Introduction (00:00:00):
In this episode of Considere Before Consuming, Lydia Cacho recounts her journey as an investigative journalist exposing child sexual exploitation and human trafficking. She shares with us how the pornography industry plays a direct role in grooming victims normalizing violence, and fueling global trafficking networks. [00:00:30] Lydia shares stories from her investigations, including her infiltration of trafficking rings and the extreme risks she has faced in working to fight exploitation. With that, let’s jump into the conversation. We hope you enjoy this episode of Consider Before Consuming.

Fight The New Drug (00:00:48):
Lydia, thank you so much for joining us on Consider Before Consuming today. You have such a wealth of knowledge and experience on the topics that we address that fight the new drug. To [00:01:00] start, can you share your journey as a journalist and a human rights activist, and what led you to focus on exposing issues like child sexual exploitation and trafficking?

Lydia Cacho (00:01:11):
Sure. Well, thank you for inviting me. I’m a big fan of everything that you do, and it’s so important nowadays to have this conversation. So thank you. Well, I, I’m, I’m a Mexican journalist. I’m an investigative journalist, and when I began working as such [00:01:30] 35 years ago in Mexico, I immediately started covering issues regarding violence against women and violence against children, because nobody was covering. So, I was a crazy journalist, a crazy reporter in the newspapers in, in where I worked. But I didn’t care. I come from a feminist family and a family that has always talked openly about sexuality and emotions. My mom was a psychologist, [00:02:00] so I guess that background of feeling safe and and acknowledging my own power as a woman, as a girl, as a young woman, to, to be able to talk about sexuality and to be safe, to feel safe in a country like Mexico or anywhere else.

(00:02:21):
So, when I started covering all these issues, women immediately, immediately began talking to me about violence against them, [00:02:30] gender violence, and then they talk about sexual violence against children in Cancun, in the southeast of Mexico. And as, as, because I lived there. So as, as the tourism industry evolved in, in that area in Yucatan, what happened was that very, very soon I started documenting cases of sexual exploitation that we never saw before. And we have to remember that this 30 ago, that when, [00:03:00] when internet started, almost nobody knew anything about it, right? We always hoped for the best. We never thought, even thought it was gonna become the monster we had in our hands. And when I started investigating sexual exploitation most of the girls told me in two, in the year 2003, that the abusers were showing them movies. That’s the words they used in a computer [00:03:30] where the girls were being abused.

(00:03:33):
So I decided to learn how to get into their hacking and investigate this trafficking, human traffickers, basically, from all over the world. And then I became the specialist because nobody was doing that, at least not only in Mexico, but in most countries, like journalists were not getting into that, and the police were, was not willing to talk about it openly. Everybody had all these [00:04:00] like wrong views of what it meant to produce pornography with children or with young adults. And so I became the expert, and then I did all this specialties in criminology and of course in psychology child psychology in order to interview children all over the world. So I’ve been working in 143 countries along my life and investigating human trafficking, interviewing the [00:04:30] children the traffickers, sometimes obviously without them knowing that I was, that I was a journalist and interviewing experts all over the world to try to understand how to tackle this,

Fight The New Drug (00:04:41):
Your life’s work thus far, and the things that you’ve experienced. I would encourage any of our listeners to please go learn more about your story and these experiences they’ve provided you with such a unique perspective on these issues. Unlike probably anyone else in the world, you’ve had such [00:05:00] bravery in the things that you’ve done. It’s so inspiring. Obviously, others are brave as well, but the experiences you’ve gone through are so unique. You, you wrote a book about 20 years ago that sheds a light on powerful, powerful networks involved in child abuse. Can you talk a little bit about those experiences that led you to that and how, what you discovered through that, about how pornography in intersects with human trafficking and child exploitation. You just mentioned it just a little bit with the movies [00:05:30] being shown to them as part of this grooming process, but to really for our listeners, explain how pornography intersects with these issues based on the experiences that you’ve had.

Lydia Cacho (00:05:43):
Yes. Imagine that this, this investigation, specifically this investigation of my book The Demons of Eden, and then the, the next book that is called Slavery Inc. began in 2002 and 2003, and almost [00:06:00] nobody understood what now everybody talks about like the deep web and, you know, things like that, the dark web and, and investigating that and how people were connecting, like criminals were connecting with each other using technology. So they got there a long time before anybody else did, even before the police got there, right? So what I did, when, when these kids started telling me the stories, and I, I infiltrating [00:06:30] in one of the hotels of one of the, the trafficker, the main trafficker that I later put in jail, fortunately on, was sentenced to 113 years for child exploitation and child pornography. When I infiltrated there, and I got some evidence with good police in Mexico, because there’s good policemen, of course with a good policeman, I infiltrate there and we got the evidence and we started looking at it, and I said [00:07:00] what are we gonna do with it?

(00:07:02):
Because if you share this, it wasn’t a crime back then, but if we did have it, it was a crime, right? Because it was pornography with children, but it wasn’t even a lit law as we know it right now around the world. So it’s 2003, and we’re watching this material, and I remember the day that we were watching all these short videos, and the police said [00:07:30] he, he was the only one that was an expert on technology. They call it a technological policeman, not cyber police. Like now we do. And he just stand up and he went to the bathroom and came, came back crying, and he said, I’m throwing up. I cannot stand this. I cannot keep going. And so I said, I’m all alone in this fight, right? I need to prove to the judges that this businessman millionaires from Mexico, from the us from [00:08:00] Lebanon, are buying children from Mexico, different places from Latin America and from the us and they are exploiting them.

(00:08:07):
They are ordering girl this guy to buy them a girl, 13 years old, mainly 12 and 13-year-old girls that had to be virgins, and they paid $3,000 for them. So I, I, I got the evidence because I got some phone calls in which they are speaking, and they are making these deals, right? With [00:08:30] this guy from Las Vegas, and the guy from Mexico City, et cetera. So I, I started talking about it and raising the case, and all of a sudden, from the five original victims I had 200 victims telling me the stories. Children that were abused by this businessman, millionaires that since they were like four and five years old, and nobody was, nobody, nobody believed them. Almost nobody protect [00:09:00] them. And when mothers or fathers tried to protect them they got threatened, you know, their lives.

(00:09:07):
So this, this was became like the biggest case ever in the continent, I guess, because this is, this is a case that a journalist, a a feminist journalist investigated, right? And when when at the beginning I started talking about this issue and I said, listen, this is child pornography. This is not, this is not only [00:09:30] sexual exploitation of children for economic gain. It’s also producing child pornography in a network that men from all over the world are sharing. So everybody thought I was crazy. I mean, journalists from all over, even journalists from the New York Times told me, Nydia, you are delusional. You know, this is, this is, this is ridiculous. People are not doing that. And [00:10:00] if, if somebody does that, it’s f but they’re not network so bad. And I said, and it’s linked to the pornography industry. And why do I say this?

(00:10:10):
It’s because the first time I interviewed these little girls, what they said was that the abuser before abusing them started giving them gifts and offering them to buy books for school and everything. ’cause most of the main victims were of this case, of the Suker case, [00:10:30] were poor girls, right? And then he came into like, middle class, and then of course, the girls he brought from Florida, they were not even, they were open middle class, right? So they give them gifts, they give them, they offer them help for school, and then they start watching pornography with, now we know this. But back then, in 2003, almost nobody believed that happened, right? An adult man with his [00:11:00] wife was training and grooming these girls and boys in their own hotel suites watching pornography and telling them that was normal. That’s what men do to women and girls when they love them.

(00:11:16):
So when they did that, I needed evidence, right? So I did gather the evidence, and then eventually I published a book. And because I published book this this criminals tried to kill me many, many times, and [00:11:30] then they put me in jail. They illegally put me in jail because there was a governor involved. So I did, when I published the book, I decided I’m going to do two things. One of them is tell everything about the evidence and explain it. Do it in such a way that is educational for people, even though journalism is not supposed to be. So, but I did, because it’s a very complex issue. And then the second part was protecting, obviously the names [00:12:00] of all the children and their families. And the third part that was complicated was exposing the names of everyone involving the crimes, like senators, governors and everyone.

(00:12:13):
And of course, they all gathered together and tried to kill me. So they put me in jail, but they tortured me. And then I got out of jail, and I won the case one year after that. And that was ga when I won the case against them was amazing [00:12:30] because I got this all these people asking the questions, bdi, the press, international Press, and Mexican Press. And so one thing I did was explaining to people, this is part of an industry bigger than do you will ever imagine. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes me, I will spend years and years demonstrating that this is, this is how [00:13:00] the industry works. And if you read demo written in 2003, right now, you see what we are discussing in this podcast, exactly what we, addiction to pornography how the industry is reaching children and, and little boys and little girls, and trying to get them hooked in different ways and grooming them and trying to sell them sex for, for love or for relationship you know, [00:13:30] for, for linking with each other. So, I don’t know, I became the expert.

Fight The New Drug (00:13:36):
It’s so compelling to hear what, what you’ve been through. And I’m curious to know if you can share with our listeners your perspective on the role that pornography plays in normalizing and desensitizing viewers normalizing violence, normalizing violent behavior. I know that you’ve had experience in opening a, a shelter for women and combating gender-based [00:14:00] violence in certain ways. So can you speak to the role pornography has played in that throughout your experiences?

Lydia Cacho (00:14:06):
Of course. When, when I, when I began doing this, this work with women in, in the year 2000, basically at the shelter, the first, very first case that came to us, it was a high security shelter. So you can imagine this is a big building. We built like rooms for 60 families to protect the women and their kids that were running away from [00:14:30] from gender violence, from family violence, and from sexual bodies. But the very first case that came to us was this woman with two girls. And they explained to us that the father was, that was a taxi driver in Cancun, was bringing his girls 10 year, a 10-year-old girl, and a 12-year-old in his taxi to a fancy, very fancy American chain hotel in Cancun to have [00:15:00] sex, to be exploited by American tourists, right? So when they talk about, they got linked with the therapist on one hand, and then with me about the other issues that the therapist was not able to handle, they explained how they this work, right?

(00:15:19):
How the father was part of a network that were, were like the uncle, the friend, the, the, the, the boss of all the taxi drivers. And and one thing that [00:15:30] they had, all they, they all had in common is I started investigating them. And they were all going every week to to, to these and the red light district in Cancun to have sex with exploited women, right? And were called them calling themselves prostitutes. And and when I talked to some of them, to some of these women, they were willing to talk to me, saying that they were free and this [00:16:00] and that. And then when I asked them how they began, all of them told me that somebody showed them pornography and told them, this is the way it works. Mostly women, the ones that were running the brothels were women.

(00:16:17):
All the women that were also exploited when they were young. And then to come up in the lather and being, stop being exploited, they become exploiters, right? So when, when I understood this in, in the year 2000 [00:16:30] I said, we have to follow the pattern and, and demonstrate how it creates how pornography is a merchandise as you explain it very, very well in your, in your projects and in your Instagram account and your blogs. So it’s a culture of byproduct, right? And it’s created to convince men, women, and non-minority people that [00:17:00] violence, it’s always okay in sex, if it’s perpetrated by men, always, okay? That’s the basis of pornography. It’s always been. And since the industry grew, you know, on TV and everything, and that’s why it gives the money. So I decided to investigate the owners of the pornography industry.

(00:17:22):
So I have a lot, a lot of articles written about them, how much money they do, how they hire [00:17:30] psychologists and psychiatrists to explain them, how to get people hooked into the narrative of pornography and how to bring that narrative from real life of women and men and their relationships in sex and love. So once I started writing about that, I learned something once. One thing was that I started writing about it in the newspapers in Mexico, [00:18:00] and a lot in Latin America, and a lot of men and women started coming to me and say, listen, I never thought of it like that. I never thought pornography would harm me this way. You know, I thought it was just entertainment. But then after I read it, I watched it again, and then it’s so violent. How can we just accept this? How can we just not know?

(00:18:24):
so I mean, I spent my life trying to explain how it works, but it’s, it’s [00:18:30] the psychology behind it. It’s like the, the abuser, the, the seducive husband that is always nice. And then he ba he, he’s aggressive or violent to his wife, and then the next day he gives, brings them, brings her flowers and all that. And then the next day, you know, the, the abuse pattern, it’s exactly the same. Pornography works the same way with our minds. And the difference I make with the other kinds of addictions, like any other kind [00:19:00] of addiction to drugs and everything it’s, it’s basically, it’s so hard to come back because we feel that it’s linked to love and emotional relationships, which is very weird to people. But for most pornography users that I’ve interviewed along 20 years, it is normal.

(00:19:24):
It’s kind of how to learn to make love to a woman. Now, I cannot tell you how many [00:19:30] thousands of men of all ages have told me that they were trained to make love using pornography. And that’s not love, obviously, it’s making violence, a violent, an act of violence imposing one body to another body, right? So the fact is that women become weaker in, in this context of pornography, not only in the production. So I decided to interview women [00:20:00] that were into the pornography industry back then. In 2000, in the year 2000, I went to la I went to different places in the world, and I interviewed them, and they all wanted to talk to me because they thought they were free doing this. And then all of a sudden I meet this very famous foreign actress that was 38 years old, and all of a sudden she had a very bad incident, violence incident, gender violence incident when his, her wife, her husband, I’m sorry, and the husband [00:20:30] told her, well, what do you expect?

(00:20:34):
You’re whore? And she just clicked. And she said, no, I’m not. I was, I’m an actress. And he was like, no, you are exactly the same kind of person that I can find in any cheap brothel in Thailand or in Cambodia. The difference is that you are in LA and you charge three or $4,000 and you go with senators and [00:21:00] congressman and whatever, but you’re exactly the same kind of woman. And that day, she decided to change her lives. So she took me to meet a lot of the actresses, and and they told me all this horrific stories 20 years ago of how they they were forced into into the set and how they were handled and everything. And then once they started talking, which is for me, was, that was the big deal, once they began [00:21:30] explaining it to me, they were aware of the violence for the first time in their lives. And some of them had been in the sex industry for 6, 7, 10 years, and then interview the first man that just stopped doing pornography because he felt he was raped in a woman.

(00:21:52):
He was actually d doing it because he was ordered by director, but he felt it right for the first time. And [00:22:00] so the thing is, if you go to the source as a, as a, an investigative reporter, I know this, you go to the search of the people who are making the, committing the crime to the source of the people who are involved in it knowingly or, or knowingly or victims of this culture, of values that, you know, that make us believe that violence is okay, and that it’s part of love and relationships, and it’s part [00:22:30] of sexiness and all this stuff. If you go to, to, to sources, and then you start walking towards the solutions, that’s when you do understand why it’s so important to talk to people about what pornography does. This is not about conser being conservative or anything. It’s just being human.

Fight The New Drug (00:22:52):
Yeah. You’ve covered so much ground there, and there are so many important things. You know, looking at how pornography is used to [00:23:00] groom individuals who are trafficked looking how pornography normalizes sexual violence, teaches women to submit to a very high level of sexual violence teaches men that it’s in some ways their role to exert violence on others in sex. And then within the industry, what’s happening there where individuals are actually being sexually assaulted and for consumers, the perception being that you know, these are people [00:23:30] separated between themselves, the consumer, and a screen, right? So it feels like it’s not real. It feels like someone’s not actually being exploited on the other side of this, when in reality they are. And that’s what you’ve seen through your work. And it’s so important to look at so many different facets of this issue.

(00:23:49):
In some of your work, you’ve spoken about how a much pornography is produced of children. We know that, you know, teen is a term that is sold [00:24:00] as being over the age of 18, but still teens. But we know that that’s not what all of this content involving teens and young adults is that’s on the internet. Can you speak a little bit to the crisis of child pornography, of this teen content, of this normalization of sexualizing young women and girls especially, but also men and boys, and how that’s fueled some of the crises with trafficking that you’ve investigated in your work as well?

Lydia Cacho (00:24:30):
[00:24:30] Of course, it’s, it’s all interlinked. The thing is that most of the people, for example, I’m gonna give you I’m gonna give you this example. I was working in Cambodia. I was infiltrating in different areas in Cambodia. When I asked a friend of mine that worked for the Washington Post, how he did his piece, he said, oh, I just went there as a client and I said, hi, I’m a woman. I cannot do that. Right? So I had to just infiltrate and try to pretend to be a buyer of children, something [00:25:00] to talk to, to all these women and men that were holding the industry in, in, in in the capital of Cambodia. So when I got there I finally talked to this woman, and then she, she trusted me. She thought, oh, she’s Mexican. She’s probably, you know, linked to narco traffickers, whatever, drug loads.

(00:25:20):
So it was, it was fine. They didn’t even ask me anything. And then I, I went in and it was shocking to go into [00:25:30] a room where they had like 10 big TVs back then. There were like big TVs were like, not, not like regular thing we had in our homes, and they had these big TVs, and she said, this is the training room. And the same thing I saw in Japan in Tokyo and Onca, and who is behind that? The guys, the, the, the men and women who are behind this industry training the children to accept abuse as a, as a [00:26:00] normal part of their life, to sustain their family or to earn some money to send to somebody else, or even when they are just simply late without any contact with the exterior world. But mostly they are, they do that, they bring children from poverty areas, and they tell them that they will, you know, pay for, for the, for the family, or if somebody is ill, whatever.

(00:26:27):
So what happened that [00:26:30] there is, they are trying them with all kinds of phonography. And then she said, but then we showed them the one we make with Cambodian kids, because we have a, a problem, I’m gonna quote her. She said, we have a problem. And the problem is that most of the youngest women that are here on this, your typical North American, you know, pornography movie are white and are older, and [00:27:00] we need to teach ’em something familiar to that. So we are looking for Asian pornography. And I said, oh, really? And she said, yeah, Japan is producing a lot of it. And I, I I, it came to my mind and I said, Japan is like, it’s a, it’s a crime to produce pornography. Back then, it was supposedly a crime. So I, I started following that thread, and I saw that when, when this woman told me that I thought, Hmm, these people are producing their own material, and they will eventually [00:27:30] do it, and they will eventually understand how much money pornography makes, right?

(00:27:36):
And then along the years came the, the big bang of technology and the platforms and as we know them, and then all of a sudden, I’m not going to tell the names because I won’t publicize them, but we know the names of the biggest producers of pornography and the internet. And they what they did [00:28:00] was they understood they were losing money because the, the clientele did not want to watch older people, white older people, or just black older people, because they were separating them as they still do, and different areas in the, in the pages, right? So they started using the teen term, and every time somebody uses the teen term, I tell them, 13 [00:28:30] years old, right? So 13, 14, that’s teen phone number. I’ve seen it all over the world. So if you think that a 13 or 14 or 15, 16, 17-year-old girl or boy or non-binary person is is using his or help her power to decide to be exploited rape in a daily basis, then you have no idea what you’re [00:29:00] talking about.

(00:29:01):
So what they did was, was they started making their own movies to train the kids. And I saw this pattern everywhere, everywhere you go to, I went to sex shops in Japan, and then all of a sudden you see all these childlike ity that had to do with kitty beauty is this kitty thing that they have in Japan. And everything was linked to childhood. And then I started seeing the pattern everywhere in Kyrgyzstan, [00:29:30] in Mexico, in Colombia, in the us, in the uk, in Poland, in Germany. And I said, this is growing by the second, and nobody’s stopping it. So governments didn’t listen to us. They were probably, we were like the crazy journalists and activists. We were probably a hundred people together in the world doing this, insisting 20 years ago, this is going to get out of hand and children [00:30:00] are being exploited, sexually exploited, and they will be used to be sold again and again through the internet.

(00:30:09):
And now governments are asking themselves what to do with it. And I will just, I will stop here, but I will say one thing is one thing I discovered 2010 years ago when I went to Washington to have this conversation with some senators that were really worried about human trafficking. It’s was I said, listen, [00:30:30] do you wanna stop this? Do you wanna stop human trafficking and especially child trafficking, sex trafficking, then investigate this guys. So I gave them the list of the, all the owners and producers of pornography, adult pornography that were also producing team pornography in the us. And I said, the servers, the main servers of all these industry are on the US control. So control it, do it, right? Nobody did it. [00:31:00] No, no one, not even the leftist person, not even the feminist women. Nobody touched the issues at the Senate that week in Washington.

(00:31:10):
And I did the same thing in Guatemala, in Mexican Columbia, everywhere I’ve talked. And in some places they did listen, and in some places they didn’t. But the most powerful governments have never been able or willing to stop it, because if you go to the search of money and you stop it, and you know, they doing money [00:31:30] laundering, all these industries, laundering money doing this, I’ve demonstrated this in my, in my writings, and they won’t do it. So we have two enemies here. The first enemy is the hypocrisy of all our governments that are not willing to stop the industry that is exploiting and targeting children as clients, as new clients. That is my new investigation, my newest investigation. And then the other thing is, [00:32:00] why aren’t they going and after this mafias, because they’re mafias, they’re part of organized crime. They’re produced in pornography all over the world or after team Stockley from OnlyFans. And because the scheme that he has is a criminal scheme, they could go after him or, or Kelly Blair, who is the new CEO of OnlyFans, but they won’t do it because it’s multimillion industry and they give a lot of money to politicians. [00:32:30] So it’s up to us to stop it through cultural education and through, you know, uniting with, with the children that are just suffering.

Fight The New Drug (00:32:40):
Yeah. You’ve mentioned a couple in a couple of different places so far, the role that technology has played over, you know, the span of your work technology has obviously evolved quite a bit, even since you’ve written your books. Can you speak a bit to the role technology plays both in enabling, [00:33:00] but also in combating this exploitation?

Lydia Cacho (00:33:04):
Yes, of course. It’s really interesting how people ask me all the time, everywhere I go for conference in the world why am I still smiling after everything I’ve gone through? I, I’ve been trying, I mean, I live in Spain because I’m in exile because I governor tried to kill me five years ago because I put him in jail because he was a part of the network of sex child sex trafficking. [00:33:30] So people ask me why I still smile and fight about and are positive. And I, I always share this every time I find one organized crime leader anywhere around the world, you name it, China, the us, Mexico, Columbia, you name it, that is doing child pornography or sex trafficking with women or, or children. Every time I do, I find 200 people willing to help [00:34:00] 200 experts and people from different ages and places and knowledges that they want to get together to help.

(00:34:09):
So this is, it is, these guys are just very few and very powerful, and we are millions, and we are also as powerful as they are, but we don’t really know it. I have to say this before I keep going because it’s really important to re you know, to remember that we can, we can end this. I do believe that [00:34:30] because we understand the geography of the, of the, the, of the, the whole network and the business, how the business work. So technology technology has been incredible. When I started investigating this in 2003 in Mexico, this case that became international, I remember I interview police and experts. [00:35:00] There were very, very few in the world, right? And they did have some technology to detect who was like sharing this material, but they didn’t have laws to stop them.

(00:35:15):
So once they talked to me, they said, it’s so important that journalists talk about it, because if journalists talk about it, activists and lawyers and lawmakers will do something about it. So we started creating this networks around the world, talking about this, and human rights, [00:35:30] ne networks around in different countries and languages. And then all of a sudden we started passing law, mostly at the same time in many countries. And, and this really grew thanks to technology. Without the technology, we couldn’t have do, done that. And then when the, there was this disappearance of this little girl in the us it was called Megan, and then there was the, the idea of one policeman to create [00:36:00] the Megan Law and the Megan Law demanded that the police would recognize the faces of children that were in this, you know, in this network.

(00:36:11):
and now we use that technology everywhere around the world. So we, I had a big fight, big, big fight with Facebook people in the US long time ago. They threatened to sue me. I said, Sue me and I will sue you. And we had this fight until at the end they offered [00:36:30] me a job. And of, obviously I didn’t take it, but this fight with the Facebook CEO back then in, in the US had a lot to do with the fact that they were, they were able to, and willing to use this technology to recognize the faces of the children of the US within the US that were being abused or disappear in the context of sexual exploitation. But they were not willing to use that technology anywhere around the world. So what we did [00:37:00] was we, we brought all these documents to the, to the people of Facebook around the world at the same time, different activists showing them how many users of Facebook, Facebook were getting pornography that was linked to children. And then they said, well, well, but they, you know, the government has to ask for this. And I said, we said, no, you, you know, you are an industry. You, you, you don’t need that. You can’t do that by yourself. So we keep fighting that, [00:37:30] and they, they, they could do it, and they’re not willing to. So I, I guess we have to sue some of these tycoons again.

Fight The New Drug (00:37:39):
Can you speak you’ve touched on it a couple of different times, but to some of the challenges that you’ve faced while exposing these issues with large companies or corruption and organized crime that are all tied to trafficking and exploitation. You personally have endured [00:38:00] so much. Can you speak a little bit to those experiences?

Lydia Cacho (00:38:04):
Yes, of course. When I, when I started investigating domestic violence, actually in the nineties in Mexico and writing about it in the newspaper there was this lawyer that came to my office with a gun. That was the first time ever in my life that I saw a gun. You know, nobody in my family has guns, nobody, you know, this is not an unusual [00:38:30] thing in Mexico, except if you belong to organizer. So anyway, lawyer came to my office and I was going out of the office with my assistant, and he put a gun in my head like this, and he said, stop talking about my private life. And I said, it’s not your private life. You tried to kill your wife, and your wife told me the story, and the, you are so powerful. You’re a lawyer, very well known in Cancun, and the only way to stop you was to publish a story.

(00:39:00):
[00:39:00] And he said, you, I’m a lawyer and you are not you know, allowed to publish my name. You could publish the name of my wife. He said, but you cannot publish my name because it’s private. And that was one of the biggest lessons of my life, aside of understanding that once you have a gun in your head, you have to be really clever and, and, you know, calm, not to make the guy shoot you, obviously and you know, to stop in prom. So [00:39:30] I said, listen, you’re very famous and my assistant is here with me. You are outside the office of the magazine, and we have cameras. We didn’t, and I said, we have cameras, so if you shoot me, you will have to shoot her, and then everybody will know that it’s you, so you know it’s not worth it.

(00:39:48):
And he said he got really angry and he left. So I got in my car, I brought my assistant to her house. She was crying all the way to her house. And then I went to my house and I cried in my [00:40:00] house. I’m like, what the hell is going on? But the lesson learned from that was that when this very famous, powerful lawyer told me, this is my private life, you will be killed because you got into my private life, it was domestic violence, very, very ous. It was almost femicide, but it was domestic violence. And I said, huh, this is where it hurts to them. When they felt that I got into their private life committing [00:40:30] crimes, it’s private saying that you’re a victim and telling your name, it’s okay. And I said, this is exactly what the media is doing, so I’m gonna do the contrary, right?

(00:40:42):
I’m gonna always use the names of all the perpetrators having evidence, obviously, and never use the name of the victims ever again. So I did that, and I talked to all the journalists, to all my friends, and they were like, no, no, no, that’s illegal. And I said, why is it legal to tell the names of all the victims and showing their pictures in the newspapers? [00:41:00] It was the nineties. So it changed. I completely changed that dynamic, and fortunately, many of us did. And now it’s different. So that was the first time that somebody put a gun in my head. So I, I started understanding that my job was really dangerous, right? I wasn’t covering wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria. I was covering the war within my country war that happened in the houses of people. So I, I try to understand what to do, [00:41:30] and I study karate just because I need to know to take a gun away from a guy.

(00:41:35):
And I did learn how to, by the way. So here I’m, but anyway, so years after that, when I started investigating this organized crime ring, what I did was I had all these death threats, and I told my family, I have this dead threats, but I have a book. And my family said, go ahead. We are with you. You have to do it. The we you cannot [00:42:00] stop. We are with you all the same. My team say did the same thing. So what I did was I made a list of all the people they had to call if I disappear, if they kill me, if they kidnap me or anything else. So when they kidnapped me, when the police kidnapped me, then 10 policemen came to my office with like guns, like they using war to arrest me illegally arrest me for a crime I didn’t commit.

(00:42:27):
It was for exposing the criminals. And [00:42:30] they took me by car to another state for 20 hours, they tortured me ordering me to tell that ev all the content of my book and everything, all the testimonies from the 200 kids, children were a lie. And I refused to do it. So they put me in jail after they tortured me, and they beat me in jail. And then I got out, and then I, I won the case. And and you know, during the last 20 years, I’ve been putting it, each [00:43:00] and every one of them in jail, all the, the policemen that tortured me had been sentenced. The governor, the governor is in jail. The main child pornography producer on pedophiles died recently, but he was sentenced to 113 years. So lesson here is, it’s very difficult. It’s very hard. But it can be done, you know, and a, a very big risk, obviously.

(00:43:26):
But if you are creative in a risky situation, [00:43:30] you might win and help others win, you know? But on top of it, it all, I have to say that the most important thing for me here is children. It’s the voices of children and young people. Those are the ones that I’ve been protecting all my life. I didn’t survive everything they did to me because I wanted to be famous or whatever. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. That’s just stupidity. I did it because I know that we have to [00:44:00] defend children’s, right? The fight against child pornography and pornography, addiction of children and teenagers and young adults, it’s something that we have to give to protect them. Because right now I’ve been, I’ve been interviewing children, 13 and 12-year-old kids, boys in Spain that are addicted to pornography, right? And older testimonies showed [00:44:30] me that they didn’t, for the pornography, that it came to them in the phones, through the video games.

(00:44:37):
So I asked the parents to lend me the phones so we could study what kind of programs they were using, what apps, and, you know, everything that they did in order to send it and what channels they were using. And now we know it. Now we have a map of it. And now we, I have some police that are working with us in the team in order to understand how to tackle that, [00:45:00] like in, in a broader way, you know, not only from journalism, but human rights and police work and everything. And I think we will do that. The children are suffering so much. All these little boys. I mean, I had this 13-year-old little boy saying, you know, in the newspaper, they’re saying that I’m, I’m a criminal because I’m, I’m watching pornography that I hate girls, that this, he said, no, I just saw it and I kept watching it.

(00:45:27):
And then, you know, I just can’t stop. [00:45:30] And that addiction, you know, it’s different from drug addiction because this addiction is provoked by the industry. The other one is allowed, and it, it’s facilitated by the industry of a criminal industry, right? But you choose to buy it from someone. But when this someone is imposing it through algorithms, then the crime is big, and you can find it, and you can, [00:46:00] you can solve it in a very, very specific way. And that’s what I think it’s the fight of this, of this century, is to protect children around the world from that, from the use of technology, but organized crime that is producing pornography and using them as, as you know, as victims. They are chil little boys are victims of it. They are, and absolutely convinced. And that’s why I’m such a fan of everything that you do. Because, because you do understand [00:46:30] what’s happening in the mindset, souls and emotional you know, life of these children or young people that are addicted to pornography. We ha we are with them. We are trying to help them. And we know that there’s a lot of people outside that is, wants to harm, harm them, and we know we are finding out who they are.

Fight The New Drug (00:46:53):
Well, thank you so much, first of all, for your support of our work, but I just have to say, you are extraordinarily [00:47:00] courageous, and it really is so inspiring to see that you have experienced, I think, everything possible on, you know, in the past a couple of decades you’ve been doing this work, and the fact that you are still in this fight and still motivated to find solutions is inspiring. You know, obviously you wouldn’t continue doing this work if, if there wasn’t progress being made. So I’m wondering if you can speak a little bit [00:47:30] what strategies you’ve seen that have been most effective in combating these issues in educating the public and, and how these issues have been addressed on a global scale.

Lydia Cacho (00:47:42):
Well, I think there are so many areas in every area where people talk about emotions, love, sex seduction everywhere where you talk about interconnection of people related to emotional [00:48:00] issues and, and sexuality. You can do something about it everywhere. I do not believe, as many people say, that sexual education will end this addiction of pornography with kids in Spain. They are obsessed with it. You need to stop the maths that are doing this on one hand. And then on the other hand, you need to protect little boys, specifically boys and young men, and talk, talk to them and listen to them how to build different [00:48:30] masculinities and how to understand their emotional beings related to sexuality. What I, what I think we can do is, this is on, on one hand with the, with the arm of the law.

(00:48:44):
We, we do, can we do tackle certain groups of mafias that are producing this pornography? We have to, for example, training journalists. I do a lot of journalism trainings around the world and specifically, specifically [00:49:00] with the investigative journalists. And that’s so important because the biases on these issues from journalists is just scandalous and we have to stop it. We had to teach them journalists, all ages of all ages, and many men, but also women of course, how to learn how to talk about these issues and stop writing about cliches and stop writing off things they do not understand. [00:49:30] And look, they have to start looking for experts, especially female experts like you, like other younger experts that know exactly what they’re talking about, that understand what’s going on from facts and, and figures and from human experience, from the victims and survivors, and from the people who are doing something about it.

(00:49:51):
So the media has a big role in this, and, and, and it’s, you know, they have to be responsible for that. And then on the other hand, is [00:50:00] what I, what I do a lot is I go to schools and I talk to kids. And the way I do it is what I’m doing here with you is I tell them about my life story, how I tackle this mobsters and how I infiltrate and dresses and on. And then I went into there, and then I talked to this trafficker and got this video and got this audio. And then once they are engaged, I talk to them about how they produce pornography and why they want them to buy that. And then I talk about love, and I ask them, what do you want out [00:50:30] of love? And most of the teenagers look at me and go like, oh, I wanna be loved.

(00:50:35):
And I said, yeah, well, we all do. So talk about that. Talk about emotional health, talk about love and desire and eroticism instead of talking about sexuality by itself, you know, because that’s what pornography does. Pornography brings us only as sexual beings and they, it takes our humanity out of them, the [00:51:00] game. We have to bring it to the kids, and they do this, they do need that conversation. They need to be listened to and to be talked to, honestly. So I think for me, that’s, that’s the part where a lot of people, that’s where why I started doing this investigation on teenage boys addicted to pornography, because I talked to them in the school. And then after the, the the conference, some of them came to me and then one of them said, can I talk to you privately? And I said, yes.

(00:51:30):
[00:51:30] And he said, I think I have a problem. He’s 13 years old. And he said, I think I have a problem. And he was almost crying. He said, I think I’m addicted to pornography. I don’t know what to do. And then he said, I have a friend that is also in the same situation. So I talked to them, and then I talked to the parents privately and everything. So then we go into these processes in which someone talks about it. And then all of a sudden when, when I wrote these pieces, a lot of people in Spain started [00:52:00] talking about it. And a lot of young people started writing to me in my pr privately on Instagram. And back then when I had Twitter where I tweet because of evident reasons they started sending me messages saying, I’m going exactly soon to the same thing.

(00:52:18):
It’s like 13, 14, or 15-year-old. The same thing that happens to you that is in your, in your accounts, right? So they need help, and we have to reassure them, you are not guilty. You [00:52:30] are not part of the problem. You can be part of the solution. We know you’re suffering and we are experts on that, and we want to listen to you. We want to help you go through this process. And if you get out of that, you will be stronger. Like I did after I was tortured. I could just stay at home and just be bitter and, and sad and scared and depressed which I was for a while, of course. But [00:53:00] or I could do something about it and decide to go out and fight the bad guys. That’s what I think we have to do. We talk to young people and make them part of the solution. And I think I, I am sure they can be.

Fight The New Drug (00:53:14):
That’s, I couldn’t have said it better. I, I wanna end with one kind of final question to you. A few years ago in an interview, you mentioned that people always say to you, we need more women like you, Lydia, and you often say, yes, and we need [00:53:30] more men like me as well. Can you speak a little bit to that comment? and beyond that, what the average person can do to contribute to this fight against exploitation?

Lydia Cacho (00:53:41):
Absolutely. You know, I’m, I’m, I’ve been working all my life with men, with men, you know around me. Some of them have been the worst, like, especially in journalism, because they were like real bigots back in my generation. I’m 62 years old, so you [00:54:00] know, I was, when I started, it was like a male room and all of suddenly comes this crazy feminist and everything. Now things have changed a lot. But anyway, I I, I have met a lot of this awful violent, macho men and everything, but mostly in my entire career, I met such amazing men around the world that are doing incredible things for themselves, for, for their family. But what, what what I see is that when a woman [00:54:30] like you, like me, like so many of our friends or your listeners discovers human rights, discovers social justice or gender equality or the human rights of children, when, when you discover and you know you have something to do about it, it doesn’t matter what you study.

(00:54:53):
If you’re an engineer, if you’re a psychologist, if you’re in media, it doesn’t matter if you are an influencer, if you discover that and you want [00:55:00] to do something already, you will find a way, right? Because there’s so many experts around you and you will socialize. So women are being, having trained for, for the thousands of years to socialize the emotional experience and to share knowledge. And men have been trained by the macho culture to keep the knowledge for themselves, to make money to [00:55:30] not socialize the experience because they’re afraid to link their emotional experience to others. And they have been trained forever to discover something good and bring it into their middle world, meaning their family, their loved ones, or anywhere near them. They don’t socialize. And when we talk about gender equality, we talk about teaching men and allowing men of all [00:56:00] ages to be a part of the solution and to join forces and learn from us how to bring their experiences and share, share their knowledge, share your knowledge from the emotional experience and the healing of that pain that you suffer as a victim of child, child abuse or child trafficking or domestic abuse and bringing into the world and do something outside the doors of your own home or your own office.

(00:56:30):
[00:56:30] I think that right now, that’s the most urgent thing because when I meet men everywhere around the world in my conferences, they come to me and they go like, oh my God, I could do so much about it, but I don’t know how to, I don’t know if pe women won’t listen to me. And I’m like, women being, we’ve been listening to men always , you will listen to you. We you dedicate some of your free time to good causes. So I will just say, let’s call men to join [00:57:00] forces with us because we need them.

Fight The New Drug (00:57:03):
Thank you so much for your time, Lydia. Is there anything else before we wrap up today that we haven’t spoken about yet that you think is, IM particularly important to share with our audience that you would like to be sure we have some time to talk about today?

Lydia Cacho (00:57:15):
Well, very, very quickly, but I, I would say that if you have someone near you especially a teenager that has an addiction to pornography, please be very sensitive [00:57:30] to talk about it. When he or she approaches you or them approaches you to tell you that they have a problem, you just listen and you look for expert advice. Never ever judge them. Never make them feel that they are doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. Just accompany them because this is trauma. Pornography creates big, big trauma. [00:58:00] It’s violence, it’s cultural violence within the sexuality of the person. So never judge, just accompany them and then join the, the fight. The new against the new drug, of course you should join it. And that’s it. Be sensitive. Always, never judge people, just, you never know how they go through that because it’s, for most of the kids that I have interviewed, it’s hell. So let’s bring them out of hell.

Fight The New Drug (00:58:30):
[00:58:30] That’s very well said. And a, a good reminder, as you mentioned earlier, that this is an industry that pres upon young people, right? The younger, that the porn industry can get people hooked the longer they have a lifetime customer in their perspective. So it is something to remember that our our boys and girls are being targeted by this industry, and it’s something that we don’t often as a society prepare them well to handle at the young ages that they’re being exposed. So to know if they are choosing to open up to [00:59:00] us as safe adults in their lives that we can help make a positive impact on them, thus creating a ripple effect of positive change in the lives of so many others across the world. Lydia, I wanna thank you so much for your time. I could spend hours or days asking you every question I have about your life and your for any of our listeners who wanna learn more about your work and your story, would you like to direct them to some of the, the resources and work that [00:59:30] you have?

Lydia Cacho (00:59:32):
Well, I have written 21 books. So, if you wanna look for my books, just write my name, Lydia Cacho. They will come up, come up, and then I have so many conferences in English and Spanish and, and translate to different languages in YouTube. So if you wanna listen to it do it. And yeah, just listen to this podcast again and again.

Fight The New Drug (00:59:57):
Thank you so much Lydia. And for any of our listeners, a reminder, [01:00:00] we will link our resources in the show notes and please remember to like and subscribe if you are interested in more episodes like this one. Thank you again, Lydia. We appreciate your time and your work in this space and look forward to seeing what you can continue to do to create such a positive impact in our world.

Lydia Cacho (01:00:17):
Thank you very much.

Promo (01:00:29):
Taking [01:00:30] care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health. If you’re struggling with stress, anxiety, or anything in between, better help makes it easy to connect with a licensed therapist from the comfort of your own home. Whether you’re dealing with the impact of porn on your brain, relationships, or life, talking to someone who understands can make all the difference as a fight through new drug supporter. You can get 20% off your first month when you sign up through our link, betterhelp.com/fNtd. [01:01:00] That’s B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.C-O-M/F-T-N-D. Start taking care of yourself today. Fight New Drug does not individually support or endorse any individual therapist within the BetterHelp Network Fight. The new Drug receives financial compensation for affiliate partnerships.

(01:01:20):
If you have a resolution to give charitably in the new year, consider joining Fighter Club for as little as $10 a month. You can take an active role in helping others recognize how porn [01:01:30] can impact them, their relationships, and their communities. As a 501 (C)3 nonprofit, we rely on Fighter Club members to help us create resources that educate countless individuals on the harms of pornography. Like this podcast. Plus, as a member of Fighter Club, you’ll receive exclusive benefits, like 30% off the five through new drugstore access to our Secret Store, a Fighter Club kit when you join and more. Make a real difference in the Movement For Love this year, join Fighter Club [01:02:00] for as little as $10 a month at ftnd.org/joinfc. That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G/JOINFC. See you in the club.

Outro (01:02:13):
Thanks for joining us in this episode of Consider Before Consuming. Consider Before Consuming is brought to by Fight the new Drug. Fight The New Drug is a non-religious and non legislative organization that exists to provide individuals the opportunity to make an informed decision regarding [01:02:30] pornography by raising awareness on its harmful effects, using only science, facts and personal accounts. Check out the episode notes for resources mentioned in this episode. If you find this podcast helpful, consider subscribing and leaving a review. Consider Before Consuming is made possible by listeners like you. If you’d like the support Considere Before Consuming, you can make a one time or recurring donation of any amount at ftnd.org/support. [01:03:00] That’s F-T-N-D.O-R-G/support. Thanks again for listening. We invite you to increase your self-awareness, look both ways, check your blind spots, and consider before consuming.