Paul Hutchinson—an govt producer of Sound of Freedom, the movie targeted on the closely fictionalized exploits of anti-trafficking activist Tim Ballard—touched the bare breasts of an apparently underage trafficking sufferer throughout a 2016 undercover operation in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Footage of the incident and its aftermath was captured by videographers working with Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR, the non-public anti-trafficking group Ballard based. An investigator with the Davis County Legal professional’s Workplace obtained the footage and wrote detailed descriptions of it as a part of a felony investigation into Ballard and OUR carried out with the FBI. That investigation was closed this yr with none prices being introduced. The descriptions had been included amongst paperwork obtained by VICE Information by a public-records request, and clarify that the trafficking sufferer gave the impression to be—and was believed on the time by Hutchinson and OUR operatives to be—about 16 years previous. Additionally they assert that OUR believed the footage had been destroyed.
An outline of one of many movies, written by an investigator, reveals Hutchinson expressing issues over whether or not he might be prosecuted by Mexican authorities over the incident. He was talking to Matt Osborne, an OUR operative, who dismissed his worries whereas making clear he didn’t suppose the video ought to be proven to the U.S. authorities. Osborne is presently the president and chief working officer of OUR, as he has been since Ballard resigned from the group earlier this yr following an inside investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.
Hutchinson, 52, is an anti-trafficking activist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur with traces in, amongst different issues, ballistic safety expertise and personal vaults who’s lengthy been related to the Utah anti-trafficking motion. In keeping with his LinkedIn, he was the primary investor in Sound of Freedom. At the moment affiliated with the Little one Liberation Basis, he was a key fundraiser and operative for OUR earlier than splitting with Ballard a number of years in the past over, as he put it in an e mail to VICE Information, “related causes as these you’re bringing to gentle in your tales.” Supplied with an in depth description of what was within the investigative recordsdata, he didn’t deny that the movies confirmed him doing what the investigator’s description mentioned they did, or dispute that he had felt the trafficking sufferer’s bare breasts. He did dispute that she was a minor, asserting that he had a sworn affidavit from Mexican federal police saying that she was over 18. He didn’t reply to a number of requests, despatched over a interval of weeks, to supply a duplicate of this doc.
An in depth description of one other video reveals Hutchinson doubtlessly creating demand for trafficking whereas posing as a rich intercourse vacationer. In keeping with an investigator’s description, he requested a trafficker, who was exhibiting him photos of intercourse staff, for youthful women—or, as he and the trafficker each described them, “mas fresca.” The trafficker, in keeping with the investigator’s description of the video, tells girls who’re working with him to search out women as younger as 14 to supply to Hutchinson.
There isn’t a suggestion within the recordsdata that Hutchinson’s habits was geared toward something however figuring out and exposing traffickers, however federal brokers with intensive expertise working undercover abroad instructed VICE Information that Hutchinson’s strategies ran opposite to greatest apply. For years, consultants within the anti-trafficking subject have raised issues about OUR’s strategies doubtlessly creating demand for trafficking victims, attributable to situations exactly like this one. Quite than discovering minors who had been already being trafficked, requesting youthful victims whereas undercover might trigger traffickers to try to discover folks to fill that request. In different phrases, such a request wouldn’t rescue trafficking victims; it might doubtlessly create them.
Tim Ballard—who has mentioned he’s more likely to run for the Senate seat MItt Romney is vacating—didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story; OUR offered a press release which might be discovered beneath.
“There’s a lot to the story, a really harmful state of affairs and I’m blissful to let the world know the small print when the time is correct,” Hutchinson wrote in an e mail to VICE Information. “Each operator who was current stands behind me in how I reacted to the state of affairs. I’ve zero reservations as to how I dealt with myself undercover.
“You don’t discover trafficked kids within the foyer of the Ritz-Carlton. We needed to go to essentially the most harmful locations on the planet to search out the youngsters.
“All my undercover work was achieved with integrity and honor.”
Paperwork associated to the incident might be learn right here.
The footage reviewed by investigators was taken as a part of the filming of The Abolitionists, a 2016 documentary film and 2019 tv collection that includes Hutchinson. The documentaries valorize the exploits of Ballard and OUR, who’re depicted finishing up non-public undercover operations in overseas nations geared toward liberating little one intercourse slaves. (Darrin Fletcher and Chet Thomas, the producers and administrators for the movie, didn’t reply to requests for remark from VICE Information.)
Screenshot: A promotional picture for “The Abolitionists” from OUR’s web site.
The recordsdata obtained by VICE Information encompass audio transcripts and timestamped descriptions of what investigator Bryan Purdy of the Davis County Legal professional’s Workplace noticed whereas reviewing the footage—which OUR, in keeping with an investigator’s word, believed it had “scrubbed.”
An outline of 1 video—which was, going by its related file title, taken in February 2016 utilizing an “earphone cam”—begins, “Paul Hutchinson and his crew are standing on the street space speaking with native males.” They cross the road and go right into a membership, the place females are seen strolling towards them down a staircase.
“A feminine,” the outline—which just like the others on this story we’re reproducing verbatim except for minor redactions, full with typographical and grammatical errors—reads, “will get to the underside of the steps and there’s an grownup male standing to her left facet. The male is carrying a light-colored shirt with lengthy sleeves and a necktie. The male makes use of each of his fingers to elevate the feminine’s shirt as much as her shoulders exposing her bare breasts. Whereas he continues to carry the feminine’s shirt up with each fingers, one other grownup male approaches from immediately in entrance of the feminine. This male (recognized as Paul Hutchinson primarily based on his personal statements on a telephone name to Matt Osborn.) is carrying a light-colored shirt with quick sleeves. Paul approaches the feminine and lifts each of his fingers and locations them on every of the feminine’s bare breasts. The feminine makes use of her hand to push down Paul’s fingers and pulls her shirt down. There’s one other feminine standing above them larger on the stairway carrying a darkish coloured skirt/shorts and a darkish coloured tube high shirt.
“Paul leans in and kisses the primary feminine on the facet of the cheek,” learn the investigator’s notes.
The grownup male within the white shirt, in keeping with the outline, goes outdoors with Hutchinson and his crew. “You need extra contact, really feel, oh no extra contact,” he says. One other man says, “You want extra 16” and that he can present IDs. Hutchinson pays certainly one of these males—which isn’t made clear within the description—cash and says, “For exhibiting ‘em to me proper there.”
Purdy, the investigator, additionally wrote an outline of a second video, which to go by its file title was taken the identical day as the primary one utilizing a “backpack cam.” (In keeping with a word, this video was taken in the identical membership and in the identical time-frame as the opposite one, utilizing a unique digicam.)
“One other lady like her, (inaudible),” says an area male’s voice, in keeping with the outline. “16, she’s 16.”
One of many OUR operatives is heard saying, “Let’s get the hell out of right here.” Hutchinson is heard saying, “Yeah, let’s get out of right here, I’m down a grand.”
“For a thousand bucks you bought your fingers on some breasts,” says a male voice, to laughter.
“What was I going to do?” asks a second male voice, whose phrases are described as being interrupted repeatedly by laughter. “Okay, she’s 16, right here, really feel them, they’re good. I’m like, shit, these are 16.”
“You suppose they’re below age, huh?” asks the primary male voice.
“Oh yeah,” says a 3rd male voice, “I might put cash on that.” The boys proceed their dialogue for a bit earlier than the primary male voice says, “Yeah, these women had been younger, man.”
“I don’t understand how smart it was to seize that lady’s boobs, although,” says the second male voice.
“You didn’t get that on video or something, did you?” asks the primary male voice.
In a press release to VICE Information, Hutchinson wrote, “Regarding the undercover mission in Cabo San Lucas, 23 victims had been liberated, and a few very unhealthy males at the moment are in jail. Your reference to the trafficker testing our legitimacy is a non story. I’ve a sworn affidavit by the federal police saying she was over 18.”
An outline of a 3rd video covers a February 28, 2016 telephone name between Hutchinson and Matt Osborne. In the course of the name, which occurred on speakerphone and was filmed in a room with Hutchinson and several other different males in it, Osborne talks to the videographer filming the decision in regards to the exhausting drive containing the footage he’s shot, at which level Hutchinson brings up the incident on the membership.
In the course of the dialog he refers to himself within the third individual as “Paul Stone”—a reference, in keeping with Purdy’s description of the video, to the alias he used whereas undercover—and asks if he’s “gonna get in massive bother from the Mexican authority for touching a sixteen-year-old on movie.”
“Once you get the exhausting drive I’ve to, I’ve to admit to one thing,” he says, in keeping with a transcript. “However I imagine that it helped to make them, actually imagine that we weren’t a law enforcement officials in any approach. Uh, (begins to chuckle), so, so we uh, we, we we, had been taken to the um to the strip membership, (Paul laughs once more in addition to the person subsequent to him.) Ok so, the very first time that V. was vetting is out and um he took us, he took us to the strip membership, and, and, the, a proprietor of the strip membership introduced down the minors. And um, and V.’s the very first time V.’s proven us any minors, and, uh, introduced down these minors effectively, effectively Paul Stone (referring to himself because the Undercover title he was going by) is standing there on the backside of the steps. A, these two women working the strip membership, these two minors come down. The proprietor of the strip membership pulls up certainly one of their shirts and grabs certainly one of Paul Stone’s hand and locations it on her breast and so it’s on the video. I simply wanna discover out if I’m gonna get in massive bother from the Mexican authority for touching a sixteen-year-old on movie?”
“Uh, is it clear that they pulled it, pulled your hand there?” asks Osborne. (Within the copy of the outline obtained by VICE Information, this whole passage is highlighted and the phrase “LIE” is written subsequent to it, with a margin word studying “PAUL PUTS BOTH HANDS ON VOLUNTARILY.” These seem like an investigator’s notes; the Davis County Legal professional’s Workplace didn’t reply to a request for remark.)
“It’s not clear on the video,” says Hutchinson. “I used to be standing on the facet and he grabbed the hand from down on the appropriate hand, on my right-hand facet as he pulled up her shirt and put em up. (Paul then raised his fingers, one his proper hand whereas holding the telephone after which raised his left hand in a movement of grabbing along with his hand.) And so, we really feel like and if, we had been all there, and all of us really feel like, if I had hesitated, and oh yeah. I’m not likely considering touching that proper now as he was pulling it up, I feel it could have thrown up numerous pink flags. Um, however a, that’s on the exhausting drive. I simply needed to run that by and see what your ideas are.”
“Yea I don’t suppose at this level that will probably be a problem, a possibly if it was the Mexican’s,” says Osborne. “And we’re sending it simply the Mexicans. I don’t need this video to be to HSI, the U.S. Embassy as a result of I’m positive, and I’ve achieved it earlier than too one time, I’m positive that technically you guys in all probability entrap a few of these folks. Attempt to not, a yeah, and I’ve achieved it earlier than by chance. So, I’m simply content material that’s not a problem.”
A person sitting on a sofa, in keeping with the outline, tells Hutchinson, “The one factor you must do isn’t inform your bishop.”
Hutchinson laughs.
A last description of a video carries no reference to when or the place it was taken.
In keeping with an investigator’s notes, within the video, a trafficker is exhibiting Hutchinson and a male affiliate photographs of females on his telephone. “Paul and the opposite male are joking that they’re previous, and saying 20, 22, 30, 40 years previous. The trafficker says 16 they usually ask him who? He replies he doesn’t know them however states these are the ladies.
“Paul pulls out his pockets and offers the man $20. Then says, I’ll offer you $100 simply to see them. Paul states, ‘Mas Pequeno’ (that means extra small) as he’s handing the trafficker the cash.
“They proceed to see photos of ladies on the traffickers’ telephones of what seem, primarily based upon Paul and different crew members statements, to be grownup girls of their twenties and thirties. The traffickers attempt to say the ladies are ‘16 or 17’ however Paul would say they appear to be they had been 30 and proceed to ask for youthful women.”
The outline ends with an account of the trafficker speaking to 2 females “and telling then to exit and discover ‘la mas chicas’ (the smallest) the extra younger you’ll find. La mas chicas. 16, 14, 15, he pay you in {dollars}.”
Tim Ballard didn’t reply to a request for remark; in response to different reporting VICE Information has achieved about him just lately, he issued a press release to a crowd in Boston and, later, one other by the SPEAR Fund, his new group, referring to VICE obliquely as “a tabloid that’s usually hostile to folks of religion.”
In response to requests for remark about this story in addition to others, an OUR spokesperson despatched one assertion, which learn as follows:
These allegations have been raised beforehand, written about by Vice and totally investigated by the Davis County District Legal professional. That investigation concluded with out the submitting of any prices.
Following Tim Ballard’s departure from O.U.R. three months in the past, now we have been working tirelessly to enhance the effectivity and effectiveness of our home and worldwide operations.
At O.U.R., we’re proud to help legislation enforcement in liberating any individual within the grips of human trafficking or exploitation and we try to make sure ongoing aftercare for all these affected. Our sources have contributed to the arrest of over 7,400 suspected predators and have impacted the lives of over 7,800 people. At the moment, we’re finishing up a median of 5 missions per week worldwide. We’re dedicated to this essential work till everybody in want is secure.
Contact the reporters at anna.merlan@vice.com or tim.marchman@vice.com. For further safety, obtain the Sign app to a non-work machine and textual content us there at 267-713-9832.
