Responding to Gary

I posted an entry yesterday about the Bernie Ward case. Gary responded with a comment. Normally, I briefly address comments in the comments section, but today I want to do something a little different. I want to post substantial passages from Gary's comments and respond to them in this entry. I want to do this because I believe that the subject is important and because I believe that Gary's thinking on this issue is shared by many, and I disagree with most of it. Gary's comments are in italics; my responses aren't.

Pedophilia is a sickness that is true, but it is a sickness that can not be treated.

I think you're right that pedophilic desires can't be cured, but I think there are treatments that can stop or prevent some people from acting them out. But let's be clear about Bernie Ward. He was not indicted for child molestation, and, indeed, after a thorough investigation, he was allowed to stay in the home with his children. He was indicted for possessing and distributing a few sexually oriented photos involving minors. Having and even distributing a few such images doesn't necessarily mean that someone is a pedophile, much less a dangerous one who must be removed from society for the rest of his life.

Now I'm aware of the recent Dan Noyes report alleging that Bernie came on to a couple of teenage girls years ago when he was a priest. But these are only allegations. He was never convicted of sexual harassment or molestation of children or anyone else. What's more, even if the allegations are true, as bad as it would be for him to have acted as alleged, being attracted to pubescent high school girls is not pedophila. If it were, most adult males would be pedophiles. Pedophila is attraction to prepubescent children.

It truly is sad that these people do what they do. If you could put them up in a condo complex where they could live and work(without ever leaving the premises of course) I would be all for that. But they can never be allowed out in society. The harm they do is extraordinary.

I agree that child molestation can be extraordinarily harmful and that a case could be made for locking away for life anyone who has shown a pattern of child molestation suggesting that he or she can't prevent himself from continuing to molest children. However, I agree with you that these people are mentally ill and do not deserve the punishment of a life sentence in federal prison for their actions. They need to be placed in another kind of more humane facility, and they should not be blamed and held in contempt for their illness or its manifestations. But, once again, Bernie was not indicted for child molestation.

You also have to remember that most pedophiles do not think they are doing harm. They honestly believe that they love the children and that they are not harming them. How do you treat someone who has those beliefs?

Doesn't your preceding statement imply the answer to your question? If someone molests children because they don't understand the harm it causes to their victims and they can be made to understand it, they won't molest anymore.

I truly feel sorry for Bernies family and friends(especially his childrens friends) but for Bernie I feel nothing but contempt for he of all people should know exactly what his actions will do.

I don't understand this statement in light of what you said previously. You believe that Bernie is a pedophile (even though there's no proof I'm aware of that he is), and you say that pedophilia is a sickness; yet, you feel "nothing but contempt" for him. Do you also feel "nothing but contempt" for someone who breaks out with a rash as a result of having chicken pox? Isn't acting out one's pedophilic desires analogous to breaking out with chicken pox? We may need to isolate a contagious individual until he no longer poses a threat to the public, but we don't hold him in contempt for being sick. Why should we hold Bernie in contempt? If he really knew "exactly what his actions would do," don't you think he must have been awfully sick to go ahead and commit them anyway? And if he didn't know exactly what they would do, then why scorn him? Because "ignorance is no excuse"? Why isn't it? If not an excuse, then at least a mitigating factor?

You also need to do a little research on the case. Bernie actually was storing the images in cyber space on his AOL account and was in possession of at least 30 images.

Thank you for that additional information. But have you seen the images or read detailed descriptions of them? This touches upon an issue I raised in yesterday's post. Not all pornographic images are of equivalent severity, and this should be taken into account. What's more, no matter how extreme these images may have been, Bernie was not indicted for nor did he plead guilty to playing any role in creating these images. I don't believe that someone should spend years in federal prison for merely possessing or even distributing a few such images to consenting adults. He should face some legal sanctions, and, indeed, he already has, along with numerous social ones. But not prison.

He harmed children, some grievously(just imagine his children reading the transcripts of what he was saying to Sexfairy about them and their friends) even if he did not do the actions he describes, the mere fact that he could come up with these alleged "fantasies" should outrage you!

I believe that what he wrote about his own children and their friends was actually far worse than the pictures from a "moral" standpoint and from the standpoint of what is likely to have done the most psychological harm. But this was not illegal and he was not indicted for it. What's more, I don't feel "outrage" over this; I feel great perplexity over why he did it, and I feel great sadness for him and his family that he did it and for the fact that they all are now having to deal with the consequences.

I have a 2 year old daughter and you know what I have never had a thought like that, EVER!

I have suggested, although I don't claim to know for sure, that maybe Bernie posted those things not because he really wanted to do them for real but because he wanted to shock his "mistress" with his naughtiness. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that he really did entertain those fantasies. Now I think it's wonderful that you don't entertain similar ones. But what if you or someone close to you did? It's easy to condemn other people for desiring bad things you're fortunate enough not to desire. But suppose you had these desires. Would you believe that you should be condemned for them? And how do you know that you could control them any better than Bernie did with his online sex chat?

Have you actually sat down and thought about what he did in a logical non emotional way? Unclouded by your personal feelings for the man?

Yes, I think I have done precisely this. Have you? Or are you the one who has let his reason be clouded by emotion and "personal feelings"?

Imagine how outraged you would be if you found out it was Dick Cheney who was doing these things.

I think Dick Cheney has done far, far worse than Bernie Ward. I think he has contributed more than his share to the deaths of countless thousands of people who didn't deserve to die and to the misery of countless millions of others. Compared to that, Bernie Ward's actions are an infinitesimal blip on the radar. Nevertheless, if Dick Cheney had done what Bernie has, I truly believe that I would feel the same way about his having done it than I feel about Bernie having done it.

That's the difference between conservatives and liberals(I am a rational anarchist) a conservative when presented with evidence like this demands punishment for the person involved regardless of political party.

What is a "rational anarchist," and just how "rational" could such a stance be? Beyond that, I mildly agree with part of what you say. A conservative is likely to urge punishment (although I suspect that he's likely to be more punitive toward a liberal than toward a fellow conservative) than is a liberal. And I think this is because so-called conservatives tend to have a more simplistic and false understanding of human nature and behavior than do many liberals who better understand that cultural and social conditions interact with our genes to shape who we are and how we behave and that unadulterated "punishment" is not necessarily the answer to all misbehavior.

Liberals refuse to believe that their people are really bad and make all kinds of excuses for them.

Again, I think, or would like to think, that liberals are more likely to understand the complex concatenation of factors that go into shaping a person's character and conduct and that just blaming and punishing people for "bad" character and behavior is neither fair nor effective.

Or more laughable of all they claim some "government conspiracy" has brought there person down. I mean come on....when are you folks going to grow up?

You folks? When have I said that I believed the legal action taken against Bernie was the result of some "government conspiracy." But I do submit this question for your consideration. If Rush Limbaugh or Dennis Prager had done what Bernie did and the government became aware of it, are you altogether certain that it would have responded as severely as it did to Bernie?

Bernie's Crime and Punishment

Bernie Ward pled guilty yesterday to a single charge of distributing child pornography and will remain under house arrest until a sentencing hearing in August. It's expected that he'll be sentenced to a minimum of five years in federal prison, and he could receive as much as nine years.

I've posted about this case several times. I've learned more about it since my previous entries. I've come to believe that Bernie has been a troubled man for years and has shown a self-destructive propensity. Furthermore, I agree with those who say that child pornography is egregious exploitation of children and cannot be tolerated.

But the question that comes to mind is how the law should deal with those who are involved with it. I was listening to a talk radio program this morning on KGO, Bernie's old station. One of the guests was a former FBI profiler and child sex abuse investigator. Her stance was that any adult intentionally involved to any degree in child pornography deserves to have the book thrown at him.

I can understand where she's coming from. She's investigated very serious cases of child pornography and seen firsthand the awful and permanent damage that this kind of exploitation can wreak on a child's psyche. And she makes a good point when she says that the child victim continues, in a sense, to be exploited and violated every time his or her image or video is passed along to someone else.

However, it seems to me that the law needs to consider more than it does the motives behind someone's involvement with child pornography as well as the extremity of the pornography and the degree or frequency of one's involvement with it. For instance, the only pornographic image in Bernie's case that I've seen described in any detail is of a topless woman, a naked teenage boy, and a fully clothed young girl, and they were not engaged in any kind of sexual or simulated sexual acts. Contrast this with a video of a prepubescent child being, say, gang raped. Possessing and even distributing the former seems far, far less egregious than possessing and distributing the latter; yet, I'm of the impression that the law makes little or no distinction between the two.

Another issue that came to mind as I listened to this morning's program concerns what kind of sentence offenders in general and Bernie in particular should be dealt for their crimes. The talk show host opined that Bernie appears to be a sick man in need of treatment but that this in no way "exonerates" him for his actions. But the question I continue to struggle with is, If someone commits a crime because he's sick, why does he deserve to be punished for it? Treated? Yes. We treat people for sickness and its symptoms. But punished? Should we punish people for being sick and for exhibiting the symptoms of their sickness?

The only reason I can see for punishing someone for their sickness is if the punishment is either part of the cure or, in the case of incarceration, quarantines the sick person from harming others with his sickness. But then, we're not talking about punishment per se but about aversive conditioning as treatment or about protective confinement, and that treatment or confinement is made as compassionate and merciful as possible while retaining its efficacy.

But is nine or even five years in federal prison merciful treatment (or punishment) for Bernie and his sickness? Not only that, but is it more effective than one year in prison or in a more humane institution of some kind or even under continued house arrest. Think of what this man has already suffered. He will never get to do talk radio again. He will never be able to teach children again in public or private school. He'll have to permanently register as a sex offender and be subject to all of the restrictions and indignities that go with it. He will probably be treated as a pariah by a large part of the community and will feel ashamed in public for the rest of his life. Would increasing his time of incarceration significantly increase the deterrent effect of his sentence? Would a nine year or twenty year sentence do that much more to deter him when he gets out or to deter others from committing this kind of offense, or does increasing the sentence yield diminishing returns of deterrence and quickly become unjustified punishment or vindictiveness for punishment's or vindictivenesses sake? I wonder if any persuasive scientific studies have been done on this question--i.e., the effect of prison sentence length on deterrence.

It seems to me, as it did to another guest on today's talk show, that Bernie's sentence is "draconian". In other words, it's far, far more harsh than what he deserves or than what is needed to bring optimal benefit to society.

What do you think?

Letting Go of the Bernie Ward Story

The sad, sad story of Bernie Ward has been at the forefront of my mind for the past several days. If he were just anyone, I might not give the matter a second thought. But when you've listened to him on the radio as long and as much as I have, corresponded with him on occasion, and come to feel as though you know him so well that he could almost be a friend or even a member of the family, one can't help but feel virtually consumed with disappointment toward Bernie, sadness for him and his family, and anger toward those who seem to be reveling in his suffering and earnestly say the ugliest things about what they'd like to see happen to him.

There are those who believe that he deserves to go federal prison for a very long time (and to suffer the stereotypical indignities thereof) for briefly possessing and sharing three pornographic pictures involving minors with an online dominatrix while cyber-chatting with her. He claims that he was conducting research for a book. However, the police transcripts of the sordid chats cast this in doubt.

In any case, the law says motives don't matter, and supporters of this strict law, in tandem with Bernie's detractors, say that the government must be merciless with child predators and with those who aid and abet them in any manner.

Is Bernie a child predator? He wasn't charged with child molestation, and his children are still living with him. Did his actions support child predator-pornographers to any degree? I think it would be exceedingly difficult to argue that his reinforcement of child pornography was anything more than vanishingly small.

But that's just what I think. Many if not most of those who've discussed this in public forums disagree, and I guess there's no point in my fretting about Bernie's fate or arguing with others about what it should be. What will be will be. However, I hope it turns out better for him and his family than it now looks like it will.

Revisiting the Bernie Ward Story

I recently posted an entry about local talk radio host Bernie Ward. I complained that the federal government appeared to be trying to railroad him into a lengthy prison term merely for downloading a few images of child pornography that weren't even on his computers when the authorities seized them. I said I was inclined to believe Bernie when he said that he was using the downloaded images for his research for a book about "hypocrisy in America." I believed him because I'd been listening to him for over 25 years on the radio, I liked him, and I had never heard even the faintest hint of a suggestion from or about him that he harbored any sexual interest in children. I admit that I had some dimly conscious doubts about his excuse, but I wanted so much to believe him that I was willing to overlook certain things in the news about his case that seemed suspicious.

Well, now that I've read more details about the case, I have to say that I now have an extremely difficult time buying Bernie's excuse. It definitely doesn't seem to fit the unpleasant facts that have come to light.

But while my opinion of the motives behind his acts has changed, I haven't changed my opinion that someone doesn't deserve to spend years if not decades in prison for merely possessing and distributing, for the briefest of time, a few images of child pornography that he didn't sell or buy or apparently play any role in creating. Yes, child pornography is a very bad thing, and those who make it or otherwise profit from it deserve to be treated severely. But what Bernie apparently did doesn't begin to rise to that level of egregiousness.

After recent revelations about his case, I can't see any way that he could ever return to talk radio. Not just KGO but also anywhere else. His reputation seems forever ruined. His media career seems forever ruined. And I can't imagine that his marriage and family life are ever going to be the same, and they may be ruined too. If the government wants to pile on with extended public service, probation, and, perhaps, even a heavy fine, well, I guess it has to do something because Bernie did break the law, as even he admits, and charges have already been brought. But a long (or even short) prison sentence and permanent status as a registered sex offender seems like an ostensive definition of "cruel and unusual punishment" not only of Bernie but also of his family.

And some of the hateful things I've heard people say about how Bernie deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison being raped, brutalized, and humiliated, or to at least have his life destroyed forever seem more disturbing to me than anything Bernie appears to have done.

I feel very sorry for Bernie Ward, for his family and friends, and for a community that has lost an intelligent, thought-provoking, and influential voice for the poor and middle class. What unfortunate pathology led such a smart and well-read man to bring such ruin to himself and such pain to his loved ones?

The Trial of Bernie Ward

Bernie Ward grew up in San Francisco, was a Catholic priest for two years before leaving the priesthood to marry and start a family, taught theology in Bay Area high schools and in a private school in Washington DC, worked as chief legislative assistant for U.S. Representative Barbara Boxer, became an award-winning reporter and fill-in talk show host for Bay Area newstalk radio giant KGO Radio, and then became a popular full-time KGO host of two programs, the Bernie Ward program on weeknights and God Talk on Sunday mornings. For a time, he billed himself as "the lion of the left" and always championed a politically and religiously liberal perspective both on his radio programs and in his spirited appearances on national television programs. He also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars via his Thanksgiving charities fund drives every year that he was host of God Talk. He was one of my favorite talk show hosts, and I've listened to him regularly on KGO since the mid-to-late 1980's.

However, he was recently placed on paid leave from the station pending resolution of federal charges brought against him for owning and distributing child pornography. Ward admits that he did download several images of child pornography but says that he did it as part of his research for a book he was planning to write on "hypocrisy in America."He contends that when federal officials seized his computer in early 2005, they found no child pornography on it, and I'm not aware of any allegations ever being made against him of being involved in any kind of child sexual abuse. Apparently the federal government offered him a plea deal sometime back that would have meant his spending several years in prison, and he rejected it. Now he's been indicted and could conceivably serve decades in prison if he's convicted.

Everything I've read and heard about Bernie Ward tells me that he's been a wonderful husband to his pediatrician wife, father to his four children, and supporter of the community, especially in his fund raising for agencies serving the destitute. I have seen no indication whatsoever that he had any sexual interest in children or that he would deliberately do anything to harm children in any way. In fact, everything I know about Bernie Ward tells me quite the opposite. Unfortunately, federal law is very clear that if one receives or distributes through any means any child pornography, it doesn't matter why one does it. All that matters is that one has done it, and the penalties for it are incredibly severe.

Although I believe that child pornography is bad and should be illegal, I also believe that the penalties for simple possession of it are unreasonably draconian and that the apparent motives of the accused should be taken into account in deciding whether or not to bring charges. In Bernie's case, based on what I know, the spirit of the law aimed at rightfully protecting children from sexual exploitation seems to have been grossly perverted by slavish and perhaps malicious adherence to the letter of the law with what seems to me to be the likely result of ruining the life of a hard-working and talented man who has been a blessing to his community and family and of doing irreparable harm to his family and many friends. Yes, one could argue that if he's convicted and imprisoned, this will deter others from becoming involved in child pornography in any way, shape, or form. But even if this is true, and I wonder if it is, it seems that this good is vastly outweighed by the harm done in this particular instance.

I don't know that Bernie's longstanding, fierce opposition to conservative political leaders and especially to George Bush has played any role in the federal government's dogged pursuit of its case against him, but I do believe, based on what I've read and heard, that the federal government is morally, even if not legally, wrong to bring these charges against him, and I wish Bernie well in his defense against those charges. I would love to hear him back on KGO as soon as possible.

Bernie debating a conservative talk show host on MSNBC