Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.(emphasis added)
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Ward initially pleaded not guilty and said he had downloaded a few pornographic images over several weeks as research for a book on hypocrisy among Americans who preach morality in public. But he was confronted by a federal law that flatly prohibits possessing, receiving or distributing child pornography - regardless of intent - and requires at least five years in prison for each conviction.
His hopes of maintaining a defense based on a constitutional right to research taboo subjects appeared to be weakened further when police in Oakdale (Stanislaus County) released transcripts in February of a series of online sex chats between Ward and a dominatrix in December 2004 and January 2005.
The transcripts quote Ward as fantasizing about naked children with no apparent reference to any subject he was researching. Police said he had sent photos to the woman that showed children engaged in sexual activity.
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After the priesthood, Ward worked as a schoolteacher, served as legislative assistant for then-Rep. Barbara Boxer for three years and was hired by KGO in 1985. As an investigative reporter, he won a national award for a series of stories in the mid-1990s, in partnership with the San Francisco Examiner, that exposed financial and sexual improprieties in the San Francisco Archdiocese.
And there's even another level to this story. abc7news.com: Sexual complaints against Bernie Ward date back to priesthood 5/10/08: "Ward's guilty plea brings some comfort to (alleged sexual abuse victim Rosanne) Schwab. She says it's important for people to know that someone who criticized the Catholic church for so long on the radio had his own complaints of misconduct when he was a priest."
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