Uncover - S24 E6: Fallout | "Hunting Warhead"

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

At Faulkner’s final sentencing hearing, we finally discover the true extent of his activities on the dark web. We thought we knew everything he had been up to. We were wrong. 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 huntingwarheadhelp. In the year that I spent reporting for this series, I've interviewed an anonymous pedophile in an airport hotel. I've interviewed victims.

And I've spent hours and hours speaking to Warhead himself. Hi. Hello. Hi, how are you? Good, good. But this, this is the interview I've been most nervous about. It's nice to put a face to the mic. Yeah, nice to meet you.

I don't know where you want to sit. Wherever you guys are comfortable. Well, we're trying to figure out where, we don't have heat in Northern Ontario, so this is kind of... It's midsummer. There's a heat wave in North Bay, Ontario. Come on in. Call some chairs. Into the shade.

I'm here meeting Benjamin Faulkner's family. Can I get you to introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Kathy, and I am Ben's mom. I am Rob, Ben's dad. And you wanna... I'm Pat, Ben's grandmother. Their life fell apart when Faulkner was arrested. And then there was the VG article, Hawkins' story, a year later,

which led to a piece in the local newspaper. Hawkins tried to talk to Kathy and Rob after that, but they were furious with him for bringing their family tragedy out into the open and home to North Bay. They went back and forth for a while about speaking with me. In the end, though, they decided it was necessary.

There's a story that's out there that gives us one view of Ben, one view of his behavior, I guess. Yeah, definitely. Now we're close to the Ben we know. So tell me about him. What was he like as a little kid? What was he like as a little boy? Always happy, always friendly, never ever fought with anybody. Well liked. Put him in the wheelbarrow and take him to the garden. As I pulled the vegetables or picked the vegetables he'd sit there and eat them, dirt and all. He was a gentle person, a loving person, like, very patient, kind. Tell me about his high school years. Oh, geez, in high school, he had lots of friends.

He wasn't a big partier, per se. Gaming. Halo. Yeah, he was a school geek. He was the guy that did all the computer stuff in the school. And then there was swimming, right? Yes. So he was a lifeguard. He was a swim instructor. Yes. So tell me about his involvement at the pool. He was one of those teachers that the kids would ask for. We used to sit. So at our pool, there's a little observation deck up top, and he'd just sit there and watch. He hated when we watched, but I'd go just to watch him teach.

And what was he like? Patient. He was very patient with the kid. They'd love him. They'd ask for him as their instructor, which was another proud moment. Everybody would ask for it. I think he's taught almost every kid in town. Yeah, yeah. He was just good at it. He was good with kids. He liked kids. Looking back with what you know now, are there signs there that you pick up on?

Nope. Nope. He learned to hide that part of his life at a very early age because he had to. As he was older, the only thing I noticed, he just didn't have any girlfriends, which, meh, I know some guys that don't. But he had, like he had, he was seeing Emily, right? Emily, yeah. He was that one on for a while. No, he was his best friend, yeah.

And so what did you make of that relationship? You don't really ask questions of your son's relationships because he's not going to tell you. You're a mom. We'd tease him about relationships and he'd say, yeah, no, it'll never be like that. I kind of thought that he was gay. If only that were the case, that would have been wonderful. Ben told me that after he went to see the therapist here who didn't offer him any help,

that he was in a pretty dark place for a while and that he was crying and you were aware of this and you were asking him what was going on. Can you tell me about that period? You didn't know, so what was it like for you? He just, he was crying and hugging me in his basement. I know. Ben is not emotional, so for him to cry is huge. And he was just crying and hugging me and saying he screwed up. And it's like, okay, we'll fix this. What happened? He couldn't tell me. He wasn't ready to tell me at that time.

I'm sure when he was little, he would have asked questions. And I probably would have reacted very badly back then. When he was starting to figure this out, he probably would have asked me, and I would have probably told him, oh, that person, jail, throw away the keys, destroy them. He said that you asked him, like, what is it, what's going on? And I think he said, I can't tell you because you'll hate me. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, there you go. I, without knowing it, I indicated to him how I would react to how he would tell me stuff. And I know I would have reacted badly. When most of us, especially parents, think of pedophiles, we imagine someone who wants to harm our kid. But sitting here with the Faulkner family, I realize there's another parental nightmare I had never even considered before.

What if your kid turns out to be the pedophile? How did you find out, Kathy? Ben's phone call. That he'd been arrested. And what did he, did he come out and tell you right away what the charges were? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had to try and get a lawyer. Figure this legal system out. It's not something you're versed in until you have to be. Can you remember how you're feeling or what was going through your head when Ben was on the line telling you this? Panic. Panic, disbelief. They have it wrong.

It can't be. That's the first thing. It was panic. It was a week of sheer and utter panic. Trying to figure out how we're going to save our child. Yeah. I want to say something. Please.

I think what I want out of this, and why we talked to you, there's so many people that don't have to follow Ben's path. There's so many people that think this way. There has to be hope for them. There has to be another path. These websites might not exist if these people didn't have to feel like this is what they have to resort to, if there was options for them, maybe less children are abused and there has to be something. There has to be something. Now or future.

But that's what I want, is things change for these people. Are you guys angry at him? How can you be angry with him? As a parent, they do wrong, you punish. He's punished. I can't punish him anymore. There's no anger. He screwed up and he's paying with his life. Yeah.

I'd like to see him again. I'd like to hug him again. So, yeah. Are you going to attend Ben's next court date? Yes. Faulkner had already been sentenced to life for sexually assaulting the four-year-old girl in Virginia. His second and final sentencing was for his role on the dark web, running child's play.

It was about a month away. And how are you feeling about that? It's going to be hell. It's hard. It's a hard process. But I need to be there for Ben. I'm Damon Fairless. And this is Hunting Warhead. Okay, so where are we, what are we doing? We're in Nashville, Tennessee. We're outside of the hotel where Hawkins is staying. We're gonna meet up with him and

we're gonna discuss, tomorrow is Ben Faulkner's sentencing trial. And we're all going to go and attend that and see what the outcome is. Even though Faulkner will already be spending the rest of his life in jail, it was still important to attend this sentencing hearing, to hear the full extent of the charges against him, and to get an even deeper look into what international law enforcement knew about his activities and how they knew it. Hi. How are you? Come here.

Good to see you. Come in. I haven't seen Håkon in about six months, since I first visited him in Oslo. But we've been in touch, sharing what each of us have learned about Ben Faulkner. Have you read any of their court files or what they have been doing? No, I've been talking to Ben and he's told me that he's prepared like an eight-page pamphlet on the rights of pedophiles or something. I don't know, he was very cagey about telling me about it because he wanted it to be a surprise. I mean, he's in there for the rest of his life,

so I guess he has to do something to give his life meaning. So I think he's going to make some grand statement of some sort, so it'll be interesting. It will definitely be extremely interesting tomorrow to see him for the first time. And do you know if the Australians are coming? Paul Griffiths, the investigator from Australia's Task Force Argos, was at Faulkner's last hearing. We're hoping he'll be at this one as well. What we're sure of is that Jen, Faulkner's relative,

will be there to deliver another victim impact statement. I think she'd be happy to meet you. I would really like to meet her. I think she'd be happy to meet you. I would really like to meet her. Hi. How are you guys? Nice to see you.

Hey, how's it going? Hey, good. Hi, it's nice to meet you. I feel like I've met you. The following day, the morning of Falkner's hearing, Håkon and Jen meet in person for the first time. It was so good to finally be able to meet you. Yes. In person. Surreal.

Before that article, we basically just had the agents kind of pop into our lives, have all these invasive interrogations and examinations and tests and things, and then they took off and that was it I had no idea what he had done I didn't even know about the website and just getting the whole story put together and then learning about the The work that Paul and John did, I just, I just, yeah. Started struggling with the words. It was like a big slap of reality.

And then that's when I was able to really start processing. That started my healing process. I'd already been in therapy, but then like reading it and being able to talk about it, things are out in the open. And once they're not in the shadows, they can't be as horrible anymore. You can start recovering from it. So I'm so grateful to you that you're sitting here today and that all of the work you've done it just I was feeling very isolated and this has it's completely transformed the tone of the entire thing for me but I mean you're the real hero in the way that you are seeking help and the way that you're working to keep your children safe.

Validation helps though. It's nice to have people firmly grounded in reality helping you out. I'm looking forward to see you there and to hear you give this statement in the court. Is this statement different from the last one? Oh yeah, yeah, this one's at him. I wrote this to him. What are you hoping this will do to Ben? I don't care. I really don't, pardon my French, I don't give a shit. That's not what I'm here for. It's not for anybody but me. This is for my healing and my process and, you know, the consequences are up to him. He made these choices.

He did this. I don't give a shit. So what would it take to be able to forgive him in any sort of way? I think that's a journey. It doesn't just click on like a switch. But yeah, I don't have any expectations, especially after the first one when they asked him if he could say anything, because that's when I did.

I did want to hear, I'm sorry, I did want to hear remorse. And he just went, no, I'm good. That was kind of a turning point for me. I was like, oh yeah, I cannot expect a psychopath to feel remorse. I'm just getting conscious of the time. You've got 45 minutes. I just want to ask you before you go, how are you feeling now? Oh, nervous.

Very nervous. I'm like twitchy and sweaty. I'm so sorry. I'm not my usual self today, so. To help steady her nerves, Jen brought a drawing her daughter had made for her. Yeah, it's a good reminder for why I'm here. We don't know if we would ever tell her, or if she'll ever find out. But if she does, I want her to know that Mama fought.

And Mama stood up and looked at him and said something. I spoke up. I was brave enough to look him in the eye and tell him he fucked up. Jen and I had been sitting in heavy wooden chairs in the hallway outside the courtroom for over an hour. Ben Faulkner's hearing was scheduled for 11 o'clock, but it was close to noon now. Patrick Fawlty's hearing was up first, and it was running a lot longer than expected. I wasn't allowed to bring recording gear inside the courthouse,

so I kept busy taking notes. Jen and I talked about Faulkner, about growing up, about our families. But as the week got longer, she grew more and more quiet. Once in a while, a pair of marshals would escort an inmate down the long hallway in cuffs and shackles. An hour and a half went by.

Further down the hall, just at an earshot, Faulkner's parents, Kathy and Rob, were waiting. They were no longer speaking with Jen. Jen didn't want to speak with them either. Court eventually let out. The hallway was flooded with lawyers and bailiffs. I caught a glimpse of Patrick Fawlty being led away. He's an extraordinarily average-looking man. I'd never be able to pick him out in a crowd.

average-looking man. I'd never be able to pick him out in a crowd. Jen was on her feet, anxious to get into the courtroom. Hawken came and found me. He told me that Falte had been sentenced to 35 years. Hawken and I followed Jen into the courtroom. It was large and brightly lit. There was an abundance of wood paneling. On the far wall over the judge's bench hung the seal of the District Court of the United States, complete with stars and stripes and a particularly grim bald eagle. Jen sat in the front row of the gallery. I sat directly behind her. Kathy and Rob Faulkner sat across the aisle from me. Sitting next to the Faulkners were Patrick Fawlty's parents. Rob Faulkner had told me that the four of them had become close friends.

They understood one another's grief. Fawlty's parents looked incredibly sad and tired. tired. Neither Paul Griffiths nor John Rouse, the investigators with Task Force Argos, were at the hearing. I had spent so much time learning about their investigative work that I was a little disappointed. I had really wanted to meet them. A couple officers walked up the aisle, and it took me a second to realize that Ben Faulkner was walking between them. His hands were in cuffs in front of him, his ankles in shackles. He was wearing green prison scrubs. On his back, in big block letters, was written, Davies County Inmate.

Ben Faulkner is thin. Gaunt, really. He had a scruffy beard, waxen skin, and long, stringy hair. He sat down with his lawyer and then took a look at the gallery. He and I made eye contact for a second. He nodded at me, and reflexively, I nodded back. He didn't acknowledge Jen at all. He didn't acknowledge Jen at all. A door on the far side of the courtroom opened.

We were on our feet, and the judge came in, a short, energetic man, Justice Waverly Crenshaw. He announced the case, United States of America v. Benjamin Alexander Faulkner. He reminded the court that Faulkner had already pled guilty to the charges against him, engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. Typically what happens in a sentencing hearing is that the prosecution gives evidence, including expert witnesses and victim impact statements. Then the defense has a chance to speak.

Both sides argue their case for an appropriate sentence. The defendant gets a chance to speak directly to the court if they want. And then the judge gives the sentence. And that was pretty much the order of things at Ben Faulkner's hearing. But I'm going to skip around a bit. Faulkner's lawyer calls Rob Faulkner, Ben's dad, to the witness stand. He's sworn in. And then the lawyer asks Rob if he still loves his son.

Rob says, yes. The lawyer asks how often Faulkner speaks with his family. Rob says twice a week for 15 minutes each time. Rob tells the court that he and Kathy have visited their son three times in two years. The lawyer asks about Faulkner's childhood. Rob talks about fishing and playing outdoors and talking science and space. The lawyer asks about Faulkner's relationship with his younger sisters, both of whom have written him letters of support. Rob tells the court that Faulkner is loving and supportive, and that it's hard for him to wrap his head around what his son has done. That it was a big shock.

That it's like another person did it, he says. Another person who didn't exist. After that, the lawyer calls up Faulkner's mother, Kathy. You've heard some pretty horrific things that your son's admitted to doing today, the lawyer says. Despite hearing all those things, how do you feel about your son? Kathy says, I love him. He's special. He's kind and he's gentle.

Kathy is surprisingly collected. In fact, she says all this with a slight smile, a sad smile, like she's remembering something beautiful that happened to her a very long time ago. The lawyer asks what kind of things Kathy did with Faulkner as a child. She talks about canoe trips, spending time in nature with him, the quiet solitude of one-on-one conversations with the paddles dipping into lake water. I look over at Faulkner, and he's wiping away tears. Is there anything in particular you want the judge to hear from you?

Asks the lawyer. Kathy says, I just want you? Asks the lawyer. Kathy says, I just want you to know who we know. He's kind. I don't think he can be happy, but I just want the best for him. Faulkner's crying harder now. Kathy continues, I beg for mercy that he's safe.

I don't want him close. I want's safe. I don't want him close. I want him safe. Kathy's asking the judge to petition the Federal Bureau of Prisons so that Faulkner serves his sentence at an institution where he's protected from the general population. There are no facilities like this near the Canadian border, which means Kathy and Rob would only rarely be able to visit their son. After Kathy and Rob speak, it's their son's turn. The lawyer motions for him to stand at the podium

in front of the bench. Faulkner's got his statement in his hands. This is the big speech he's told me about. Faulkner begins. For the first time in my life, I'm speaking before the people I love about the wrongs I've committed. He sounds nervous. He's reading so fast, the court reporter asks him to slow down.

Living with pedophilic disorder, he continues, a little slower now, is a life of perpetual anxiety, crippling fear, and debilitating depression. Faulkner's statement turns out to be fairly anticlimactic. And it's also almost entirely about him. About his suffering. entirely about him, about his suffering. He goes on about how he had no option but to hide his desires from the world. He brings up the one psychologist he had consulted and blames that for leading him to the dark web,

even though Faulkner told me he was active on the dark web well before he ever saw the psychologist. Faulkner goes on. I know that people were hurt and I'm sincerely sorry. I'm sorry for who I've hurt and I'm sorry for the lives I've altered. The last thing Faulkner says before thanking the court and sitting back down is this. I'm sorry for how things turned out, and if I could go back, things would be different.

But you'll remember from my interviews with Faulkner that at one point, I had asked him, Do you think it was worth it now? Uh. I wanted to know whether he regretted what he had done, whether he would do it all again if he was given the chance. And he had said,

Yeah, I would do it again, for sure. I would do it again. So it's pretty difficult to see his apology as sincere. And his desire to go back and do things differently? I'm pretty sure he was just saying what he thought the court wanted to hear. The prosecution calls Jen up to the stand to give her statement. She approaches the bench, sits to the stand to give her statement. She approaches the bench, sits to the left of Judge Crenshaw, and adjusts the mic. And then she squares her shoulders and looks directly at Faulkner.

Your Honor, she says, I'm here today to address the court. Benjamin Faulkner concerning the effects of his horrific actions on me, my family, and many others. Ben, for the last three years I've thought a lot about what I would say to you when this final sentencing came. The fact of the matter today is you haven't made simply a couple of bad decisions or acted on merely just a few urges. You manipulated and violated me. And you abused my two-year-old daughter after we gave you our utmost trust within our most

sacred of places, our home. It nauseates me to think of how much you would have abused her, given your talent for deception, her verbal immaturity, and your future exposure to her at family gatherings had you not been caught. The absolute disgust I can feel when I think of you or anything that reminds me of you is beyond measure. Thanks to you, hundreds are now living with images of their children on the web, horrifically. Unlike locking up a perpetrator, which keeps them from continuing to do harm, these images will continue to exist and cause victims and their families anguish forever. Discovering that you spent hours meticulously constructing yourself, a hidden world on the dark web where you could legitimize and act out on your fantasies, even while in my house, was nightmarish.

This goes beyond the pale of what other people with your sickness have done. It's your selfish and toxic belief that these acts are not harmful that makes you, in my opinion, exceedingly more dangerous than the typical pedophile. I feel fortunate that I have the opportunity to be here today to confront you on behalf of many people that have been affected by your septic behavior. The shock, trauma, and pain you have inflicted on so many people will no longer be muted or

minimized. Everyone left behind in your path of destruction will take comfort in the fact that you will never again walk free or be able to hurt another child. I seek solace in the fact that you are exactly where you belong. You've had my mercy and my forgiveness in the form of my not pressing charges against you for what you did to my baby. And you know what? You also have my gratitude. Thank you Ben for opening all of our eyes to how very real and close evil can reside. While I'm not sure you care enough to start the process, it's up to Ben, to balance your own karma. Start to heal what you alone have broken. In my opinion, you can do that by acknowledging that you are not a victim here today. You are an

individual who manipulates, rapes, and victimizes innocent children. Own up to what you actually did and who you actually are. You owe that to yourself and to a lot of people whose lives you've destroyed and rearranged along the way for your own benefit. We all definitely sleep better knowing you can't hurt anyone anymore. And you know what? You should as well. Bye, Ben. Bye, Ben. You could have heard a pin drop.

Judge Crenshaw gives Jen his undivided attention. Faulkner looks at her, but Jen's statement doesn't seem to have any impact on him. Earlier on in the hearing, while the prosecution was presenting its evidence, it brought up an expert witness, a guy named James Futrell. Futrell is an investigator with the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. More specifically, he works for the High Tech Investigative Unit. He gathers digital evidence used to prosecute people like Faulkner. He's one of the American investigators who had been monitoring Faulkner and Fawlty's dark web activities.

His job in court that day was to lay out the facts. That Patrick Fawlty and Ben Fawlty were co-administrators of the child abuse site, the Gift Box Exchange. And that Ben Fawlty, under the username Warhead, built and ran Child's Play. Then Fattrell reveals that law enforcement had also gained access to private encrypted messages between Faulkner and Fawlty. Fattrell reads the first one aloud.

It starts with Faulkner saying, Keeping secrets makes me feel like a badass. When somebody asks me how my vacation was, I can simply answer, It was okay. But in reality, hanging out with another pedo is the most liberating experience of my life. Faulkner goes on, Running child porn sites, having most of the market, lol. The messages are filled with crude, sometimes graphic braggadocio.

The type of stuff that Faulkner and Fawlty, for a variety of reasons, were uncomfortable posting publicly, even on the dark websites they ran. Again, I'll spare you too many of the details. But in these chats, Faulkner admits to sexually abusing a toddler. He encourages Fawlty to move to Canada, where the prison sentences are much lower. And in another chat, Faulkner's talking to Fawlty about what will happen were he to tell his family he's a pedophile. I think my mother would cry for days, Faulkner writes. My dad would not talk to me. My sisters would also likely not talk to me. If I told them I was a pedo, they might

be okay with it, but I won't because my sisters need to have kids someday and I don't need to have extra eyes on me when that happens. The messages are disturbing, but for the most part they reveal the side of Ben Faulkner I had already gotten to know. However, they also hinted at something that was a genuine shock. Something neither Hawken or I had any idea about.

After Fautrell had laid out the fact that Ben Faulkner had been warhead and had built Child's Play, and that he and Fawlty had run the gift box exchange, the prosecutor mentioned another site called Private Pedo Club. The banner of the forum, according to the prosecutor, reads, Just for Producers.

Futrell explains that a producer is someone who has access to a minor. The administrator of that site was someone named Nesko. N-E-S-K-O. And who is Nesko? Asks the prosecutor. Vitrell replies, Benjamin Faulkner.

And then the prosecutor brings up a fourth website. Vitrell explains that it's another child abuse site, this one with a focus on children's feet. The administrator of the site was Curious Vendetta, a.k.a. Benjamin Faulkner. Ben Faulkner wasn't just warhead, and he wasn't just running child's play. When Faulkner was arrested, he was running at least four child abuse sites under various usernames,

and he was busy bragging about having cornered, and I quote here, most of the market. This was when the full extent of the story began to dawn on me. This was when the full extent of the story began to dawn on me. For a brief period of time, Benjamin Faulkner was one of the most active dealers in child abuse material on the dark web. The police work that led to his arrest and Task Force Argo's undercover work dealt a crippling blow to what was likely one of the largest networks of child abuse sites in the world. And yet, at the time of Faulkner's arrest, none of this got much attention in the media. Without Hulken and Einar's investigation,

the world might not have ever known about Warhead. And even so, we were the only journalists in the courtroom that day. The last thing I'll mention about the hearing is that at one point, early on, when the prosecutor was going over Ben Faulkner's activities on the dark web, I looked over to watch his reaction. His hand was covering his face, his shoulders were shaking,

and I assumed he was crying. But he wasn't. He was chuckling. Just laughing quietly to himself. His lawyer leaned over and whispered in his ear, and Faulkner stopped laughing immediately. But it took a while for the grin on his face to fade away. 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. In the end, Judge Crenshaw handed Faulkner the same sentence as Patrick Fawlty,

420 months, 35 years, to be served concurrently with their respective life sentences. You didn't seem to have any trouble making eye contact with Ben. Not this time, huh? I looked at him long and hard at least four or five times that I could think of, and he was looking right back at me, and it didn't affect me the way I thought it would. I mean, I couldn't even turn my body towards him last time so to mug him down this time was it was cathartic. Do you maybe want to talk about how you felt about his statement?

Um it was really difficult for me not to shake my head. He was saying what he needed to say to make himself look as good as he possibly could after everything that was said. It's so contrived, and I just, I know he didn't try to get help. You can't go to one doctor and just go, throw my hands in the air. I tried. No, Ben, you didn't try. You didn't try to communicate this to people. You really did not try to get help. So I think that's where I get offended because I really don't believe that. You've talked about your kind of healing journey. What's this done? Where does this fit in in now how are you feeling afterwards in terms of healing i feel good i do i feel i feel ready to move forward with our lives and in a positive

light i've said everything that i've needed to say but yeah i'm just ready to go home see my kiddos i miss them yeah that's what you're gonna do now right you're gonna go catch a plane But yeah, I'm just ready to go home, see my kiddos. I miss them. Yeah, that's what you're going to do now, right? You're going to go catch a plane? Yeah. Yes, and just not say the name Ben for a long time. I wasn't done with Ben Faulkner quite yet, though.

This is combined public communications with a prepaid call from an inmate at the Davies County Detention Center, Kentucky. Oh, hey. How you doing after that? Whatever. It was a fun little exercise. How do you think your statement was received? Well, I've heard it was received well, but that's only from people who are already on my side. Right. So, I don't know.

No. And how did you feel about her statement? About who? Oh, yeah, whatever. She is going to believe what she wants to believe, regardless of what the truth actually is. So I'll let her be angry. Faulkner was more interested in making sure I understood the full extent of his dark web activities. I just wanted to know whether you learned anything you didn't already know. Well, I didn't know about

the other sites. Yeah, I didn't know about the feet one and the producers one. Oh yeah, that makes sense. I don't think Hawken knew about at least one of those either. I think both those sites

were new to me and Hawken. Yeah. Faulkner told me that he would regularly work 16 to 18 hour days managing all these sites. You know, after, I was quite surprised to hear that he had been even more active, as you say, on the dark net than we knew. So I went back and read some of the emails that he had been writing me before. And there, in one of these emails, he actually said, we may or may not know of these websites and services. I mean, he's already there bragging about everything that he's done.

But I just disregarded it because I didn't think much of it, to be honest. Yeah, and so do you have a sense of how involved he was on these different platforms? He writes about it himself in a letter that he wrote to me after the sentencing. I mean, the way he writes in this last letter, it's different from the former letters, I feel. It's more like his, it's like his mask has finally fallen or something, you know, finally he can tell me what he really wants to tell me. Do you want to read that? Yeah, yeah. So this is what he wrote to me in the last letter. He says, let me be a little full of myself for a second, but three websites, one producer

group, two chats, one recruiting platform, four servers, multiple personalities and admins of sites I'd broken into, all at once. And then he writes, Booyah! I hope we all can agree that that's at least somewhat impressive. He says, I think it's anyway. It took a lot of work. So he mentions three websites, and that's three, four, five, six, seven, seven sites and services and websites, and then four servers.

And then he had five usernames. So I mean, he was all over the place, really. So, beside one or two major child abuse websites on the dark net, he seemed to be controlling all of them. So, I mean, he was really at the top. One of the things, too, that I think is worth talking about is after the court date, Ben started telling me that he had a group of people who were recruiting people off the clear net onto the dark web. Oh, that's crazy.

Faulkner had told me that he had several people working for him who would monitor the clear net for people uploading and downloading child abuse material. Faulkner's people would contact those users and urge them to move over to the dark web. Yeah, it's like he's recruiting people. Like he's going online and finding people and saying, you know, hey, it's not safe for you to be there. Come to our place. It's much safer. I've built this safe place where you can do whatever you want, really. So Ben Faulkner was involved with a group that was doing some of the worst stuff on the dark web, right? Yeah. I mean, he was their tech guy, mostly. And they were this group who were producing the worst child abuse material that you can ever encounter. They basically tortured children and then killed them. The group Hawkins talking about was run by an Australian man named Peter Scully.

Faulkner claims to have worked as Scully's tech expert. The group abducted and sometimes purchased children to torture them and to record the torture. One of the children was killed as a direct result of this abuse. Peter Scully and the rest of the group were arrested in the Philippines in February 2015. They're serving life sentences there. In 2016 though, Benjamin Faulkner posted one of the worst of these videos on Child's Play. Not only was he involved in many, many more sites on the Darknet than we knew.

He had also been involved in helping the absolute worst people on the planet in producing their stuff. The conversation I had with Faulkner after his sentencing trial, after finding out the full extent of his role on the dark web, that was the last time I spoke with him. For the record, I still feel justified.

Just so we're all clear on that. I still feel justified. Yeah, I know you do. We're on the same page here. Yeah, I figure that. I think that potentially that'll wait over time. You know. We'll see.

I'm open to suggestions. Well, I don't think you are yet. Like, I think you're holding your ground, and I think you will for a while. Maybe forever. Yeah. Faulkner kept calling me for several more weeks, sometimes three or four times a day.

I could see it was him from the caller ID, but I couldn't bring myself to pick it up. I just... I just couldn't. It isn't simply because Faulkner is a pedophile. In the course of this series, I've spoken with pedophiles who understand that acting on their desires is wrong, who live in a state of perpetual self-loathing, who, I have every reason to believe, will probably never abuse a child.

As tempting as it can be to think of pedophiles as monsters, it's not accurate. They're people with an affliction we don't yet fully understand. Nor do we really know how to help them. More than that, maybe we don't really care to help them. And so I wonder if maybe we have a bit of reckoning to do if we truly do want to protect children. That said, it's also true that there are people who do monstrous things. People who exploit and harm others simply to satisfy their own selfish desires,

who don't care what kind of fallout they leave in their path. I think that's an accurate description of Benjamin Faulkner. Not pedophile, not master of the dark web, but a selfish and remorseless sociopath. Where do you guys think you'll go from here, working together? What do you think you'll work on together in the future? Well, right now there's a project I need to get Einar out of his, where he's right now, out of his hole somewhere, and start pestering him again. Because there's a project also about child abuse that I really want to get done. Håkon and Einar still work together, but they haven't collaborated on an investigative piece since the two of them broke the story of Håkon and Einar still work together,

but they haven't collaborated on an investigative piece since the two of them broke the story of Operation Artemis. I've been reluctant to head back into this sort of topic for a while now. I mean, the whole topic has become difficult for me. I've struggled with the feeling that we don't do enough, and then I take that very personally, and that haunts me at night. I think I've had three major depressions now over the last five years. I get really tired of not being able to relax ever. But it's even more difficult to handle when the subject is as important as child abuse. It doesn't get much more important than that.

get much more important than that. Immersing yourself in the bleakest places on the dark web can take a severe toll, which makes the work that Task Force Argos does year after year that much more commendable. John Rouse has just been named Queenslander of the Year. Detective Inspector Rouse is with the Queensland Police. He started a thing called Task Force Argus, which tracks down and puts out of business the most hideous child sex offenders. This is an interview from the Australian national broadcaster ABC. It aired in November 2018.

Detective Inspector John Rouse, what did you think you'd be doing when you joined the police force? I guess my ultimate goal was just to try to help people. How many children have you rescued? In one year, we did 300. I think on a daily basis now, our victim identification team is referring a case internationally almost every single day. The world now has gone on a long way from internet with a modem. There's the dark web i understand there

are live streaming capacities for people to find their way and watch this happening live yeah well as we speak mothers in the philippines for example on demand and for payment do whatever you want to their child on a web camera that's been happening for 10 years and we're very actively internationally focusing on that now and the Philippines police and NGOs to stop that. But they're doing it because there's a market for that in rich countries, including Australia. Totally.

Realistically, stopping the market may be nearly impossible. Even making a dent in it seems like an immense task. The year Hulken published his investigation into child's play, 2017, American tech companies reported more than 20 million images of child abuse to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The next year, 2018, the number of reports had more than doubled. The fact is, as soon as one child abuse site is shut down, another one opens. At first, Warhead was a name Ben Faulkner used to stay anonymous.

Then Warhead was taken over by Task Force Argos. Warhead became a way of thinking and acting, an identity the police used to hunt for other online abusers. I've come to think of Warhead as something even more abstract as a mask anyone can slip on if they want to inhabit the dark web and prey on children Ben Faulkner's in jail and he'll spend the rest of his life there

but Warhead Warhead's still out there thriving in the dark. Do you have three minutes to tell me about the Philippines? Oh yeah, sure. Like Task Force Argos, Hawken continues to investigate and report on the way child abuse continues to spread and evolve online. I was contacted by a Belgian journalist, and he had been working undercover, befriending all of these people in the Philippines

who were streaming live abuse of children to customers in Europe. And he got hold of a large amount of data, of usernames, Skype usernames, chat logs, things like that. And we were able to identify many Norwegians and many Scandinavians who had been doing this. Who had been paying and received live shows of children being abused. Did you confront any of these guys, the Norwegians? Yeah. I went there.

First I went to the Philippines, talked to the children. They are at shelters right now. I showed them pictures of Norwegian guys. Do you recognize any one of them? And they did. And after that, I went up to the north of Norway and met this principal at a small school, in a small community, and told him,

I know what you've been doing. I know that you've been paying money to watch children being abused. And now, the Norwegian police, they have started a big investigation. And some people have been arrested. The End and associate producer Mikala Rana. Sound design by Cecil Fernandes. Emily Cannell is our digital producer. Original music by Olivia Pasquarelli. Artwork by Ben Shannon and Sarah Clayton. The audio of John Rouse was from an interview he did with Hugh Rimmington on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National Network.

Special thanks to Einar Otto-Stangvik, Nathalie Remo-Hansen,iette Amundsen-Koren, Janne Thronsen, Magna Antonsen, Christopher Iversen, and Nina Stensrud-Martin. Also, Judy Tse-Gue, Evan Agard, Phil Leung, Eunice Kim, Fabiola Caletti, and Kate Zeman at the CBC Reference Library. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Leslie Merklinger is the senior director of audio innovation. Hunting Warhead is a co-production of CBC Podcasts and the Norwegian newspaper VG.