September 22, 2018

"The drinking was unbelievable," said Bernie Ward, who was the sex-ed teacher at Georgetown Prep in the Kavanaugh years...

... and who — according to "'100 Kegs or Bust': Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, has spent years writing about high school debauchery" (WaPo) —  "later spent two decades as a radio talk-show host in San Francisco and served six years in federal prison for distributing child pornography."
“It was part of the culture. A parent even bought the keg and threw one of the parties for the kids.”..,

[Mark] Judge wrote that he came to view Ward as an example of his school’s fall from Catholic orthodoxy and traditional discipline into a New Age emphasis on feelings and liberal notions about faith and politics.

Like Kavanaugh, Judge grew up in a Catholic Washington that formed its own social world, centered in the big old houses of Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Potomac.... The big houses were perfect for large Catholic families....

Judge spent two decades in Catholic education, from Our Lady of Mercy to Prep and on to Catholic University. But he came to believe that he had been “cheated out of a Catholic education,” failing to be assigned the great theological works, the rigorous texts he devoured later in life. Rather, he wrote in “God and Man” that at Prep he was “bombarded with drugs, alcohol, widespread homosexuality among the clergy.” The faculty at Prep, he said, had morphed from “tough guys” to “hippies and leftists.”...

“I was a Catholic illiterate kept that way in a Catholic school,” he wrote in “God and Man.”

Judge spent years struggling with his faith. He relished boxing with God, questioning and testing his beliefs. He read his father’s copies of books by G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Merton, works that embraced the mystery of faith, an idea that appealed to Judge’s belief that the most complete people are those who, as Chesterton wrote, have “permitted the twilight . . . with one foot in earth and the other in fairyland.”...

In 2003, a student named Eric Ruyak reported to school authorities that a Jesuit priest who was a teacher at Georgetown Prep had touched him inappropriately. Some Prep alumni, including Judge, rallied around the teacher, the Rev. Garrett Orr, according to several Prep graduates.

“Numerous alumni told me that Judge was going around saying I was emotionally unstable and a sexual deviant,” Ruyak said Thursday. “He told people that the only reason I wasn’t being expelled was my dad was a powerful lawyer and president of Prep’s board.”

An investigation by Jesuit authorities later confirmed Ruyak’s account....
Ruyak's name is familiar from this post, written earlier this morning (which expressed a desire for more articles like the one I'm blogging in here).

74 comments:

Michael K said...

By all means let's get the pedophile point of view about the matter.

This is the swamp at prayer, as used to be said of the Anglican Church of England.

That is another culture that a lot of us are not members of.

Matt Sablan said...

So? There were a few drunken parties at my high school I didn't go to.

The Crack Emcee said...

“One foot in earth and the other in fairyland.”

A description of the average American.

The Crack Emcee said...

Michael K said...

"By all means let's get the pedophile point of view about the matter."

No - let's hide everyone who can actually tell us what's going on and stay with the liars who have something to hide - like this:

"[Mark] Judge wrote that he came to view Ward as an example of his school’s fall from Catholic orthodoxy and traditional discipline into a New Age emphasis on feelings and liberal notions about faith and politics."

NewAge in the Catholic Church - with all that debauchery? Something's starting to add-up here,....

mccullough said...

The drinking age in Maryland was 18 until the early 1980s.

So states like Maryland and Wisconsin and Louisiana and other states that had the drinking age 18 until the 1980s had a stronger culture of teenage than in states that had a 21 drinking age for longer.

No one waited until they were 18 to have their first beer.

David Begley said...

Convicted sex felon complains about keggers? Please!

I’m not to sure that high school boys are ready for Summa Theologica.

The root of the problem is modern liberalism which revolves around the Children of 1968.

RMc said...

"Sex-Ed Teacher at Georgetown Prep" sounds like a Netflix series. (I'd watch.)

mccullough said...

Ford drank more than Kavanaugh in high school. Way more. He went to Yale and she became a Tar Heel.

David Begley said...

The legal drinking age was 17 in IA when I was in HS. One of my classmates died in Iowa and it involved drinking.

Temujin said...

From Ford's yearbook accounts, their years at that high school sounded like training for the heavy drinking, sex binging universities they'd be attending next. Sounds like Ford had a penchant for heavy drinking and seeing who she could 'conquer'. Not that passing out blind drunk and wondering who you were with is a problem. Especially if you want to behead one of the old neighborhood guys 35 years later because he doesn't belong to your particular political party.

David Blaska said...

Part of the kultur in college, too, from 1967-72 (the 5-year plan). Was editor of the student newspaper. Kept the beer keg on a city sidewalk so as to circumvent (we thought) campus rules. Dormitory reeked with men's after shave/cologne Friday nights as the denizens prepared for hoped-for sexual conquests.

glenn said...

I seem to remember Bernie Ward having a bunch of liberal defenders when he got busted for kiddie porn.

The Godfather said...

"a New Age emphasis on feelings and liberal notions about faith and politics." Looks like that's another thing Kavanaugh didn't pick up in prep school.

Ann Althouse said...

When I was in high school, I was never exposed to any drinking. A little marijuana and a drop of LSD, but no drinking. Even in college, there was virtually no drinking. An occasional bottle of Boonesfarm was seen and someone made mead in his dormroom, but basically drinking was what "frat boys" did and a frat boy was persona non grata in the Residential College in 1969. Drinking was for old people. "America Drinks and Goes Home" was the prevailing idea as I saw it. It was for frat boys, squares, and your parents.

Psota said...

Oh my God...Bernie Ward?? Was a sex-ed teacher at a Catholic boys high school??? what a (sad) joke.

And there's no "according to" about it...he went to prison for child porn after 20 years as a left-wing radio host here in the Bay Area.

The Crack Emcee said...

Ann Althouse said...

"When I was in high school, I was never exposed to any drinking. A little marijuana and a drop of LSD, but no drinking."

I never did more drugs than when I was in the military. "M.A.S.H." was nothing compared to my experience.

Psota said...

But Ward is right about one thing: the drinking scene in DC-area Catholic schools when I was in high school in NoVa back in the '80's was notorious. If Kavanaugh was part of that, I'm not impressed.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

Bernie Ward was their sex ed teacher? That is just unbelievable.

Judge mentions in his book how "value free" the teaching was. Marxist priests (liberation theology was a big thing at that time), sex ed was "penis and vagina and ejaculation" with no references to actual human beings.

It's a wonder that Kavanaugh survived this.

As to the charges: If I was pressed against the wall I'd say I believe "something" occurred between Ford and Kavanaugh and Judge. Attempted rape? No, but some sort of sexual "horse play" that she didn't want a part of. They misread her intentions - I assume she voluntarily went into the room with them? - and she theirs. Add a bit of left feminist politics and you have the perfect storm.

Leland said...

Come now, this is a religion that serves alcohol as a ceremony at the church.

Laslo Spatula said...

Contrast Mark Judge's contentious growth into adulthood with that of Kurt Cobain.

Wait.

Nevermind.*

(*intended)

I am Laslo.

glenn said...

Looks like Brett and Chrissie are a real pair.

PhilD said...

I read Helter Skelter in the beginning of the 1980s. What surprised me that almost everyone seemed to be on drugs and obsessed with sex. And that was concerning the 1960sin, granted, California. An eye opener for sure for a parochial guy like I must have been.
And today the heirs of that culture pretend to be holier than thou. Modern society is a sick joke.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

Social science statistics report that fewer young people today are having sex, taking drugs and alcohol then any generation over the past 40-50 years. At least since the Sixties.

There's hope I guess; although one wonders where they are learning not to do these things?

Marc in Eugene said...

Nevermind, indeed. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine....

Marc in Eugene said...

As I read these posts that observe the quasi-pagan attitudes of the post-Second Vatican Council decades in the Church in the US, I begin to wonder if AA has been chatting with Mons Morlino.

AMDG said...

Georgetown Prep sounds exactly like my high school (same school as Lawrence “Larry” O’Donnell):

1. Drinking Culture - Yes the parents would buy the keg and it was not unusual for the headmaster to show up. Year books are full of references and pictures of drinking.

2. Student body (mostly Irish) made up of boys from primarily affluent communities.

3. There was no molestation of students by priests that we knew of at the time although it has since Ben revealed that there were incidents in the late 60’s and one priest (who was transferred to be a pastor at a local church) and one priest was known to be gay.

4. The school did a poor job of developing the spiritual side of the students. Religious education was was cursory. I had a religion class every day for 6 years but was completely unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, etc. upon graduation.

Not an unusual experience.

buwaya said...

Everything is connected, isn't it?
I used to regularly listen to Bernie Ward on KGO (but mainly stuck to Paul Harvey).
Working nights, pre-internet, one kept the radio on.

MountainMan said...

The drinking and partying was not confined to DC-area prep schools. I spent the 1980s in a very conservative small town in Texas. Saturday night drinking parties among the better-off teenagers were common. Sometimes the parents provided the kegs. I don't know how many times my wife and I went to our adult Sunday school class on Sunday mornings to see all the mothers in class crying because so-and-sos son/daughter was killed in a one-car accident the night before after another drunken party. One guy I knew at work lost his son to a natural gas sniffing party one Friday night after the football game, a not uncommon activity in an area where natural gas wells were all over the countryside.

One of the teenagers at the local high school at the time is well-known today. I wonder if someone today could easily come up with some story to smear him about what he may have done at the time.

Fortunately my kids at the time were elementary/pre-school and never were exposed to any of this. We left in 1991.

tcrosse said...

In the early 1960s the University of Wisconsin at Madison was a fountain of learning where all went to drink.

PhilD said...

"I had a religion class every day for 6 years but was completely unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, etc. upon graduation."

Same here and for me it was the 1970s in Flanders. It seems to have struck the Church in every Western country.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

They're Catholics. They're taught that there's no way they can live with themselves. I'd bet the only way to deal with that is by constantly drinking your memory away.

buwaya said...

I went to similarly elite (socially, academically) Catholic schools, but in another time and culture.

We did not have Catholic "lite" as these people seem to have had.

Where I came from, drinking and other such activities were for bars nightclubs and poolhalls, not homes, as even if parents were away everyone had servants. There are no secrets in a house with servants.

And since the city was socially a village, for anyone of family there was no anonymity. Many a time my uncle or godfather (both hopeless alcoholics) or some friend of my father or some relative of one of the gang, would happen to be wherever, and buy us boys and girls a round.

And the girls mothers at least would hear about it later.

reader said...

Same as it ever was...

From my experience drunken high school parties happened during the 80's at all socioeconomic levels. They still happen today except the parents (who seem to want to be their kid's best friend) have to get involved.

Lawyer dad arrested for hosting drunken Playboy Mansion themed birthday party for his daughter, 18, and hundreds of her friends

Owen said...

Growing up in northern Canada (which lagged Southern Canada by about 10 years, and the USA by about 20) I can attest that in 1965-7 middle/high school was painfully preoccupied with knowing what songs were cool and who had a really great motorcycle. Some booze, yes. Essentially no drugs. Girls? Are you kidding?

Ralph L said...

It's like watching all the guys rack themselves on FailArmy: you wonder that enough survived adolescence to reproduce.

Gahrie said...

I went to an American high school on an air force base in England in the early 1980's. Drunken parties were the norm.

Owen said...

MountainMan: "natural gas sniffing." I had never heard of such a thing. And I don't want to get ghoulish but, as a sometime poet, I find something deeply moving and instructive about that idea. Inhaling too deeply of the earth itself? Trying too hard to become the stuff on which your people make their livelihood? Some terrible ironies in there.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

Maybe it's good - great - that this young generation is focused on their cellphones and social media. Little real interaction with each other.

Does that explain the drop in drug abuse and teenage pregnancy rates that is taking place?

BrianE said...

So this is that Bernie Ward! Like Buwaya, I listened to Ward on KGO and occasionally called the show to challenge his liberal positions. It was always irritating, since he would allow you to make a point, then disconnect you and procede to counter your statement without any chance for rebuttle.

Yancey Ward said...

I was in high school the same times as Ms. Ford and Mr. Kavanaugh (1980-1984), but it was a different world- public school, lower middle class to outright poverty, and boondocks rural etc. However, I did get to see what upper class students were like when I got into college my freshman year at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY- it was eye-opening. I was like a fish out of water. One of the reasons I transferred out the next year.

mockturtle said...

AMDG reports: I had a religion class every day for 6 years but was completely unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, etc. upon graduation.

What about Jesus Christ? Just curious.

Howard said...

Animal House came out in the summer of freshman year in college. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Every dorm hall threw a toga party and there were massive food fights in the commons. The school kept changing the dorm rules throughout the year but that only fueled the fire. Good times.

Howard said...

Bernie Ward and the Church of the Holy Donut.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Ann: I'm interested in your suggestions that Catholicism and alcohol may both be under-reported parts of the Kavanaugh-Ford story (if any part of it can actually be described as under-reported). You say there was little alcohol in your world in high school, or even university. Booze was for losers. (I taught at a Lutheran school, originally Norwegian, and a local barber did an impression of a professor with a Norwegian accent saying: the boosers are the loosers, and the abstainers are the gainers). Is she saying that the Catholic Church simply had no intelligent way of dealing with sex, that hiring Ward as a sex-ed teacher was a clear indication of the problem, and that the combination of sexually active priests (the scandal that never goes away), crazy teachings, teenage hormones, and booze, maybe related to guilt, would make it more likely that an unfortunate Kavanaugh-Ford interaction would occur? On another point: Scalia, to his credit, used to say it was strange and probably unfortunate that the Supreme Court is mostly made up of Jews and Catholics. Hardly representative of the U.S.

wild chicken said...

Drinking was for old people

Exactly. Drinkers were lame.

Sure changed in the 70s though.

T J Sawyer said...

The more I read about Kavanaugh, Prof Ford and Georgetown, the less I think this appointment is going to help drain the swamp!

Mark said...

AMDG reports: I had a religion class every day for 6 years but was completely unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, etc. upon graduation.

What about Jesus Christ? Just curious.

I've been in a few bookstores which have religion sections. In the Christian area, there are, of course, some Bibles for sale, but they are overwhelmed in number by all of the books written by Protestant authors.

Francisco D said...

From the Washington Times:

"Ms. Blasey Ford was a popular figure on the Dewey Beach bar scene. She once got caught in a romantic triangle that culminated with the two men getting into a fistfight over her, according to people familiar with the incident.

“She enjoyed the Dewey Beach nightlife,” said another resident speaking on the condition of anonymity. The resident, now a restaurant owner, added that the town was “pretty wild” in those days."


FWIW

C R Krieger said...

I was initially confused between Judge and Ward re the time in Federal Prison.

But, then this whole mess is confusing.

I am glad I wasn't sexually assaulted at ~15, since I love flying, especially solo.

Regards — Cliff

tcrosse said...

Blogger Howard said...
Animal House came out in the summer of freshman year in college.


It came out 15 years after my freshman year in college, and all that stuff had been going full tilt for years before that.

Ralph L said...

It was set in the early 60's. It could be your story.

madAsHell said...

Nevermind.*

Kurt Cobain had two blue eyes. One blew this way, and the other blew that way!!

PhilD said...

"AMDG reports: I had a religion class every day for 6 years but was completely unfamiliar with Aquinas, Augustine, etc. upon graduation."

"What about Jesus Christ? Just curious."
Reading a question like that one wonders what the person who asks this thinks an Aquinas or an Augustine wrote about. And does she thinks it is exclusive?

Seeing Red said...

Ho hum. The drinking is still unbelievable. The drinking age might have been 19.

Ho hum the drugs are still unbelievable.

Do these people live in a bubble and think it only happens in their group?

steve uhr said...

People are so odd. This Ward guy wants to be seen and heard despite his conviction for sexual crimes against children. If anyone should lay low it is him.

Christy said...

I was part of the Dewey Beach House scene during the 80s. As one of my first housemates said, "You check your brain at the Bay Bridge on Friday night and pick it up on the way home Sunday night." My crowd was older than Ford and did the private party thing (for 2-300 of your best friends), but still everyone went to Fran O'Brien's bar Friday night and hit the rock & roll bar after the beach but before the parties started on Saturdays. Our crowd was 30-something singles from D.C. - congressional and State Department staffers mostly - and I don't remember much mingling with the bartenders and such, but then I might not have noticed. One could weave some interesting narratives involving Ford. (I, of course, was the quiet girl sipping Diet Coke, reading Godel, Escher and Bach by the surf and just watching it all.)

Steve M. Galbraith said...

Do these people live in a bubble and think it only happens in their group?

All of the social statistics show that it's not happening everywhere. In fact, the numbers are declining. Fewer young people are doing drugs, having sex, drinking alcohol. ER reports of overdosing on drugs, drunk driving are down; teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are down.

Are they lying? Are these all phony statistics?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

I think Kavanaugh deserves a chance.
How this young rapist/potential murderer turned his life around, became a model citizen with an impeccable character, and now a chance to be a Supreme court justice--
could be quite an inspiration to other at-risk youth in our Juvenile Justice system

mockturtle said...

Maybe teens have found it difficult to text while drunk.

reader said...

With our son graduating high school just a few years ago it doesn’t seem to be getting better, at least in our community.

“This is beyond tragic,” Kathleen Sciuto, Parent Teacher Association community relations coordinator. “I think the kids have just come to assume that each year there will be a death at Poway High. The question is no longer ‘if,’ but ‘who.’”
Lipscomb's death is the fifth in the past two years at the high school. In 2009, Clayton Blackburn died in his sleep and Veronica Aguirre died in a car accident. In 2010, Chelsea King was raped and murdered by John Albert Gardner III. Later that year, senior Tyler Peterson collapsed and died in his home.

Chelsea’s murder was the only one not tied to drugs or alcohol. This article didn’t include instances where the kids survived and was written before the year a teenager disappeared the day of graduation. He was found alive a month later.

Teenage life seems like a horror story that you just catch glimpses of in the flash of a strobe light. I hate the thought of these kids carrying every mistake they ever made around for the rest of their lives.

Joanne Jacobs said...

My sister Peggy (Michigan '72) was in the Residential College. I visited her there in fall of '69, when I was 17. I remember a lot of marijuana, but not much alcohol.

Also, a boy -- a complete stranger -- tried to drag me to his room after I said "no" twice. He literally dragged me down the hallway outside an RC dance. He had to let go when someone came by, so I was able to get away.

The next day, we saw Michigan beat Ohio State in one of the great football games of the rivalry. I have to say that's what I remember best.

Jamie said...

I went to the same high school as Gahrie above - a DoDDS school in England. Not just drunken parties but kids regularly coming to school drunkk, keeping intoxicants in their lockers (notably Robitussin), and hash readily available. I was so very straitlaced - I got drunk once, in the Hague at Model UN, and because of my own Ford moment there (which I could describe in detail, just saying), never again until I was about 23.

Jamie said...

BTW, Gahrie was always a perfect gentleman. I would trust him with my life or my honor - or my daughter's, which means more to me now. Not to say he didn't drink. (Actually I don't know for sure if he did.)

rcocean said...

Imagine having Bernie Ward as your HS Sex ed Teacher.

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

rcocean said...

I hear Bernie is out of jail, and making a lot of Trips to bangkok.

He loves the curry.

rcocean said...

All these, our parents threw keggers for their kids, seem like bizzaro world to me.

We had to buy our own booze.

And we drank but our parties were fairly modest. Anyone who boasted about getting "Hammered" all the time, was looked down on.

rcocean said...

I remember listening to Bernie's self-righteous, piggishly left-wing "Religion" show in the Bay Area in the 90s.

Basically, Jesus didn't meet his standards.

When I found out, he was a pedophile, I laughed myself sick.

mockturtle said...

My brother and his friends got drunk whenever they could in high school. I didn't drink at the time other than when my parents served wine with dinner and we were allowed a modest glass. First got tipsy [drunk, actually] at the age of 20 and thoroughly enjoyed it. At the time.

Ann Althouse said...

“My sister Peggy (Michigan '72) was in the Residential College. I visited her there in fall of '69, when I was 17. I remember a lot of marijuana, but not much alcohol. Also, a boy -- a complete stranger -- tried to drag me to his room after I said "no" twice. He literally dragged me down the hallway outside an RC dance.”

Hi, Joanne.

Thanks for corroborating my story about low alcohol use at RC.

I’m sorry that happened to you and glad some RC person saved you.

I’m surprised that there was an RC dance. I remember boko maru, but no dancing.

Darleen said...

I was in high school 68-72. I was a theater geek, cast parties flowed with pot, LSD and booze - Boones Farm, Ripple or cheap vodka and orange juice.

Funny thing was, I never ever enjoyed being "high" so never drank or did drugs (also the descriptions of what I might experience on acid from my friends didn't attract me but repelled me).

Oh, I would nurse a screw-driver most of the evening and have a lot of fun with music & friends.

It is not unusual to hang with groups notorious for their behavior and not be doing the same thing.

The 80's was just the 70's turned up a few notches -- add to that many parents of kids who were teens in the 80s honestly thought "well, if the kid is going to drink anyway, they should do it in our family room and we'll take the keys away from their friends so they don't drive drunk home." Saw that a LOT.

The Crack Emcee said...

"One foot in earth and the other in fairyland.”

It is truly amazing this is how people want to go into the future.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

TCE,

You are misunderstanding Chesterton. When he says "fairyland," he is talking about fairy tales -- not the made-up kind, but the ones that are too old to trace. The common thread in all of them is that happiness is conditioned on something -- a promise, a pledge, a deed -- and if any of these fails, so does the hope of happiness.

Anonymous said...

BrianE: So this is that Bernie Ward! Like Buwaya, I listened to Ward on KGO and occasionally called the show to challenge his liberal positions. It was always irritating, since he would allow you to make a point, then disconnect you and procede to counter your statement without any chance for rebuttle.

Yes Bernie was very clever that way. He was here in Sacramento for a few years before moving to San Francisco. I did listen occasionally. He was very good at sophistry. Of course there was no rebuttal. He always had the last word.

Unknown said...

I never agreed with any of Bernie Ward's politics, but listened to him regularly because he was an interesting guy. I was very disappointed he turned out to be a kiddie porn watcher.