Uncover - S24 E5: Becoming Warhead | "Hunting Warhead"

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

What led Benjamin Faulkner to become Warhead? And, more importantly, how do you prevent others like him from following the same path? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. The following episode contains difficult subject matter. Listener discretion is advised. If you want to learn more about how to prevent child sexual abuse, go to cbc.ca slash hunting warhead help. Come on in. Make yourself comfortable there.

Cecil will come and get us set up. It's okay. I play video games. Oh, okay. Oh, okay, good. We should have got you a headset. Should have brought mine. Should have brought, exactly.

Can you introduce yourself and tell me how you knew Ben Faulkner? My name is Emily, and I knew Ben, we met in college, and I thought we were dating off and on throughout college. And so that happened. Why'd you think you were dating? Because I asked him if we could date and he said, sure. And then we wound up, um, hanging out a lot, spending a lot of time together. You know, I'd go up to his place in North Bay and, you know, he met my parents and, uh, it was, it was fun. We had a lot of good times together. Yeah, well, that does sound like dating. Yeah. Sounds pretty much exactly like dating.

We had a really weird relationship, though. It was not uncommon for us to go weeks before we'd actually send a message to each other or even pick up the phone to call each other. So it was a really weird relationship. Part of this was that the chemistry wasn't right between Emily and Faulkner. He kept saying that it wasn't me, it was him. He's got a problem. And then eventually he just, like, blurted out,

no, I think I'm asexual. To be honest, sex has never really been something that I've been super interested in. It just so happened that I was when I was with him. So that never happened. So, a hard question, did you love Ben? Yeah, I think I did. Yeah.

Emily and Faulkner were close for several years. But after college, they both started working, and they eventually grew apart. How did you find out about what he did? Well, his mother wound up calling me. And actually, I remember her words. She said that he... So, you know how some people like animals and some people like objects and some people like people of the same sex? And some people like kids.

Well, Ben likes kids. And then when we hung up, I wound up looking up everything I could on the internet about him. Sure enough, there were tons of articles about him. And I sent a couple of them to my immediate family and friends. And then I said, don't bother me for a little while. And then just turned off everything and definitely had a good cry. Ben Faulkner was looking at a long sentence in the U.S. His family was fighting to get him back to Canada, and his mother, she asked Emily to

act as a reference. And I wound up having to tell her no. And that was probably, to this point of my life, one of the more difficult things I've had to do. Why did you say no? Because my job at the time made it super awkward to even consider trying to help that way. Can you tell me about your job at the time?

So at the time, I was working for a local police force. And I was one of the people that was working on specifically child porn investigations. Emily's a civilian. She'd been hired by the police for her computer skills. Part of her job was to analyze evidence. So confiscated hard drives full of child abuse images, that sort of thing. The two started dating before Emily got the job,

and she says she never discussed her work with him. But still, it's a crazy coincidence. And there's more. There was a time when we were looking to hire people, so I asked him for his resume. And he gave me his resume. And the entire time, you know, I had a week to hand it in. And the entire time I was sitting on it thinking,

maybe I shouldn't hand this in because it would be super awkward to get a job with him and work side by side with him. And that's, you know, not a good idea. You know, you don't shit where you eat kind of thing, right? So I never handed that in. But I was close. Do you think you would have got the job? I don't. But I was close. Do you think you would have got the job?

I don't know. I hope not now, but... Wow. Access to that kind of library every day? Unreal. Yeah, it sucked, because like, you know, you go to work every day, and you're like, these people are gross, and then all of a sudden, oh, I'm in love with one!

Shit! I'm Damon Fairless, and this is Hunting Warhead. I'd been talking to some of the people who knew Ben Faulkner best. Former friends of his, mostly. I'd also written his parents. I was hoping they'd have some insight into their son. I wanted to understand how Faulkner became warhead. I think it's a vital part of preventing more people like him from following the same path.

I got an email from Faulkner's mother a few weeks later. She wasn't ready to talk, at least not then. But Ben was. And it's funny, because suddenly, I wasn't sure I was ready to talk to him. However you like, I'm not sure how casual the podcast is. I could either be Dr. Burke or Mike, as you choose. Sure, okay.

So I called around for a bit of expert advice. I'm trying to figure out why does he want to talk to us? Like I assume there's some element of manipulation. He maybe has an agenda, but he also seems genuinely interested in coming clean. Is that something that is common? You know, I have found that there is a type of pressure to get this toxic stuff, this energy out. And I think there is something cathartic about that for some of these offenders. This is Michael Burke. I'm the chief psychologist for the United States Marshal Service and the head of the Marshal Service Behavioral Analysis Unit.

He spent a big part of his career working in prisons, treating child sex offenders. I wouldn't necessarily trust that you're going to get 100% of the story. In my experience, they'll sort of disclose 90% or 80% or 60% or whatever it was, and you're never quite sure where they're going to draw that line in the sand of what they consider shameful or sick and what they don't. But to your point, it's definitely possible that this individual wants to get some stuff out. And it's also possible that there may be an agenda and what you'll hear is a partial truth and a partial justification, intellectualization, rationalization, denial. In the letters that I started to get from Faulkner and those he had sent to Hawken,

there was plenty of all this. Justification, intellectualization, rationalization. And there was also information on how we might be able to speak over the phone. I'd reached out repeatedly to the warden at the jail where Faulkner was being held, looking to organize an in-person interview. But I didn't have any luck. But Faulkner was able to make local calls from his jail cell. So if I got myself a local number over a voice over IP service and had that connect to my cell phone, I'd be able to speak with him. So I got myself a Kentucky number and I waited.

This is a prepaid call from an inmate at the Davies County Detention Center, Kentucky. This call is subject to monitoring and recording. Your call has been accepted. Hello. Walkness started calling me fairly regularly. Your call has been accepted. Hey, Ben. How are you? I'm alive. I have no idea what time it is. I'm sorry if it's super early.

Sometimes several times a week. Your call has been accepted. Hey, Ben. what's up? Hey, Ben, I'm in the car. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you. We'll keep you in your field. Can you tell me what life is like for you there?

Absolutely terrible. Boring to tell. I spend my days reading, writing, staring at a wall, and listening to NPR radio. Faulkner liked to talk, but it was tricky getting real information from him. There were a couple complications. Complication number one, Faulkner had two cellmates who were almost always within earshot. Yeah, okay. Complication number two, although he'd already been sentenced for sexually assaulting the four-year-old girl in Virginia, he hadn't yet been sentenced for sexually assaulting the four-year-old girl in Virginia,

he hadn't yet been sentenced for his involvement with the dark web. So he was reluctant to give me specifics that could be used against him. We agreed not to talk about Child's Play until after his second sentencing hearing, which was fine, because the whole point of speaking to Faulkner was to do the difficult and unpleasant task of trying to understand him, his psychological state. So, you won't hear me challenging or confronting him as much as you might expect, or as much as I wanted to, actually. My goal was to get as deep inside his head as I could. And to my surprise, he was pretty willing to let me in. Oh, man. I remember there was one time I had a friend.

He was sleeping over at my place. And at one point, he just, like, there was some porn up on the TV, as, you know, young 13-year-olds do. And, uh, I mean, he's enjoying it. I'm not, it was just weird. It was just weird. Like this was the moment that I realized that I can't be who he thinks I am right now.

I can't, I can't be that person. By now Faulkner's starting to realize he has no sexual interest in people his own age. But he is developing a sexual interest. Because I have much younger sisters than myself. They've never been on my radar, but their friends certainly have. And I just, I remember it being, at the moment, it was like, oh, you know, whatever.

But as it started to dawn on me, it was just crushing. I don't even know how else to explain it. It's this existential misery that you know that you're never going to be ever going to be who people think you are and it hurts so much as it as dawns on you year after year it just it's always there always in the back of your mind pretend pretend put on the mask pretend what would a normal person say at this point what would someone not in my shoes do here do, do this, stay here. It just becomes an act forever. And it just, it sucks realizing that you have to act for the rest of your life. At this point, Faulkner says he turned to the internet to find help.

I remember I found a couple, like, Yahoo chats and a couple random stuff. Then he said one of two things. find help. The second one was pretty much like, oh, you're a monster and you should die. The number one take-home message that I always give any audience is that pedophilia is not a synonym for child molestation. That's James Cantor. He's a psychologist, neuroscientist, and an internationally recognized sex researcher. People use these interchangeably, but there are pedophiles who are not child molesters, there are child molesters who are not pedophiles. In fact, most child molesters are not pedophiles. That's because most people who molest children are opportunistic sexual offenders, meaning they'll take advantage of whatever victim they come across.

Ben Faulkner is both a child molester and a pedophile. Pedophiles were born with it, they didn't ask for it, and it's not going to change. They're sexually aroused by children. That's pedophilia, regardless if they ever touch one, suppress it, or act out on it. There's compelling evidence that pedophilia has at least some biological basis. The first hint was there was a difference in IQs. On average, offenders against children and pedophilic offenders had a couple of IQ points on average lower than offenders against adults or people who had committed non-sexual crimes. averaged lower than offenders against adults or people who had committed non-sexual crimes.

Researchers also found subtle physical traits that are more common among pedophiles, which suggest that the disorder may have roots during a critical stage of fetal development. This means, to a certain extent, that pedophiles may be born this way. Now, exact numbers are hard to come by, and there's a lot of debate, but experts believe that anywhere from 1 to 4 percent of the adult population has some form of pedophilic attraction. That attraction can take a number of forms. Some pedophiles are attracted to children in addition to adults, and some are attracted to older kids, young teenagers, for example. Others are attracted to very young children, including infants. And

there's a subset of pedophiles who are exclusively attracted to children and have no sexual interest in adults whatsoever, like Ben Faulkner. Pedophilia also seems to be far more common in men than in women. That said, James Cantor argues that being a pedophile doesn't mean you're fated to abuse kids. He provides counseling to plenty of non-offending pedophiles. So a lot of the people who come in, they don't need therapy. They need to be treated like a human. These are people who are horrified by their own sexual desires. And because of that, Cantor believes they don't pose as much of a risk of becoming abusers.

And they just need the feeling they are not the only one in the world. They just forever had this thing. They tried living life, faking their ways through marriage, beating themselves up their entire lives because they were not able to defeat their own pedophilia. You can't imagine a weight like that. their entire lives because they were not able to defeat their own pedophilia. You can't imagine a weight like that. But that is not who Ben Faulkner is. He took a different path. At the same time, as all this is going on, the highs and the lows, right?

Depression, acceptance. There's always that little voice in the back of your head that's just like, just do it. Just do it. You know, just do it. Just do it. Nobody will find out. Kind of like, there's always that voice telling you to do it anyways, even if you don't want to, kind of thing. The thing is, it's pretty clear that Faulkner did want to. And so that little voice of his, it won. So how old were you? 13 or 14, I think. Maybe a little bit younger. That notion we have of pedophiles as dirty old men is sort of inaccurate. Most pedophiles actually seem to identify their sexual

preference around the time they reach puberty. And those who go on to act on those preferences and molest children often begin offending as teenagers. And how old was the other person was younger, I'm assuming? Oh, four. Maybe,

give or take a year. I was, uh, taking care of... Your babysitter? Yes, indeed. Was this a family member? It was.

Faulkner is being reticent on account of his cellmates, not from what I can tell because of any shame or regret. He sexually abused this girl for about seven years, until he was in his late teens. It's tough to hear him talk about this, especially so casually, but it's not surprising. It's actually common for child sex offenders to have a long history of committing abuse before they're caught. One study suggests that on average, they typically offend for just over 13 years before their first arrest. So at that point, are you looking at material online? I'm trying to find it. And I may have found a little bit of it. But not a whole lot. I'm looking for literally anything. Because it's really hard to find.

So pretty much anything that I can come across is like, oh hey, I found this. That's good. I bet to the collection. Faulkner is not yet on the dark web. He's just surfing the regular internet. This goes on for several years. He slowly builds a collection on encrypted hard drives.

He's also spending a lot of time at the local YMCA. I'm sure by this point you know that I had a lifeguard position for seven years. Yep. I worked with kids every day. Every day. Loved it. My favorite thing in the world. Part of his job at the Y was to teach children how to swim.

I would take as many teaching trips as I possibly could because it paid really well and it was ridiculously fun. I just want to clarify something when you're talking about fun and teaching. To what extent is the fun you're getting from teaching just because you're enjoying teaching kids pure and simple? To what extent is it because you're enjoying their company at a deeper sexual or emotional level? at a deeper sexual or emotional level? I don't know if you can separate the two,

because on one hand, I adore being there to help them become better at what they're there to do. Yeah. It's ridiculously, what's the word I'm looking for, fulfilling, I guess. But then there's that added layer of like, well, also, of like these like 10 that I have in my class, like three of them are pretty okay.

So there's that aspect as well. My first memory of Ben was probably at the open swims, mostly while we were in swimming lessons, I'm not. That's Katie. She and her younger sister, Kira, are now young adults. They spent a lot of time at the pool when they were kids and a lot of time around Ben Faulkner. If he was guarding near the hot tub,

we would go to the hot tub and talk to him, and he was nice, he was funny, he was charming. There was a little bit of a crush, I guess you could say. So just being able to go to those open swims was exciting for us. At no point at that job did I ever do anything criminal. I may have pushed a couple boundaries, sure, but nothing criminal. Katie remembers Faulkner pushing those boundaries. One of the memories I do have is, like, when we went to go leave the pool, he would ask us for hugs.

And Faulkner pushed things further. Here's Katie's sister, Kira. It eventually came to a point where we weren't allowed to leave the swimming area without giving him a hug. And then it started, he would follow us out to the changing rooms. Like he wouldn't follow us into it, but he would follow us to it. And then he'd say, okay, you guys can't go in there unless you give me a hug. Faulkner was in his late teens. Katie was about to turn 11. So I think it was getting close to my birthday,

and he kept telling me about the secret that he wanted to tell me, and I was excited to go to the Y to hear about the secret. And we ended up going into the sauna together at one point and he admitted that he had a crush on me. I was just I think it was more or less like I was starstruck and as a kid I wasn't really worried about the age. I didn't really think about that kind of stuff back then. Like, it hits me hard now, just because I'm older. But I didn't have many friends growing up in school. I haven't always been the type to make friends. This is classic grooming.

Finding a kid who's lonely and making them feel special. Faulkner tells Katie he's going away to college and that he wants to stay in touch. I got a letter in the mail and of course it was weird because it was addressed to Katie and Kira. That's Katie and Kira's mother, Rhonda. So I opened it, and I'm like, what the hell is he writing letters to my daughter? It was written like they were his best friends and that he could tell them whatever he wanted. It's just the fact that an 18- old is writing two little girls both of them a letter to me that just doesn't sit right why are you trying to establish a relationship between

yourself and my two children when you should be looking at college girls and people your age this is not normal for me. Rhonda forbid her daughters to communicate with Faulkner. And then he began to start talking to her through email again. So she would have been 13 by that time. And then I told Steve about Bandai. Steve is Rhonda's husband. So he stopped it. He wrote him a nice little threatening thing.

If you ever talk to my daughter again, these are going to be the consequences. I will call the police, leave them alone. They are underage. And it never happened again. Rhonda also paid a visit to Faulkner's supervisor at the pool. And at the time, I still had the letter. So I showed him.

I said, does this make any sense to you? He says, no, I would probably be really upset about it. Exactly. So see it from my view. You run this place. Perhaps you should look more into it. Did you hear back about that request? Not at all.

I was pissed. I was so angry. Nobody listened to me. I was so mad. Ben Faulkner continued working at the YMCA in the summers, and he continued grooming other children. So, working as a lifeguard was a very, um, it was a good, uh, I want to call it a hunting ground is what I'm going to call it. Although that sounds super sinister, but that's what I'm going to call it. So there was one Friday, I was preparing to leave, but it was raining outside. And she comes up to me and she's like 12. Faulkner's talking about one of his students.

She's like, hey, can you give us a ride home? I'm like, oh yeah, fuck yeah, I can give you a ride home. That sounds like a good idea. So Faulkner gives the girl and her two siblings a ride home. And it becomes a pattern. More rides home, trips to the beach, going out to eat. All without their parents knowing. Faulkner is interested in one girl in particular.

Eventually at one point, things started getting a little bit out of hand. In that, like I'm texting her from the bar, I'm like pissed drunk and I'm like texting her. That's not something I should be doing. But anyways... Faulkner texts her. He gets a text back. He's like, we should go cruising. And I'm like, okay, cool.

He gets another text to meet the girl at an isolated spot on the town's lakeshore. Lake Shore. So, of course, I show up and then your grandmother, her mother, her uncle are like, what are you doing? I'm like, ah. The girl's family had been intercepting Faulkner's text messages.

So what are they doing? That's how that went. They're pretty much just like, you are doing illegal things. And I'm like, just like, you are doing illegal things. And I'm like, ah, I am not doing illegal things. Nothing illegal has been done yet. And so they're like, you are going to stop this. And I'm like, yep, I'm going to stop this.

There were no explicit threats. But Faulkner tells me he felt lucky to have made it out of that situation unharmed. And then I was traumatized. It was a little bit of a close call. Faulkner finally decides he needs help. He needs to see a psychologist. I pulled out my phone, and I picked the first one that showed up on Google. Faulkner wrote Hulken about his appointment with the therapist, including this.

I asked what his legal obligations were. He explained that he had to report me if I was an imminent danger to myself or others. Being that I worked at a pool, and that I had already touched some kids before, I did not tell him. Instead, I told him I didn't want to hurt anyone, which is 100% true, but not all the truth. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally took a breath. I like kids, is all I could manage.

Sexually, he responded, all I could do is nod. He visibly shifted in his seat, presumably uncomfortable, and asked, like, ten years old? I couldn't get myself to correct him that it was more like two to ten at the time, so I just nodded in agreement. When the hour was up, he gifted me with the final thesis and discussion. Just deal with it. I learned

nothing besides the fact that experts can't help me. It only helped me to reinforce the idea that only I can help myself, and the isolation must continue. And with this one visit to a therapist, Faulkner believes the psychological community as a whole failed him. The fact that somebody has professional training doesn't mean that they are immune to having some of the myths or some of the beliefs about people with pedophilia. This is Michael Cito. He's one of the world's leading experts on pedophilia.

He's talking about a set of studies, interviews with pedophiles who have approached therapists for help. I'd say their description of the reaction was quite mixed. Sometimes the therapist was helpful, and sometimes literally the therapist basically said, I don't know, I have nothing to offer you, get out of my office. So it's not simply saying, well, people should, you know, be more willing and more able to go and seek out help.

You know, we want that to be knowledgeable and evidence-based help. So it is plausible that the therapist Faulkner saw didn't know how to deal with his condition. That said, most therapeutic programs are designed to treat pedophiles after they've been caught. There's really not much out there in the way of preventative therapy. But the bigger issue is how badly did Ben Faulkner really want help? is how badly did Ben Faulkner really want help?

After all, I was able to find and contact three of the world's leading therapists fairly easily. And then there's this. I asked Faulkner what he thinks might have happened if he had connected with an appropriately qualified therapist, someone like Michael Burke or James Cantor or Michael Cito. Realistically, if I would have found this person pre-TOR... TOR is the software that allows you to access the dark web. Oh yeah, for sure. This, yeah, it's going to change a new path. Awesome.

If I had found this person post-Tour, I probably would have gone to him. But even if he would have been like, yeah, I can totally do something for you, I can't guarantee you I would have gotten rid of anything I already had. I had hard drives. Hard drives full. So I almost guarantee those hard drives would have remained intact. I don't think I would have had the strength to be able to get rid of them. What Faulkner is admitting here is that it didn't really matter how qualified the therapist was. He was already active on tour.

He was immersed in child abuse material. Meaning, by the time he sought help, it was too late. He didn't want to change. The internet does something that's very problematic. Michael Burke again from the U.S. Marshals. Aside from being a venue through which people can distribute child pornography, it allows people to build these communities of like-minded individuals. It is a subculture.

There's pedophilic subcultures and sadistic subcultures and voyeur subcultures and whatnot. And these are just as powerful as any other group to which we may belong, for which we have an identity or an affiliation with. Very powerful social support. Man, that is a powerful human need to be accepted and to have a sense of meaning in all this. They found that online with each other. They found that in their networks. This is precisely what was going on with Faulkner.

He had joined a forum on tour called Pito's Support Community. This is a site devoted to written messages, not images. And he was posting under the username CuriousVendetta. Messages like this one. After reading the pages and pages of kind, supporting words from all the great people here, I cannot help but feel like everyone here is almost family. And for that, I am blessed.

He also bragged about his job at the pool, about his quote-unquote relationships with young children, and about his background as an IT security specialist. And it's where he met another user, Mission Man, a.k.a. Patrick Fawlty. Patrick was the first person who was finally like, look, you don't have to pretend anymore. And that was, yeah, no, it's, relief is not even a word. It's like some sort of divine intervention. When someone finally comes to you and puts their hand on your shoulder and they're like, you're safe here, it's okay.

You don't have to pretend anymore. Patrick Fawlty was running another dark web forum under the username Crazy Monk. The site was called the Gift Box Exchange. It was one of the most popular spots on tour for trading child abuse material. Crazy Monk was looking for a co-administrator with a background in IT security. So when Curious Vendetta showed up on Gift Box, Fawlty recognized him from PETA's support community

and brought him on board as his right-hand man. as his right-hand man. So then you hung out with Patrick in real life when? That would have been Super Bowl weekend, January 2016. Actually, it's kind of funny because, I mean, we had been planning on meeting up for her Because he had been there before I was there. Faulkner's talking about plans he and Fawlty were making to see the four-year-old girl in Virginia. To abuse her.

Yeah. So, me and Patrick and her dad, we were all planning on meeting up. So this was the first time I got to meet Patrick. So we had, you know, got everything figured out, made sure we weren't law enforcement, got the burner phones, all the other stuff, got everything together. From what Faulkner tells me,

these sort of offline, in-person meetups are extremely rare. What's not rare is how frequently a father participates in the abuse of his own child. A study by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that when a child has been abused by a single adult, half the time that adult's family. 42% of the time, it's either the child's father or stepfather And there's another study that's also concerning The relationship between looking at online child abuse And actually committing real-world hands-on offenses

This is something Michael Burke has studied in depth What we found is about 87% of the men Who had come into prison for possession of child pornography acknowledged that they also had engaged in some form of hands-on abuse with the children. When I consult on child pornography investigations, I say, assume that this person is a hands-on abuser unless proven otherwise. Faulkner was a hands-on abuser long before he became Curious Vendetta or Warhead. And it seems like he was always looking for opportunities.

There was a point in time when he approached me and said, you know, I'd like to become a foster parent someday. This is Emily again, Ben Faulkner's not-quite-girlfriend. And, you know, maybe you'd like to do it too with me. Okay, yeah, maybe. We'll have to see how that goes. We wound up growing apart enough, and he wound up applying to become a foster parent. And I was like, this is great. Go for it, dude. And I was really behind him 100%, But it, I guess, never happened. It didn't happen.

But Faulkner did apply. I didn't get very far in the process at all. I needed to have a room, you know, X by Y dimensions. I needed to have an entrance that is at the front of the building and not like through a garage. You know, all those other things right so uh i went around searching for places that would fit these definitions and then we came down i brought gordon to dc and then that's just where it kind you know yeah right but what was your motivation I'm going to go ahead and veto that one

Faulkner's plans on the dark web are just as chilling and he got much further with them not content with being an administrator on the gift box exchange, he starts his own site. In the spring of 2016, he brings Child's Play to the dark web

and he gives himself a new username. Ben Faulkner is now Warhead. is now warhead. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs.

And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so you've got access to maturity. You've got access to a community. But why start your own site? Is that something you can talk about? Maybe I can frame that question a little differently.

Why, theoretically, would one want to start their own site? Yeah, okay, theoretically. There's a whole economy that goes on behind all this stuff. I'll come up with an analogy, right? You can collect comic books, right? You can collect comic books, right? You can go to the store and you can buy your comic books, whatever, but you're never going to get the rare

Spider-Man number one, Hulk number one. In mint condition, you're not. You're not going to get anything other than the commons, what everybody else has, which is great, but the speed with which these comic books are made is much

slower than the speed with which you can consume them. So, at some point, you need to start looking for other people who are more likely to have the rares that you're looking for.

So, in order to do that, you need to raise yourself onto the social ladder. Okay. So if I'm understanding, social status in these communities is tantamount to more access to stuff? For the most part, yeah. At the top of the ladder

you have your producers people who make the products right that's the top of the pyramid if you're there you can get anywhere you want because

you know someone's like if you want access to this you need new material 30 seconds later here it is there you go right you can get anywhere you want

the next rung down on the ladder would be like someone like like an administrator or someone who runs a service and then the ladder would be like someone like an administrator or someone who runs a service. And then underneath that would be like moderator, gets you into the VIP zones. And then there's a couple rungs underneath that.

So, yeah. That's generally the main drive you'll find. Plus, at that point, I'm pretty sure I was addicted. I don't know if I told you, there was one time where me and Gordon went out for dinner and shot the shit and whatever. But after like two hours away from my laptop, I'm like, we have to go home. He said, why? And I show him like I'm shaking. I couldn't be away from my laptop for more than like a couple hours or I'll go into the shakes. So I think on some level there was some sort of, maybe not addiction,

but I couldn't not do it. Do you also feel like you've got an addiction to, I don't just mean porn, but also being involved in that community? I feel like that might be the case. I mean, at the beginning

when it was just like TGE be the case. I mean, at the beginning, when it was just like TGE, like just the admin there, I was like, okay. And then I branched out, and then after that I started Cplay. Not only are you the admin, but then you get all the perks on top of that. All the better trades, all the better deals,

you get to meet all the high-level people, you get to meet people in other countries who have things for you, etc., etc. And then it just went from there. Every day when I would wake up, I felt like a fucking super spy, I'm not going to lie. Because nobody around me knows. Nobody. They have no idea that when I say jump, at least one million people say how high.

no idea that when I say jump, at least one million people say how high. Faulkner wasn't just addicted to the community. He was addicted to the power. In fall 2016, Ben Faulkner makes plans to travel to Virginia. His friend and roommate Gordon decides to join him for the road trip. So you guys met up together on the Friday. You guys all spent the night at Gordon's relative's place. Then Saturday, you guys go into the city. Gordon goes his own way, goes to the opera that night.

That night, you're you're with her dad. Faulkner and Fawlty sexually assault the four-year-old girl and take photos and videos of the abuse. Sunday morning, we left the hotel and went back to D.C., picked up Gordon, and we did the whole tourist, whatever touristy thing. Homeland Security has been monitoring Faulkner and Fawlty all weekend. The three of them drive back to where they're staying with Gordon's relatives. The next morning is October 3rd.

So, I don't know what time it was. Like 15 minutes before my alarm on my phone was to wake me up. Patrick was on like a mattress on the floor and I was on like a big love seat, I guess. I don't know. But anyways, it was really weird because we both woke up. We both sat up and looked at each other. And we're like, why are we awake? And then like five seconds later, battering ram at the front door, like police with a warrant.

We're like, well, fuck. And I'm sitting in my head, I'm thinking, well, it's probably not Gordon. Because I've never seen Gordon do anything even remotely illegal. It might be the two old people that own the house, but they're adorable. And I don't think it's them it's probably the two pedophiles sitting in this room who have the largest stash of child porn in like a 50 mile radius I don't remember

we said something to each other something on the line like well it's fun and of course they they storm the house. You can hear them searching the rooms downstairs. We're just sitting in the room. We're the first room at the top of the stairs on the right. So we hear them coming up the stairs.

And you hear one of them say, like, check right. And you just hear them like, two on right, two on right, two on right. I come in, cuff Patrick, throw him on the floor. Cuff me, throw me on top of him. I guess they took everybody else downstairs. Three or four minutes later brought Patrick to another room down the hall. And then they came in. Like, do you know why we're here?

They would not tell me what Patrick was doing. They would not tell me what Bork was doing. They wouldn't tell me anything. was doing. They would not tell me what Thorpe was doing. They wouldn't tell me anything. You were interrogated separately? Yeah. Yeah. That son of a bitch lied to me. He told me, he's like, if you help me, I can help you.

And my dumbass, not knowing how the legal system works, he's like, oh, okay. Let me just decrypt everything for you. And seal my fate. So you're being interrogated, you decrypt your computer, what happens then? Oh geez. Not just my computer, like, I don't think I understand the levels of security that I had to breach for them. I don't... Probably not, no.

Like, the levels of security that they would have had to have gone through had I not for them. Probably not. The levels of security that they would have had to have gone through had I not helped them? I'd be home right now. Right now. But anyway, so I decrypt that. At some point they ask, because they didn't even know, they're like, where were you Saturday

night at 9? We noticed you weren't at the hotel. So I was like, alright. I was at were you Saturday night at 9? We noticed you weren't at the hotel. So I was like, all right. I was at, you know, this address. They're like, what were you doing there? I was like, well, I was at, uh, I was at, uh, a child's house. And he's like, oh, fuck. Like, he starts texting, and a whole bunch of other texting goes on,

and everybody's face gets all dire. So what was their reaction like? They didn't have a clue. You said it got real serious. They were definitely surprised. I gave them everything they needed. Every question he asked me, I gave them the answer to.

I decrypted everything. I put myself up on the line. I admitted to literally everything including they had no idea about everything they were standing in front of me sharpening their razor blades

and I exposed my throat I was like yeah go ahead sit right here that's what you do right there I'm a fucking moron that's the day that I betrayed the trust of everybody

I killed here. I understand you've had some suicide attempts? Uh, that's seven right now. Seven? Oh, don't tell Mom, though. She only knows of two. The first significant suicide attempt was March 2017. I had to use a shoelace, and then I woke up in the hospital like two days later. What was the major motivation for that? I think the major factor is like, there is no reason for tomorrow anymore.

Are there going to be more? Likely, but not anytime soon. I'm going to have my goals. I need these goals. These goals can really keep me alive. These goals Faulkner's talking about include a social campaign to change the perception of pedophiles

as monsters, a push for widely available preventative therapy, and legal reforms that focus on treatment as opposed to long prison sentences. They're ambitious, to say the least. And while there might be some merit to each of these points, what stood out to me talking to Faulkner is just how self-serving they are. But he doesn't see it that way. I want to help people. I've always wanted to help people. It's kind of one of the main motivations for everything. But he doesn't see it that way.

This is a classic example of what psychologists call a cognitive distortion. Michael Burke. A cognitive distortion is something that human beings employ that allows us to rationalize doing whatever we're going to do. So the clever thing about distortions is they actually allow us to do what we want to do instead of what we should do. And they generally do it in a way that makes us feel better about ourselves. And this is also true with sex offenders is as soon as they go offline, they feel guilty. So the conscience will kick in and say, you shouldn't have done that. So what happens is at that point, they actually engage in another type of distorted behavior, which is compensatory behavior. So for sex offenders,

a lot of times what you'll find when you look at their lives, the community will sometimes rally behind this rabbi or this youth group leader or this coach, and they'll say, wait a minute, you've got the wrong guy. This is such a great guy. He built three houses for Habitat for Humanity last year. He's donated to all these things. He works. He's so great with kids. He's a great school teacher. And the truth is, he is a great school teacher. He did build houses for that charity. He is contributing to many wonderful things. But that's because sex offenders have an ability to compartmentalize their lives, and they will use those good things as moral compensation for the evil that they're committing

in another sector, if you will. So they're saying, look, I'm not a monster. I'm a good person that has a little bit of problems over here. And it allows them to ultimately rationalize and justify what they're doing. Which brings me to the thing about Faulkner I find most disconcerting. Yeah, she seems totally cool. During one of her calls, I asked him about the girl he abused when he was a teenager, the family member he told me about. Someday I want to, I want to just sit down and be like, look, how do you feel about this? Because I legitimately want to know.

Certainly I haven't hurt anybody, as far as I'm concerned. Not physically, anyway, so. I certainly haven't hurt anybody, as far as I'm concerned. Not physically, anyway, so... I also asked him about the four-year-old girl in Virginia. I can tell you, I can tell everybody, I was so fucking in love with her, you have no idea. But people are like, no, you can't, that's not possible.

That's not a thing. No, you don't understand. Like, I was in love with her. Like, my eyes are watering right now. Like, I'm tearing up. And I brought this up to every single psychologist I've spoken to. Like, no, no, that's not a thing. Bullshit, it's not a thing.

There's a lot more than just the physical attraction. I want an attachment. That's what I want. The most remarkable thing about Ben Faulkner's distorted thinking, at least to me, is that it allows him to somehow tally up all of his abusive and predatory behaviors in a way that lets him think of himself as basically a good guy. Now, where his distortions really emerge is that any sexual contact with a child, regardless of whether that child, quote unquote, consents or not, which they can't, but I get what he's saying. He's saying, overtly, when I said to the child, hey, is it okay if I do this to you?

And the child replied, yes, that would be okay. And I said, great. And I did it. And the child laughed. That's consent. Now, what I say is that's not consent. And we all know that that's not consent. But in his mind, he desperately wants to rationalize what he's doing.

His particular distortion says, when you do something to a child and the child's crying, they have not consented. When I ask the child and the child says, yes, it's OK, that is consent. So he's drawing this dichotomy to make what he's doing more morally OK. But children cannot consent. And on some level, he actually knows that. I really believe that you've got a blind spot, and I just think you're not aware of what you're leaving in your wake.

I think you're having trouble putting yourself in the place of the kids. And I think that a lot of your assumptions about consent and the ramifications of the behavior, I don't think you have a very nuanced or sophisticated understanding of what those may be. And I think it's because it's in this blind spot of yours. I think it's going to take you a long time to figure out that blind spot. Well, okay. I can agree with

some of that. I'm obviously going to have to disagree with most of that. But I can't really get into that. Yeah, it's hard for you to do that. I would like to. I think for sure, if one day,

I'm not saying it will, I'm not saying it won't, I'm open to suggestions. If one day, the blind spot is no longer blind, it will kill me. The fact is, child sexual abuse is extraordinarily harmful, especially if you look at the long-term consequences. A recent study by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection found that 70% of people whose abuse had been shared over the internet lived in constant

fear of being recognized. And for good reason. 30% of them had been recognized by someone who had seen images of their abuse. But the most startling fact is this. In addition to staggering rates of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, problem sleeping, and relationship issues, 60% of the respondents had attempted suicide. So you've got two types of offenders. Michael Burke with the U.S. Marshals. People whose predilections and urges don't sit well with them, that they understand it's wrong and that they need some help.

Then you have the guys where they don't think there's anything wrong with what they did. So they can actually be impossible to treat. So our task in many cases initially for those guys that don't think that what they did is wrong is we have to motivate them and get them to the place where they at least recognize that what they did was potentially harmful, that what they did at least had negative consequences. Because most sex offenders that come into a prison system are eventually going to leave. I think it's in excess of like 85, 89 percent will eventually leave the

prison system and come back to our communities. And we don't have a cure for pedophilia. In this way, it's like substance abuse. You know, we don't have a cure for alcoholism. We don't have a cure for opioid addiction. And that's the case with sex offenders as well. We don't know how to change their fantasies. And also, we never take anything away in psychology without replacing it with something healthy. When you take that stuff away and begin to remove those behaviors from someone's repertoire, we always have to remember, this is how he got needs met. This is how he coped with stress in his life. This is how he dealt with sadness and anger and all of the other negative emotions.

So if we're going to take away this coping mechanism, which is certainly maladaptive and harmful, well, what are we going to replace that with? Because if you don't do that, the anger and sadness and loneliness and frustration, when all these things are still present, he's going to fill it with the only thing he knows how to assuage those thoughts. And he's going to go back to those websites or go back to that water park or whatever it might be. What literature exists on Project Dunkelfeld? I only learned of it maybe two years ago. Faulkner and I are talking about something called Project Dunkelfeld. Like, I only learned of it maybe two years ago-ish. Faulkner and I are talking about something called Project Dunkelfeld.

This is a pilot project based in Berlin. Actually, I interviewed one of the head researchers on it for this. The aim is to encourage pedophiles to volunteer for therapy before they commit an offense. It was launched in 2005 with a public ad campaign, including posters and subway stations, all funded by the German government. The findings from the Dunkelfeld Project are still too preliminary to know how effective the program is.

But the big takeaway so far is this, that in the first five years, over a thousand men volunteered. It seems that there are at least some pedophiles out there who are genuinely looking for help. We're starting to see some evaluation results, but those are the first results in the peer-reviewed literature, right? This is Michael Cito, the pedophilia expert we heard from earlier. So we don't have as much evidence about prevention as opposed to treatment for people who are sexually offended. And so Cedar argues we need a lot more research

and funding for that research. The other thing I would say about research and sort of the prevention of harm is anything that involves, you know, we should give more money to the police, we should build more prisons, we should lock them up for longer, that's reactive. That's actions that take place after sexual offending has already occurred. And where I'm putting more energy nowadays, and I think the field more broadly is really thinking about this, is how can we do more in the way of prevention. So wouldn't it be better to have child sexual abuse prevention efforts in place, right? That involves some serious efforts in terms of sex education.

Michael Burke agrees. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a mental health professional that wouldn't be supportive of early intervention. I think that it would behoove us to begin working with these folks when they're in adolescence. And the research shows promising effectiveness when earlier intervention takes place. Most juveniles who act out inappropriately during their young adolescence do not turn out to be adult sex offenders.

With appropriate intervention, that gets handled. And a lot of that stuff is either modeled or it was taught to them or they learned it on the Internet these days. So some of that stuff. Like it seems kind of inevitable that you'll get caught up doing the shit you were doing, like eventually. Yeah, no, I knew that. Do you think it was worth it now? Now that you're at the theater?

Would, if by, would you do it again? Yeah, no. So I always knew. I always knew that this was the eventual eventuality this was going to happen there was there's no escaping it i didn't know it was going to be this fucking severe which is stupid but whatever so i knew this was going to be an eventuality but knowing that this would have been the outcome, and I have thought twice, but in all realism, yeah, I'd probably still do it again.

It made me... Oh, jeez. Not just accepted, but powerful. Pretty much it was one of those, like, all your dreams came true. Actually came true. Yeah, I would do it again. For sure. This call will be terminated in one minute.

Do you want to call back or you don't? Well, I'm going to allow everybody else to use the phone. I don't know how long it's going to take. Maybe like 45 minutes. We'll call you back. Okay. Later. Oh, fucking Jesus.

Talking to Ben Faulkner was disturbing and infuriating and exhausting. I've spent a lot of time trying to get my head around everything he's told me and everything I've read and heard from the experts I've spoken with. Here's where I stand right now. Pedophilia seems to be a naturally occurring sexual disorder. And so in that respect, Faulkner's sexual desires probably aren't something he has much choice over. But desire is not the same as action. There are pedophiles who try their best not to act on those desires,

who feel it's wrong, and who want help. And there are therapists out there who can help, though it's also true that this help is imperfect and difficult to access unless you've already had a run-in with the law. So maybe some of this is on us. Maybe we need to be more willing to face those facts head on, to discuss them more openly. That's just my opinion, of course. So is this, though I think it's well-founded. Pedophilia is clearly a major part of why Ben Faulkner ended up as warhead.

But I think it explains only part of it. Ben Faulkner is not the kind of pedophile who feels what he did is wrong, who feels remorse, or who really wanted help. He's someone who actively convinced himself that his desires left him no avenue but to abuse children, and that that abuse was consensual, that it wasn't harmful. And I think he convinced himself of this so he could do what he pleased, which is less about pedophilia and more about entitlement, control, and a desire for power. And that, that's hard for me not to think of as just plain evil. Either way, Faulkner's got plenty of time to sort this out. When I spoke to him, he was already serving life, but he hadn't

yet been sentenced for the role he played on Child's Play. Since then, I've gone to his final sentencing hearing. Holken was there too. And we finally came to understand the true extent of Faulkner's activities on the dark web. We thought we knew everything he had been up to. But we were wrong. I'm going to go. Warhead is written and produced by Chris Oak and me, Damon Fairless. The series is co-produced by Halkin Hoytel and associate producer Mikala Rana. Sound design by Cecil Fernandes. Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Original music by Olivia Pasquarelli. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Hunting Warhead is a co-production of CBC Podcasts and the Norwegian newspaper VG.

Coming up on the final episode of Hunting Warhead. I was quite surprised to hear that he had been even more active on the dark net than we knew. The whole topic has become difficult for me. The challenge is more being able to let go. It's staggering to think of the number of people that have been affected. I'm ready for this to be over. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.