Feds seek 9-year term for ex-KGO host Bernie Ward in child-porn case

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Federal prosecutors are recommending a nine-year prison sentence for Bernie Ward, the liberal radio talk show host who pleaded guilty in May to distributing child pornography.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, spent 24 years with KGO-AM in San Francisco, as a reporter and later as the host of a talk show that ran three hours every weeknight. The station fired him in December after his federal grand jury indictment was unsealed.

... Ward maintains that he downloaded the images as part of his research for a book on hypocrisy among Americans who preach morality. Prosecutors said Ward was actually part of a group that traded pornographic images and noted that the law, in any event, prohibits possessing, receiving or distributing child pornography, regardless of intent.

Ward is free on $250,000 bail and is confined to his San Francisco home with electronic monitoring. He is to be sentenced next Thursday by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/21/BA0912G3V4.DTL&tsp=1

[VeraAgnes]

1. What a waste ...........

yet, I despise child porn perverts. He needs to be locked up, he pleaded out.....so he is a cockroach! :grr:

[Coleslilwitch]

2. Jail isn't good enough

for a POS like this one. Anyone convicted of any crime against a child needs to have a certain appendage removed. Of course, put him in general population and the other prisoners will let him know what they think of child pervs.

[VeraAgnes]

3. You just made me quiver/shiver

for you speak the truth.

[CatholicEdHead]

4. Sterilization is a good start

[Kweli4Real]

6. Except ...

Pedophilia is not about sex ... It's about power. So sterilization will do nothing to curb the behavior.

[LiberalLovinLug]

7. I may get flamed but

I have to point out that it wasn't a direct crime against a child. There is a huge difference between the disgusting act of downloading and exchanging images of child porn, and actual pedophilia where one actively seeks out real children to abuse personally, and sometimes film this abuse.

You may argue, and successfully, that folks who engage in simply exchanging and looking are indirectly responsible because they further the market for such perversions. Maybe my years of late night devotion to hearing Bernie brilliantly tear apart the Republicans on his show is the reason I have a shred of sympathy, and it's just a shred, but I wanted to point out this substantial difference.

There are probably millions of Americans who have seen at least once, briefly, an underage person in a compromising or naked pose, even though it is something they are abhorred by. I don't mean pornography necessarily, look at the hits of Miley Cyrus's riske photo-shoot for example. It is simply curiosity. The same way straight people have looked at homosexual imagery, curiosity and mostly to confirm that It didn't move for them. They want to see the "dark side". I can believe that Bernie started out with something like curiosity, but his mistake was not stopping and seeing a counselor before it got to where it did.

[librechik]

5. yikes--what a shame n/t