Inside ‘The Sound of Freedom’ book with author Paul Hutchinson

Turning to a very important topic here, child trafficking. And drawing upon the success of the film Sound of Freedom, a new book with the same name is coming out soon. We spoke with author of the book, Paul Hutchinson. In the book, Hutchinson shares the behind the scenes stuff that didn't make it into the movie. He also warns that child trafficking is a growing problem that will only get worse. He shares what inspired him to help fund the movie and release the book. In the book, he also gives real life advice for families to keep their kids safe. Here it is. Paul, thank you so much for your time this afternoon to start off your movie, Sound of Freedom. Successful, very much so. And now you're coming out with your new book on the movie. So to start off, just tell us about this book. Absolutely. Well, there's the movie itself, Sound of Freedom, has a lot of different rescues and a lot of different operators that we we put all together into one storyline. There's a lot more that went on behind the scenes in the jungle rescue is a whole different country, a whole different team, etc. What I did is in the book, the Sound of Freedom that you can go to sound of freedom book dot com and pre register for it should be out within about a month, month and a half. And in the book, I take the first one third of it and talk about making an undercover operator. And there's a lot of information in there that families can use to keep your family safe. I go through the details of the things that I learned in in hand to hand combat and situational awareness, etc. that made me qualified to be able to handle those dangerous situations. And all of those are information that the parents can use to keep your children safe in a dangerous world as well. So what motivated you to come out with this this book? I've been writing for a long time, every single undercover mission that I did, I took copious notes at the very end of the mission, in fact, every single day. And I have led or played a key part in over 70 undercover rescue missions in 15 countries since the time of the Columbia mission that we highlighted in in the Sound of Freedom movie. And so I needed the world to see the inside view of really what was going on in those missions. And and and I believe there's a lot of background in preparing for them that parents can use to keep their families safe. So you're you're mentioning parents here. Is that the main demographic here for the audience? What is the demographic? Well, that, yeah, for the book, probably it's it's it gets a little bit more detailed than what we did in the film. You know, the movie Sound of Freedom, I feel comfortable showing it to a nine year old that 11 year old because there's conversations that need to be have had with those kids after watching the film in the book, it would get a little bit deeper, deeper into exactly what happened on the missions and where those kids came from. And you'll you'll need a box of tissues. It's a beautiful story of transformation of these kids and getting them back to their families and talks in depth about the feelings that me and the operators had as we went through these these undercover rescue missions. All right. Just one more question on the book. Any ballpark estimate as to when it might come out? We're working hard to have it ready for the publisher to start pushing in about about 30, 30 days, 60 days max. It will be out on Amazon and all over the world and you'll be able to access it then. So you can just go right now to Sound of Freedom Book dot com and pre-register or at least get information about exactly when it's coming out. Awesome. All right. And I also understand that you're actually the primary investor of the movie Sound of Freedom. Why did you decide to back it? Well, I was there. I was physically on that first rescue mission in Colombia. You know, the things that changed my life forever is, number one, when the trafficker leaned forward and hands me his phone and said, Pablo, I have a gift for you. And he talked about this a little 11 year old girl who was being sold for the first time. And this was the first time that I saw what I knew was a trafficked child. And that galvanized my commitment in the movie Sound of Freedom. My character was only convinced to go undercover when when my driver showed me a picture of this little girl. In reality, I was already there. I was face to face with the most evil people on the planet. And then we negotiated this deal and it ended up being the largest, one of the largest child rescue missions in history with over 120 victims that were recovered and back to their families. And so seeing that firsthand, we knew that we couldn't we couldn't take millions of people to see what we had seen, but we can help millions of people feel what we had felt and create a movement. That's really what this is all about, is helping good people everywhere become aware of what's going on so that together we can join forces and eradicate child trafficking. And just so that all of us, including our viewers, are on the same page, what is the overall situation right now with with this subject matter, child trafficking? Well, sadly, you know, 10 years ago when I was sitting on that chair and this they present this little girl, this 11 year old in front of me and I'm I'm she's standing up. She's not much taller than I was sitting down and our eyes connected almost on a level area. And all I could see was fear in her eyes. And I made a commitment to myself, to God, to that little girl that I was going to dedicate my life to eradicating that evil from the face of the earth. And in last year, we looked at the numbers and there's more children being sold today than there was 10 years ago. In fact, there's more than all 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade put together. We sit here and think that that slavery disappeared with the time of Abraham Lincoln. No, this is this is something that is pervasive in our world today, all over the world. And it's it's the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. It's the second most profitable, second only to the illegal drugs. And soon it will become the number one most profitable because you can sell a bag of cocaine once you can sell a child five or 10 times a day for many, many years. So it's getting worse. And it's something that we as good adults need to get together and say, what do we need to do to fix this problem? Wow. Very eye opening here. And speaking of the movie, which talks about this, when you invested in that, did you think about whether your investment would turn a profit? Did you think about that? Did you even know? I didn't even care. I came from a successful real estate investment background. I'm a co-founder of a company that was called Bridge Loan Capital that morphed into Bridge Investment Group, which when I retired, had over 20 billion dollars in assets under management. It's continued to grow since that time. And and I know how to make money in that space. I'm not a filmmaker, but I knew that somehow we needed to get that message out to the world. So I volunteered to be the primary investor, the first investor in the film. And then we brought on a lot of good, good families to help fund it after that. And can you speak as well on the impact that this movie has had since it's been released? That's exactly what we were hoping, is to have a global, a truly global impact. We only spent 14 million dollars in creating Sound of Freedom, and it's done over 270 million dollars in the box office sales alone. Not including the digital sales of Amazon and others that are picking up. It's the number one independent film in the world last year. It's top 10 in history. And it's not about the money, though. It's about the fact that millions of people have been able to see and feel what we felt and get behind this movement. And so you can see a lot of the things that we're doing with this movement. We have our foundation is that the Child Liberation Foundation is one that I started about seven years ago. That's working on safe houses and healing retreats for the children. And in the movie gives me the ability to have communication with with political leaders and royalty and world leaders all over the globe. And these people are saying, OK, I didn't even know. I don't even know how to define trafficking. What is it? What policy changes do we need to make? What legal things do we need to do to help keep the children safe in our country? So we're super excited about the success of the film. The doors that is opened and the laws are being changed in the children's lives who are being safe. And I understand you're personally trying to do something about this. And I see the words liberating humanity behind you. Tell us what that is. Well, it's a it's even a bigger picture. The liberatechildren.org is where you can go to find information on the Child Liberation Foundation. But that's just focused on what I call, you know, fighting fire with fire. We're funding organizations that are helping with the rescue missions. I led 70 missions and I I realized that that there has to be so much more that can really fix this problem. Just just pulling children out of hell wasn't going to fix the problem. We have to raise the global collective consciousness. We have to help humanity break down the the addictions and the walls and the divisions that are creating things like child trafficking in the first place. So that's what the bigger picture is. We liberating humanity helps to host fully immersive, transformational healing experiences in here in Latin America. It is it is funding the the expansion of what we're doing with the safe houses and the healing retreats around the world. 25 percent of the profits goes right back into the foundation of everything that we're doing there as well. So it's more of a of a holistic approach of how do we take away the demand for child trafficking? How do we help heal the divisions between us? How do we break free from this low vibration energy and come right back to our moral standards and the foundations that that that made this country what we are and and to help heal the world? That's really what liberating humanity about. You can go to liberating humanity dot com and get lots of information on how to keep your children safe. Training courses from my original trainers on things that you can do to to to keep your kids in an aware position and safe in a dangerous world. Is there anything that regular folks, regular Americans who may be watching can do about this? Absolutely. So many people will leave the movie Sound of Freedom and they'll say, OK, I want to do something. I want I want to go rescue kids. The worst thing that you can do is go to Columbia and try to go do a rescue mission that you're going to get arrested. You're probably going to get shot. The best thing you can do is go home and hug your kids and people say, well, how is that going to help? I don't know. It's going to fix trafficking. Yeah, then the majority of children who are being sold in this horrific world of child trafficking, the majority of them sleep in their own beds at night and their parents are oblivious about what's going on or sometimes they're involved. And so you need a relationship with your children where they can very comfortably come to you and say, hey, I don't like it when you make me hug Uncle Harry because he even he touches me weird or, you know, I don't like going to this this friend's house because her brother is wanting us to do these things or where our babysitter is showing us pornography and wants us to trust her more than you. These these are grooming behaviors. These are things that parents need to be aware of so that they can keep their children out of these potential snares. In fact, one out of every four women that, you know, one out of every four has been a victim of sexual abuse as a child and many of them in their own homes. And so our goal is to not only eradicate child trafficking, but to help heal that generational trauma that's creating all these problems in the first place. So that's that's what my primary goal is every day since I retired from from from bridge and and and we're just we're building healing retreats, building safe houses. People can get involved if they want to donate. Wonderful. And if they want to help get us on to bigger stages and influencers, that's fantastic as well. If if you want to just take the information on liberating humanity and apply it in your own lives, in your own home, that will save millions of children. All right, Paul, it's been an incredible discussion today. I just have one more thing to ask you. You gave up a very successful career in business to dedicate yourself to fully ending child sex trafficking full time. Have you ever looked back since since then? Is this always the path you you would have taken in life? I I believe that the success I experienced in building the investment funds, I believe that that massive success was due to one decision that I made in my early 20s. And that decision was that, you know, the average person donates two or three percent of their annual income to charity. I made a decision that that number would be more than 10 percent, sometimes 15 to 20 percent being donated to making a difference in the lives of others. And you can call it the universe. You can call it karma. You can call it gifts from God. You can call it whatever you want to. There's a there's a universal law that that brings powerful good into our lives when we when we donate and provide that value in the lives of others. And so because of that, when I saw child trafficking firsthand, it was an easy decision for me. This was I was going to dedicate my life to eradicating that evil from the face of the earth. And whether that be through undercover rescue missions or helping to fund the movie or now going public with these stories, I believe that every single step made in that direction is the right one and will will will bring peace to millions of children. All right. Like I said, incredible discussion today. Thank you so much for your time, Paul. Thank you. I appreciate you.