Troubling new evidence in bernie ward case

This from ABC Channel 7, KGO

By Dan Noyes

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The ABC7 I-Team has the inside story of what lead up to the arrest of popular talk-radio host, Bernie Ward, on federal child pornography charges. It's an investigation you'll see Only On 7. We warn you that some of the information is graphic.

Bernie Ward got indicted in December and got fired from his job at KGO Radio, effective at the end of last year. Now, police reports just obtained by the I-Team tell us who blew the whistle on Ward, and how he came to send the woman child porn, by his own admission.

The case against Bernie Ward began with a phone call to the Oakdale Police Department, just outside Modesto.

"We received a report from a local resident of Oakdale that she had gotten an e-mail message and pornographic material involving juveniles," says Chief Marty West with the Oakdale Police Department.

The woman gave police the photographs and a transcript of her online conversation with Bernie Ward.

It's Christmas week, three years ago. Ward's on his home computer using the screen name "Vincentlio." He begins the chat with "Good afternoon, mistress." The woman using the name "Sexfairy" answers, "How was your day, slave?" In explicit detail, Ward describes being humiliated sexually. At one point, he asks, "Are you going to make me feel dirty, mistress?" "Sexfairy" answers, "Yes, I am."

Ward discusses group sex he had at an infamous porn theater in San Mateo. Then, nearly an hour into the conversation, he brings up photographs, "I love trading pictures." "Sexfairy" answers, "and why haven't I gotten any pics, slave? Send me some."

Ward sends several pictures -- one of a woman and two children. Ward describes her as a mother in her late thirties, she's topless. He says the naked boy is 14, that the girl wearing clothes is 12. They're all touching in a sexual way.

"Sexfairy" writes, "brb," (be right back). A half hour later, she's on the phone with police, reporting Bernie Ward for child porn. They tell her to keep chatting with Ward.

"It would be important to the case to gather as much information as possible in support of bringing charges against the person that's sending these pornographic messages," says Chief West.

In the days that follow, "Sexfairy" asks Ward for more pictures -- he complies. Then, police get a search warrant for Ward's AOL account. E-mail sent and received by "Vincentlio" had pictures attached.

An investigator writes, "several of the photographs depicted children engaged in or simulating sexual acts with adults or other children." The ages of the children in the pictures -- four to 17 years old.

"Bernie is an upstanding pillar of the community," says Jeannette Boudreau, Ward's civil attorney.

Ward's criminal defense and civil attorneys declined to be interviewed on camera Wednesday. However, they repeated what they've said from the beginning -- that Ward was doing research for a book.

"Whatever he did was inadvertent, it was something that was a violation maybe of the letter of the law, but certainly the one thing Bernie is not is a child pornographer. He's not a child molester," Boudreau told us in December of 2007.

They also now say Ward was role-playing during the online chats with "Sexfairy" and that all details of his sexual activity were 100-percent false. The former KGO Radio host is facing two counts for distribution of child pornography and one count for receipt of child porn.

With a jury trial set for June, ABC7 legal analyst, Dean Johnson, says the transcript of the Internet chats knocks down Ward's claim that he was researching a book.

"That's very bad news for Bernie because in these messages we not only have an almost systematic knocking down of every defense that could be raised to possession or distribution of child pornography," says Johnson.

Also, from the federal case file, we learned Ward's conditions of release on his $250,000 bond. He surrendered his passport. He's confined to his home with electronic monitoring -- he can leave only for work and to drive his children to and from school. His computer use is limited to his employment and he cannot have unsupervised contact with minors other than his children.

A difficult time for Ward, now, and a grim outlook for his future.

"If these Internet conversations are accurate, if they're truthful, if they correctly reflect what Bernie said, Bernie is potentially in a lot of trouble," says Johnson.

There's so much more in the police report that we can't discuss because it's just too graphic. Federal prosecutors declined to be interviewed for this report. We've been unable so far to contact the woman known as "Sexfairy." I did reach Bernie Ward directly and he says he would like to tell his side of the story, but he has to take his attorneys' advice not to talk.

Comments

[Duffman]

This appears to be one sick puppy. I will give him the benefit of the doubt to the extent of the law but just the content in the Oakdale police report is enough for me to form a strong opinion. I would think he would never want to face the system of justice that exists within the penal system for such apparent acts or even discussion of those acts. God help you, sir!

[PugetSound]

Bernie's supporters get taken for a ride.

PoliceReport

Most disturbing. He knows he is caught dead to rights. But he trots out that convoluted story of a 'book' to expose horrible hypocritical conservatives. Did he really think that just because he was the Lion of the Left that his supporters were such 'sheep' that they would automatically defend him out of reflex? Just blame it on the right wing,

He must have a fairly low opinion of his supporters in terms of IQ. Oh wait, he did get some of them didn't he?

[Duffman]

Puts, I think we will hear the loud sound of 'quiet' in this regard henceforth!

[jummy]

Indeed he did, PugetSound.

In fact, the Lion of the Left, "one of our heroes around here," was praised on this very blog for his "good intentions".

Somethin' i'nnit?

And as we speak a user named Seicle is edit-warring Bernie "skinny but cute" Ward's Wikipedia entry in an effort to whitewash the matter. Is that you Dan?

[cowpotpi3]

You have to love right wingnuts slobbering all over this story as if it is somehow a great 'gotcha moment.' News flash: it isn't. See lefties (you know guys like me) view this information and go 'OK put him on trial it looks like he did it.'

End of story. This is not an indictment of the left: Your shit slinging politics are what is being indicted here. Blame the right? For other things yes, for the actions of one guy on the left no. It is telling that you guys are taking such joy in this.

[Duffman]

Hehe...Puts, me thinks you hit a nerve. :)

[Tommy008]

Michael Savage is a guy who can be right on about a lot of things but he has a blind spot in terms of his fanatical hatred of the left. He read the whole Ward police report live on the air last night, and seemed to take pleasure in exposing Ward, and also in using this one apparently sick pup to demonize the whole lib and left world as evil degenerates. That is absolutely asinine and ridiculous. There are criminals and perverts in all political parties and stations of the political spectrum, from left to right. Bernie's acts speak for Bernie Ward, period. Bernie had the most insightful and substantive comments on the corruption, wrongheadedness and hypocrisy of Bush and the Repugs that I ever heard on the radio, and whatever he has done in his personal life won't change that. I guess Savage is having fun, since Ward and a few others at KGO RADIO weren't very nice to him when he was at the station, in the nineties.

[Duffman]

oops there I go again! :)

[PugetSound]

Tommy 008
Bernie Ward is an intelligent/well educated on a number of issues/verbally skilled radio host. If he would have been up in Seattle as a local host, he could have owned the liberal talk market. As a local host.
Listening to him since the late 80's, I have learned things and had a few 'oh, never thought of it that way' moments listening to him.
Be that as it may, he felt he plenty of sheeple that would buy his 'book dealie' story because it would appeal to their bias 'oh Bernie was just unmasking Conservative phoniness.' He played them right.

We can pause as some of the posters pull out the Larry Craig, Mark Foley, et al tunes and begin to play. Wail away, wail away, wail away.

[PugetSound]

Duff
forgot to congratulate you on the excellent challenge for Cubesteak vis a vi Sound Politics.

Did he take your challenge?

After all, you, me, Chucks, Wuttitiz, KS, come on this board and fight uphill.

[Duffman]

oops there I go again! :)

Posted by: Duffman | February 15, 2008 at 08:07 AM

Imposter! ooops there you-know-who goes again! :)

[abob]

Bernie Ward should be punished using every form of torture banned by the Geneva convention. When he is dead they should bury him, dig him up and kill him again. Ward is a scumbag pedophile.

[Duffman]

Hehe...yeah Puts, I think may be cubesteak needs some tenderizer; he's been somewhat exposed as rather delusional :)

[jummy]

"See lefties (you know guys like me) view this information and go 'OK put him on trial it looks like he did it.'"

In actual fact the response of lefties like you was to say, "clearly Bernie was too effective at exposing Bushco's crimes, so he sent one of the AGs he allowed to stay on the job to frame him with these false charges."

That's what lefties like you actually said.

[Robert Ackley]

Let me get this straight, Bernie Ward is a former priest and high school teacher who has child porn on his computer, and there are really people out there who believe him when he says he was just doing research for a book?

[abob]

The sexual fantasies involving children expressed by Bernie Ward represents the sick and demented ramblings of a mind straight out of the bottomless pit of Hell.

[Tommy008]

Several of us, including myself, at an earlier time when there wasn't much iformation about the Ward case commented that we had SUSPICIONS that this simply was Bush U.S attorney tryign to take advantage of WARD'S mistakes to get rid of a principle Bush enemy in the media. There was NOTHING unreasonable, unfair or paranoid in those suspicions, given the corruption of Bush'es Justice Dpartment and Bush'es vengeful and vindictive naure. There was no reason to poohpooh the book research defense, since Ward had a clean record and he could have actually been doing a book. Now that more evidence has come out on the case which seems to expose the book research defense as crap, I've changed my stance. I've posted in my message above that he now appears to be a sick pup. You'll find that others who were initialy suspicious will follow in my footsteps.

[wutitiz]

It would be nice if we could de-politicize sex-scandals, but unfortunately that ship has sailed. Libs reacted with virtual glee when cases like Mark Foley, Larry Craig, etc. made the news. Before that there was the misguided investigation of Monica and Bill, cheered on by Republicans, albeit made possible by Bill's own contribution to sexual harrassment law (at the behest of his trial lawyer buddies).

The politicization of sex scandals is unfortunately not going away anytime soon.

[altarboy]

It is not that Ward is a liberal that is remarkable, it is that he's a Catholic priest. Christian clergy, particularly the celibate, seems to encourage pedophilia, and secretive sex.

[abob]

Bernie Ward had sexual fantasies about his children's friends when he saw them in their underwear. Parents need to be extremely careful about sending their kids to a neighbor's house for sleepovers.

[Dori Monson's bitch]

At CNN.com they have a pic of that guy who shot up that school yesterday. Fairly ordinary looking kid, but what's up with the over-tweezed eyebrows?

[sue-b]

Sexual repression sucks,(so to speak.) It causes its practitioners to act out in sick ways. Religions like Christianity, Islam, Orthodox Judaism, and Mormonism are some of the worst, and it's always children that take the beating. This has almost killed off the Catholic Church in the U.S.

[PugetSound]

Tommy008
You have been very consistent. And I appreciate that you have been honest and willing to give it a second look.
We both looked at the evidence he offered when he put up the Book Defense. It sounded thin to me -after all, at best it was Bernie sending lewd pics to 'conservatives' to see which ones would respond to the bait.
I was always curious why Bernie had some child porn to begin with. Moreover, the premise seemed flawed.
Plus, lets be honest. Bernie is fairly small potatoes. Why in the heck would W or his admin want to take him down? Sounds like shades of the thinking that was buzzing around when Randi fell down on that curb and you had Air America breathlessly reporting she was the victim of a right wing attack.

[Dana]

Ick

[wutitiz]

I would still say innocent till proven guilty. Too many past cases of frame-ups in ped. cases. But if guilty, life w/out parole, minimum.

I am generally anti-Islam, but one thing they have right is a draconian approach to dealing w/ certain crimes. Ayaan Hirsi Ali relates how the Somali treatment of unwed mothers is such that it is common for pregnant unmarried women to commit suicide (often by fire). That is preferable to what they face as a 'single mom.' So there is very little pre-marital sex in Somalia.

Now before joanie and ccp3 twist my words, I do not want punishment of unwed mothers. But of rapists and child molesters? Definitely, yes.

We run mass internet stings on pedophiles and give hand slaps. We even turn it into a TV show and use it to sell beer, soap, etc. And we offer plenty of tax-funded counseling. Result: more child molesters out there than ever.

The Muslims are onto something there.

[PugetSound]

Innocent til proven guilty for court, but the that doesn't mean in the court of the public you can't take a look at the facts/circumstances and make an intelligent decision.
of course, it could all be a frame. that is what court is for. i would say that i am willing to bet that bernie will plead it out.

[Duffman]

"We even turn it into a TV show and use it to sell beer.."

..as long as it's not Duff-Beer. :)

[wutitiz]

PS, I don't see a need, as a member of the court of pub opinion, to form an opinion before the trial. Better for the sake of all involved to wait.

Anyway, I love your Randi analogy. I don't think Bush would trouble himself over a lib talk host who couldn't even get syndicated. Just what was the theory--that by icing Ward, R's will now have a chance in SF?

Gotta love BDS.

[PugetSound]

wutitiz
i get your point on public opinion. and i respect what you say.
i guess i would liken it to having watched the three plus hours of cspan testimony of roger clemens.
at the end of that three hours i had formed a very strong opinion. most of it was based on his contradictory testimony. now, if i was on a jury would i have to set that aside, yes. but as a member of the public i can form an opinion based on the facts that i have seen to date.
oh god, 'randi' is a piece of work and the 'attack' on her was a real rorshach test.

[SmarterThanYou]

The politics of this do not involve Ward so much as they involve the politics of BDS: If you guys actually were capable of thinking that ANY rightwinger, let alone GWBush, would bother to persecute this nobody then you REALLY need to stop and think about how broken you are. And forgo the classic "But those rightys do it all the time" crap unless you have a real, factual case to site. And not a difference of opinion-type case but an actual, verifiable case of a malicious prosecution. And if you need to go to "They are so powerful they never get caught" then you are full of shit. Proof is needed for such accusations.
Now the odds that anyone at Blatherwatch could seriously practice this style of DesCartian self reflection is slim but ya'll really do need to take this Ward case as a "teachable moment" and pull your heads out...

[Tommy008]

The U.S. Attorney mass firings hearings in Congress revealed that the various U.S. Attorneys were (and probably still are) being pressured by superiors to go after people who were prominent dems and/or political enemies of Bush, in a way that a Bush party liner, or even average citizen would never be persecuted. That's why the decent Republicans in those jobs rightly were offended and angered by this attempt to misuse their offices, didn't go along with the program, and were fired. It's not at all a stretch to believe that a corrupt, go-along-to-get-along U.S. Attorney would take a case where someone had broken merely the letter of the law, (as it appeared might have happened in the Ward case before yesterday's revelations), and show no mercy or common sense in prosecuting/persecuting Ward. We're not talking about trumping up imaginary charges , but rather how you interpret a technical breaking of the law by someone who has legitimate mitigating factors , such as doing research for writing a book. Dori Monson is a "nobody", not Bernie Ward. Ward was more than just an SF talkhost. Even if he WASN'T syndicated, KGO reaches 5-8 different states and a potential audience of probably 50 million souls during the late evening hours Bernie was on. I won't bother to respond to your childish ad hominems.

[Pierre]

RE: Bernie.....I have been Mr.liberal all my life....Bernie,say goodbye.you preached to the choir,screamed down any oppositional callers as fools and idiots...you do not have a lot of friends left.....so long....good riddance.

[DT]

Everyone, let me boil-down Tommy's thoughts on this matter...

"When someone who shares my politics turns out to be a pedophile, I will make excuses for him, or just look the other way, but when someone who doesn't share my politics turns out to be a pedophile, lock him up and throw away the key!"

And save your "But he hasn't been convicted of anything yet!" crap. That's not my point, and you know it. My point is your morals change depending on whether someone has a D or an R in front of their name, and that show a lack of character and integrity. And I think my girlfriend, Mary Nam, would agree with me.

[jummy]

Tommy,

By no means am I going to try to talk you down from this. a perusal of Democrat Underground and DKos demonstrates a uniform inability amongst progressives to simply walk away from this with any sort of dignity. This failure to defy expectations doesn't disrupt my worldview. It's not my problem.

However, for the benefit of the rational reader, let me address the dramatic tie-in with the AG non-scandal.

When progressives thrust this nonseense forth (you're not the only one to have done so by far) they either:

A) get it wrong and say that he's one of the AGs who "survived" the "purge", or,

B) get it half right and say that he was the Bushco replacement for one of the purged AGs.

In fact it doesn't matter which it is because what is being asserted is non-falsifiable. Any Justice Department employee collecting a paycheck is a monsterous, unerring stormtrooper for the Bush regime in this narrative, and either A or B could be, and has been, substituted for "proof" in this narrative. Indeed, when either Clinton or Obama immediately, upon taking office, fire and replace nearly every single AG, as the first Clinton did, this is the narrative progressives will adopt to wash away any troubling awareness of their own hipocrisy.

Though you can't reason someonje out of a notion they didn't reason themselves into in the first place, I'll offer this counter-factual to the "reichwing stormtrooper" frame.

Scott Schools, the temp AG assigned to a terminated AG's office, promptly dropped the state's case against Josh Wolf.

If you don't know who Josh Wolf is that's fine. suffice it to say that he was as much of a "hero" to the Bay area left as Bernie "skinny but cute" Ward is.

You may now go back to shilling and obfuscating on behalf of a man who, if he is to be taken at his word on anything, appears to have raped his own children.

[PugetSound]

I would say this. If Bush was truly that Machiavellian he would have kept this stuff on Bernie in his back pocket.
Bush knows that he will always have some opposition. Given that reality, isn't it better to have a "Lion on the Left" that you know you have by the shorthairs. One that you can call in at anytime and have a real come to Jesus meeting with? C'mon people like Bernie or Randi are the Bush's dream.

[joanie]

Welcome to the puts and wzzz show. Yawn.

[joanie]

Welcome to the puts and wzzz show. Yawn.

[Tommy008]

There has never been a mass firing of U.S. Attorneys during the MIDDLE OF A PRESIDENTIAL TERM since the founding of the republic, until G.W. Bush. Clinton fired his attorneys at the start of his presidential term. Big difference. Defending Bernie? You obviously haven't read my previous post on the matter or you're just being an ass and a duck. I don't defend the Bernie that's revealed in the new police transcripts. That's why I called him a "sick pup". Those of us who had suspicions at the announcement of this prosecution were doing so when it was still thought by us that he probably was just researching a book. Got it?

[PugetSound]

yeah, nice to see the Seattle Skedaddler is back.
why don't you answer Chuck's question?

[jummy]

"Never ...blah blah...MIDDLE OF A ..."

How about on a Teusday? Teusday's are scandalous I think.

"...I called him a 'sick pup'."

Tone it down there. We don't need to bring it down to that level. That would be like when progressives, when complaining about the alleged injustice of the military's successfull hit on Abu Musab Zarqawi, would CYA by denouncing him as a "crazy nut" and other such shockingly strong language.

"Those of us who had suspicions at the announcement of this prosecution were doing so when it was still thou..."

One hour ago. You were saying it one hour ago. And you'll be saying it again an hour from now, brecause you're a lying shill for a pedophile.

Escuse me; "sick pup".

[joanie]

chucks, you ask a question

puts and wzzz put me to sleep so I must have missed it

was it important

[Tommy008]

Aer you deliberately being a brick, or do you have trouble with reading comprehension? My post of an hour ago was a reponse to your sneering comments about those of us who questioned whether this was a political prosecution, BACK IN DECEMBER, when it was announced. You dismissed the possibility that the Repug feds would go after someone on a political basis, which is ridiculous and naive. No one is defending the secret Bernie Ward we've known about since yesterday, you blockhead.. Obviously this ISN'T a political prosecution, we know now, due to the revelation of these transcripts. Duhh "Smarter than you", my ass. Talk about false advertising.

[wutitiz]

joanie, aka WWW, so you're bored. Does your computer have an off button? Or is one of Rove's Blackwater thugs holding a gun to your head, forcing you to read? You're bored--yawn, who cares?

[Oyl]

where is duffman, is he back from the bathouse yet

[kevin de bruxelles]

It turns out Bernie Ward really was researching a book on hypocrisy in America.

It was his autobiography

[Stubbynuggs]

Who cares when Bush decided to fire 7 AG's. They are his employees to fire at his will. Was it political? probably. Is that wrong? No. Don't kid yourself, it was political when Clinton fired his too. It's not a scandal in either case, drop it.

And as for thinking Bush's guys were behind taking down Bernie Ward, that would be a precedent set by Slick Willie. Except Clinton used the FBI and IRS to intimidate all his political enemies. Funny that every right-wing personality in the country got audited during Clinton's 8 years. I'm sure thats just coincidence though.
When has Bush ever blamed any criticism on a liberal conspiracy against him? That was the biggest play in the Clinton playbook. Even in both of their memoirs.

[KrispyKreme]

I think there are 2 issues here:
(1) Determination of criminal activity, and (versus) (2) evaluation of one's personal character & psychological health.

On the one hand, I must admit that "research" is a weak & transparent "defense" in too many cases (know personally of a case of a later-convicted pedophile psychologist who was doing young boys while "treating" them & later claimed "research"). OTOH, one can suspend legal conclusions & hypothesize that he was researching ("experimenting") and thus, as someone in this blog or another said, was behaving like a chatroom "insider."

I could grant him a pass on Issue One, since the full circumstances have not come to light, including identity & motivations of the chatroom partner. HOWEVER, I grant him no pass at his personal fantasies, and even less so at projecting, making public, those fantasies. In the deepest parts of my unconscious, never once could I imagine having sexual fantasies about my very own children, and I have two. It's not just repugnant: it's unimaginable. Yet he was able, even in scripted pretense, to identify his own two sons with accurate ages, and to mention at least one of his 2 daughters. He had neither the brains nor character to discuss fabricated juveniles, or juvenile dependents of some associates of his. This is a violation of highest moral sort (or lowest, more accurately). I'm speechless.

The guy has major Boundary problems, as they say in psychological lingo. This was evident when he spoke on the air within the last couple of years, of driving down Tenth Street in the City on the day of the Folsom
Street Fair, his children in his car. He spoke proudly on the air (I joke not, exaggerate not) or deliberately pointing out to his children all the leather attire being paraded by, and "what a good discussion I had with them about fetishes." Extremely inappropriate for an unsophisticated audience. Why would you deliberately introduce the subject of fetishes to minor children? It's a subject they may encounter in adult sexuality, & plenty of mainstream adults of both orientations have fetishes.

Previously, a few years earlier, he had a producer named Beth. He would "play" with Beth on the air with sound-effects of whips. At the time it was entertaining. In retrospect, perhaps it was indicative of something else.

[Duffman]

"The guy has major Boundary problems.."

At the VERY least! Well said KK. :)

[Morty]

where does Bernie post his essays?

[Trixie]

Bernie's kids are not babies...one is in college. He has always talked about answering his kid's questions himself instead of someone else doing it. I am amazed that you are all so quick to believe a woman heretofore never heard from in four years of investigations, especially since Bernie's computer has been gone over with a fine toothed comb and there was nothing beyond the 2 week period first mentioned.