved trauma tied together with unlimited resources, you know, they say that, that power corrupts

with unlimited resources, you know, they say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And unfortunately, you got a lot of people that think that they have that absolute power. What is the current state of the world of child sex trafficking? I mean, you know, it seems like your guys have tried to work pretty hard at this. We've got this film that's come out now in terms of operations have you even made a dent or is this like trying to put a sand castle up against the tide? No, it's an opposite Chris. So here's the thing 10 years ago when I was sitting on that chair and they presented these little virgins and they were scared to death. And I made that commitment. At the time, there was approximately 8 million children that were being sold for sex. In the movie, we talk about over 2 million children

a year being sucked in. Those are new ones that are coming in. But the numbers were approximately 10, 8 million children that were being sold. The end of last year, I finished up some rescue stuff in South America and I looked at the numbers and statistically, they said there's approximately 10 million today. So if my goal was to eradicate child trafficking, I wasn't doing a very good job, right? Pulling 20 children out of hell, yes, it made a massive

difference to them. But then we spend the next five to 20 years dealing with their trauma and helping them and because not enough was being done to fix the demand side, it created a vacuum. And another 20 children were being sucked into the deepest recesses of hell. So I took a step back and I'm like, okay, well, undercover rescue's not fixing this problem. I've got to figure out how to fix the demand. What does that look like? And for a while, I thought, well, maybe I need to go out against pornography because all of these guys started out with a hardcore addiction that became harder and harder pretty soon. They needed something younger and younger. But almost everybody listening to me is seeing pornography. Just because you've seen pornography

doesn't mean you become a pedophile. But when you take a woman from a divine feminine to an object, you do start going down a dark road, tied in with that ego and that arrogance and that commodization, et cetera. However, even that is a symptom of a deeper problem, right? It's the fact that we've allowed our media and Hollywood and whatnot to start feeding us and desensitizing us.

I mean, are you kidding me? The Netflix allowed cuties to be their TV series, yet they didn't wanna take sound of freedom, okay? Really. So you have to ask yourself, what kind of things are being promoted and why have we let ourselves go there? That together with unresolved child trauma,

two out of three people who have dealt with massive childhood sexual trauma, two out of three become really good men and women. They've dealt with their shit. They use that as a motivation to protect innocence at all costs. However, one out of three end up becoming contact defenders. And so people ask me a lot. They say, Paul, how can you go face to face with somebody selling an eight-year-old and not have them see the anger and hatred in your in your in your eyes? And my answer surprises them. I said, part of me really feels bad for him. How can you feel bad from their selling you in a year old? No, I will do everything in my power to ensure they never hurt another child again. But what I wish

more than anything is that I had a time machine. and I could go back five years or ten years to the point before they ever Ever heard a child and figure out what the hell was going on in their life They were likely raped as a child themselves They had a thousand bad things happen in a thousand bad decisions that got them to the point where they thought that that was okay And now we don't have time machines But what we do have is hundreds of millions of people on this planet Who who are dealing with a level of crap in their life? time machines, but what we do have is hundreds of millions of people on this planet who are dealing with a level of crap in their life.

That if we don't help them work through it, we'll likely pass that trauma on to others. So if we can come from a place of compassion and love those kids, those teenagers that dealt with that and give them the help that they need, I think we'll save millions of children. What's the next steps? What are you planning on doing to try and impact this further? What can people that are listening doing if they feel compelled to contribute? Two things.

I opened up a website literally last week called liberating humanity. Liberating dash humanity. You can follow me on all my social media. You can just type in liberating on the first one that comes up. It's liberating humanity liberating dash humanity and you can follow me on all my social media Do you just type in liberating on the first one that comes up? It's liberating humanity because that's what it's about It's not just liberating the 10 year old from the clutches of a traffic rids liberating humanity Which will in turn save those 10 year olds before they're ever raped in the first place? That's my primary goal you can go to liberate

Children.org and and get involved from the actual child rescue stuff. We're still funding operations of guys that are going in and taking out pedophiles, etc. and our art cleaning things up. But my goal personally, now that I've decided that my voice is more powerful than my body being undercover. And so being on podcasts like this one with your amazing audience. I mean, it's you being able to take your lifetime of work of accumulating this following

and being willing to bring me on and have me share my voice, my passion, my heart. I believe that is going to help save children. I really do. I think that there are people who are listening right now that are like, you know what? Yeah, I'm dealing with some stuff, whatever. Go get the help that you need. Come on to liberating humanity and download some stuff and get some help so that you can work through your trauma because we love you. We know that that's super difficult to be holding on to that. So let's release

it and stop the generational trauma, stop the demand site so that we can eradicate child trafficking. Paul, I love your energy. I think that you've made an awful lot of sacrifices in order to be able to get this across the line. I really, really hope that everything you do in future goes super well to everything that we've spoken about. Everyone should go and check that out.

I really do think that, you know, it's a problem that's been hiding in plain sight. You need a landmark event like the one that you've been a part of to bring public attention to something that really needs it. Thank you, Chris. Honored, honored to be on your show. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah