In Re Bernie Ward; INRI Bernie Ward

Featured on Crooks and Liars.

Well, the San Francisco area media was abuzz this week with the shocking release of the actual police reports featuring transcripts of Bernie Ward’s 2004 AOL chat with someone named “Sexfairy” who turned him in for possession and distribution of child pornography.

A correspondent tipped me to it on Feb. 14 (inappropriately enough), writing, in part …

Have you seen the latest scoop on Bernie by any chance? Channel 7′s I-Team reporter Dan Noyes evidently decided to dig up the dirt on the exact nature of Bernie’s online chats with the woman in Oakdale who ended up calling the cops. Read this:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=5956230

That’ll do him in in the court of public opinion for sure.

I’m not sure why ABC7′s legal analyst Dean Johnson so portentously declared that these revelations “systematically knock(s) down” Bernie’s claim that he was doing research for a book (Bernie’s lawyer says he was “role-playing” with the woman, which sounds like a plausible investigative tactic), but he sure was going about it in a weird way. Why would he send child pornography to a woman who sounds like she’s into dominatrix-type role-play with adult males? Why not target a more obvious kiddy porn aficionado? I can’t account for it….

And, as is my wont, I haven’t been willing to say anything until I felt I had anything to say. But over the past several days, my earlier blog postings ( “The Camel’s Nose and the Camels’ Toes” and “Bernie Ward, Daily Kos Followup“) have been hit repeatedly, like the sharks hit that big fish Hemingway’s Old Man caught. As a peripheral essayist in the matter, it suggests that there’s been a huge upwelling in interest, if they’re getting around to me on page 3000 of Google.

I tracked down the actual police report (not the easiest task) and read it, even though the media is glad to do your bluenose rooting in the gutter of the culture for you, they’re not so great about SHARING the location of the gutter. And I ruminated. And, waking up today, the oven timer had gone off with a discernable “DING!” and “my take” was ready, crust all golden brown and insides flaky and fresh out of the oven.

I used to write sex fantasies. I wrote a LOT of them: I wrote them for cassette scripts; I wrote them for ADAM, for OUI, for PLAYERS, for HUSTLER and lord knows who else. So, I know something about them, and something about other people’s, too, since I was never foolish enough to think that my fantasies were the only fantasies, and, as a commercial writer, I kept abreast (pun intended) of the latest developments in the field.

PENTHOUSE, of course, led the way, ginning up everything that anybody could think of within legal limits, and had long series of “real” letters in its various magazines on everything from gay-curious to sex with amputees (“monopede mania”) — which Paul McCartney evidently read at some point.

Theodore Sturgeon — who knew the ways of the human heart as well as anybody — used to say that nobody likes facing the fact that old shoe lovers love loving old shoes.

We are repulsed by the fantasies of others, and tend to chauvinistically pontificate when given the chance — either because we are truly repulsed by the old shoe lovers, or, worse, because we are disgusted with ourselves because some still, small fantasy loves loving old shoes, too.

That said, I am going to discuss this as delicately as I can, because I believe that it is inappropriate in the highest sense to pass judgment on others’ fantasies (as long as they are, demonstrably, fantasies) and because I know that it is perfectly vile and human to wallow in the dirty laundry of others. That’s why I’m not going to give you a link to the actual police report. If you want to tittilate your blue nose, you’ll have to do the work yourself.

I can summarize, though: Bernie Ward seems to have been engaging in cyber-sex. That much is apparent. He may have been doing research, as well. But I believe, from the transcripts, that his fantasies seem to have been triggered by the presence of teenage sexuality in his home, and I believe in my heart of hearts that Bernie Ward isn’t the only person who has such fantasies.

In fact, I imagine that they’re common as dirt.

Why? Because when stuffed into a pressure cooker with repressed teenage sexuality, only the dead could fail to be affected by it. The rules of civilized behavior and the instincts of the species are often at odds with one another, and never so much as here, where we pretend that the period between human sexual maturity (at puberty) and “actual” maturity is a period of six or seven or even eight years of “childhood.”

And, alas, when human law conflicts with human instinct, human law generally loses. But the point is NOT that we’re screwing our teenaged sons and daughters. The point is that many can’t help THINKING about it — and vice versa. Ever heard of Oedipus and Electra?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

According to the police report, at some point “Sexfairy” — who was role -playing as a dominatrix (calling “Vincentlio” “slave” and giving or withholding permission for him to do this or that) decided that she was creeped out by his fantasies, and became worried, after receiving a photograph, that he might be a pedophile.

Here: let’s let the amateur pornographers at KGO (ABC) TV in San Francisco write their letter to PENTHOUSE:

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 (sic) and got fired from his job at KGO Radio (sic), 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. [Note: without seeing the photograph, there's no way for us to judge this. -- HW]
“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….

A veritable Starr Report. And with the same prurient “icky!” tag that all perverted moralists use after wallowing in filth for “moral” reasons:

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.” [Gee. I wonder why? HW] 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.

There are more new details of the case in the I-Team blog here.

Thanks a lot, I-Team Blog. (Sounds like what they had to clean up off the floor after reading the “just too graphic” report.)

But that’s the sanitized gist of it.

So, here’s my “take.”

First, I don’t go there. What “Sexfairy” and “Vincentlio” were doing on AOL is something that I don’t know, don’t want to know, and actively RESENT being forced to know by the “I-Team” at KGO.

Worse, I want to know WHY the sordid details were leaked by the Oakdale Police Department and our ever-protective police state. The trial will begin soon enough. Surely there will be plenty of time to play OJ psychodrama then. Ward, an ex-Catholic priest will be fertile fodder for the conflation of “Catholic Priest” and “pedophile” and the obscenity of the speculation by those “moral” losers of our “moral” society will surely outdistance anything that Sexfairy and her AOL chat buddy ever dreamt up.

I have written elsewhere about how sick I believe American society to be in matters sexual: as we have become obsessed with racial classification to “combat” the racism inherent in our society, we have become obsessed with sexual details and prurient trivia to “combat” the sexual “perversion” of our society. The orgasmic manner in which Christine Lund used to announce pornography busts and hooker sweeps on KABC’s Eyewitless Nooz in Hollywood far outstripped the prurient drooling of the vast majority of the consumers of said illicit fare.

Anthony Comstock hated pornography and sexual information (like, say, information on contraception) so much that he spent all his days and nights poring over it.

And “child pornography” is the new scarlet letter, undifferentiated from “sexual abuse of a child” in reportage and generalized moral sniffery. Bernie Ward is ruined, as surely as Fatty Arbuckle was ruined, whether or not he is exonerated — as Fatty Arbuckle WAS.

But that’s not WHY I heard the oven timer go off as I awakened.

It was this: This all took place in 2004.

Significantly, the KGO “I-team” plays down the date, acting as if this all happened yesterday. The only indication of WHEN this took place is this little modifying phrase slipped in “It’s Christmas week, three years ago.”

The Oakdale Police Department does the investigation (the one that was released) and then HANDS IT ALL OVER TO THE FBI.

The FBI gets Bernie Ward’s computer, finds a few (but not a lot) “child porn” images, and then nothing happens for THREE YEARS.

Now, I’m going to take a wild guess here: I’m guessing that the FBI has better things to do than make a federal case out of someone having a few pictures on their computer. It’s the same thing as the FBI finding some cocaine or pot: if it is clearly for personal consumption, the THRUST of the FBI’s interest is going to be WHERE did you get it?

It’s the dealers that they’re after. And, in this case, I think that’s the story too.

Bernie Ward did an incredibly dumb thing. He had alleged “kiddie porn” and shared the pictures with some anonymous AOL user in Modesto, California, a backwater community in the San Joaquim Valley, between Bakersfield and Fresno on I-5.

Sexfairy, for all we know, sings in her church choir on Sundays and playacts at being a dominatrix when her husband is out waxing his pickup truck. The point is this: Bernie Ward was not a pedophile. He was not MAKING kiddie porn, and, whatever his sexual fantasies were and are, I am not going to judge him for them, and I ain’t even a Christian.

The “Christians” ought to hold themselves to a higher standard than some heathen pornographer from hicksville, USA. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Because I KNOW what your fantasies are. I used to get a stack of them every morning on my desk at HUSTLER that was a foot deep (OK, more like 18 inches.) And, poorly written though almost all were, they were equally grotesque. I didn’t judge you then, and I’m not judging you now.

But we do NOT have control of our sexuality in this country and even less so our fantasies. So I’m not going to judge your fantasies if you don’t judge Bernie’s. Not my cup of tea, but then, for a pornographer I’ve always been a little too vanilla for the tastes of most pornographers.

The search warrant, and the fear of prosecution was probably considered by the FBI to be sufficiently scary, and Bernie undoubtedly went and sinned no more.

But what set off the oven timer was this:

WHY, after three years had passed, did the U.S. Attorney – not in San Francisco, but in Washington D.C. – decide to prosecute Bernie Ward on charges that I’m convinced the FBI doesn’t generally bother with?

Remember the “politicization” of the Justice Department? The refusal to testify that just got Josh Bolton and Harriet Meirs slapped with Contempt of Congress citations for refusing to testify about?

And remember how the Bush Administration loves to “get even” with its enemies?

Yeah. That was what I was thinking too.

Courage.

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UPDATE, 1:11 AM PST 2-18-08: The Support Bernie Ward site is “Temporarily Disabled.”