As if Penn hasn’t had enough bad pub recently with rumors of deans “matriculating” students on the sly and the never-ending Tracy McIntosh sexual assault drama, convicted felon and kiddie-diddler Scott Ward (“The Brilliant Professor Ward,” January 2007) is making news again. Word leaked out on Monday on ivygateblog.com that the former Wharton prof shared property in Cape Cod with newly appointed Wharton dean Thomas Robertson. The two purchased a waterfront retreat together back in 1977 while both were teaching at Harvard, and would later co-author more than 20 papers and reports, including the unfortunately titled “Consumer Satisfaction Among Children.” Accompanying the IvyGate post is an image of a mortgage record for the property from 2001 listing Ward, Robertson and his wife as co-mortgagors.

So how close is Dean Robertson and Penn’s favorite pedophile? Not very these days, according to Jerry Bessette, a longtime friend of Ward’s who, in the fall of 2006, broke the news to Robertson via telephone that Ward had been arrested for possession of child pornography (“[Robertson] said, ‘This scares the hell out of me,’ He was devastated.”). Bessette says Ward used the property as a vacation home and a rental, splitting half the profits with Robertson, but adds that Ward sold his half years ago, and Robertson is in the process of doing the same. “Tom’s not happy being in the position he’s in,” Bessette says. “He called me [about a month ago] and said, ‘Do you think there’s going to be any fallout [from my friendship with Ward]?’ He just had a funny feeling something might come back on him.”

Penn has been under fire for its tendency to go mute when these crises arise, but today Dean Thomas e-mailed the following statement in response to Philadelphia magazine’s questions about his old pal:

“My wife and I had joint ownership of a house on Cape Cod with Prof. Scott Ward. My wife, three children, and I spent time at the house over the years in the summer, but never at the same time as Prof. Ward.

“It is now clear that he was leading a double life and fooled me, my family, and many others, who thought they knew him well. I am appalled and angry at his actions, and I’m deeply embarrassed by my past association with him.”

As for Ward, he’s currently enjoying a 15-year stay at a low-security white-collar prison 90 miles east of Pittsburgh, where he is preparing to teach classes to his new jumpsuited colleagues. He’s also making weekly phone dates with his common-law wife in Brazil, one of his favorite travel spots over the years and a Disneyland for child sex predators. —Richard Rys

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Updates, Reportage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by Richard Rys on 10/3/07 in Updates, Reportage