96: Lawrence Scott Ward – Republican Sexual Predators

Lawrence Scott Ward was an Ivy League professor at Harvard Business School and later at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He was the Chairman of the Marketing Department at Penn. He was hired by major companies as a consultant, particularly on marketing to children, making him a rich man. He also founded a nonprofit called the Rebound Foundation which included faculty and students at Penn, in order to help “troubled kids.” It was easy access for Ward to exploit and abuse these kids and he took full advantage of it.

This is one of those “you have to read it to believe it” cases. In the 90s, he was caught multiple times with evidence he was a pedophile. In one case, a burglar got caught in Ward’s Main Line neighborhood and explained he stayed at Ward’s house. He told police that when he was younger, Ward paid him for sex but now Ward pays him to procure younger boys of twelve and thirteen. An undercover cop met with Ward who solicited the cop for sex thinking he was fifteen. It was recorded, but the recording did not work and was blank. It took six years but Ward finally pleaded guilty to two charges though he walked out of the court house claiming he was innocent and only pled to end the legal wrangling. He got five years probation.

Ward used his Rebound Foundation to inveigle himself in to children’s lives, working with juvenile facilities who allowed him to take children home where he would rape them. In another case, told by the victim’s lawyer, Ward used his charity to access a 13-year-old boy, even taking him to his home overnight with the permission of the people who had his custody. The child was sexually abused 50 to 100 times as a youth in exchange for medical care, clothes, and money. He was nineteen when he came forward and the defense portrayed him as an extortionist. Ward was acquitted.

He was finally sentenced to real time in prison when he got caught coming home from Thailand with child pornography. A lot of it. A smart customs agent was suspicious of his pictures with kids on a beach in Thailand which is a known pedophile destination and searched more carefully and found his laptop filled with child sexual abuse imagery. That led to a search of his work and even more was found. He got 15 years and then 10 years. He appealed his sentenced but was denied.