Originally posted by: CPA
Originally posted by: Moonbeam
We have an ex Catholic priest who is a liberal talk show host and who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in San Francisco to feed the poor and has won journalist awards for exposing sexual abuse in his own Catholic Church making a plea on transmitting child pornography to a woman he was having regular sexual conversations with in a chat room, and claims he was doing research, but the law itself doesn't allow such a defense on the basis that anybody, even award winning journalists who have exposed sexual improprieties in the past, could use such an argument in their defense, and making that plea because of the absolutism in the law would double his sentence if he lost at actual trial. Confess or risk doing 10 years instead of 4 years 3 months. What would you do.
Note that "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." does not actually weaken his case except in the appearance of the beholder because we can't know what kind of research he was doing. Note also that he himself wasn't engaged in child pornography but exchanging pictures with an adult woman.
So there will be no trial because the cost of defending will be prohibitive given the absolute nature of the law. You can't have a picture of children engaged in any sexual activity on your computer nor can you send such images for any reason at all, period or you go to jail for 5 years, provided of course, the feds come after you which they most certainly may if you're not nice to Bush.
I don't know if this profoundly productive citizen has a side of him that is attracted to talking dirty to women on the internet or if he really was worming his way through such garbage to know a subject from the inside for a book. What I do know is that the law can be used in ways just as perverse as pornography and chat room banter. I know also that there are lots of filthy minds out there in the world that are ready to condemn others they know nothing about because they are liberal and speak well. And apparently there will be no trial. This business also happened years ago before all the hoopla about internet porn made people very conscious of the risks they run in chatrooms.
Maybe Bernie was unlucky and stupid and has a taste for chatroom garbage, but he is not up on sex acts with minors or anybody else. It's about passing pictures and dirty talk and that's it. This whole case is a perversion. The state is a monster machine that can grind you up. Good luck.
Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you f'in kidding me? Or are you just trying to kid yourself? So, it should be perfectly acceptable and legal to pass around pictures of kids engaged in sexual activity? Seriously, moonie, how much do you hate yourself within? oooh, he helped the poor and disadvanted, let's give him amnesty and immunity for any wrongdoings. aaaah, so sweet.
Actually, I think my awareness of my own self hate makes me less emotional and certainly more able to think rationally than you, judging by the twisted logic in your post.
My point was that Ward is being vilified by many as a child molester when what he is guilty of is downloading and passing on images of child porn in a chatroom as part of a fantasy conversation with another adult. He says he was doing research, which I now doubt, and he actually has a history of just that very thing, having won journalistic awards investigation sexual corruption in the Catholic Church. Now because everybody caught doing what he did would claim the same thing, the law says no exceptions.
Now what is his crime? Did he photograph children having sex? Did he have sex with children? Did he show an interest in having sex with children or bring it up until asked in the conversation? Have you ever seen any pictures of child pornography? Could you go to prison if caught viewing that? Are you guilty of murder if you pass on murder crime scene pictures? How would you research child pornography without seeing some of it?
What he is guilty of, in my opinion, is growing up in a religion that says sex is dirty and should be repressed. I think the sexually repressed are sick because they have a need to do the dirty. Sex is natural and desirable and when that is slimed by religion, you get infantile adults who diddle in one form or another. What he did in my opinion, is just sad and because it's illegal he will have to pay because he got caught by some other fruit cake doing research.