| Topic Name: |
Bill Kamal: Is he telling the truth? |
| Message Name: |
This sums it up |
| Date Posted: |
05/12/2005 |
| In Reply To: |
How is PLG the laughing stock? where do you work?? |
| Message: |
Posted on Thu, May. 12, 2005
COMMENTARY
Kamal's view of the truth is mostly cloudy
By JIM DEFEDE
jdefede@herald.com
Former WSVN-Fox 7 weatherman Bill Kamal has been off the air since he was arrested last October after being caught soliciting sex from a 14-year-old boy (who turned out to be an undercover cop) he met in an online chat room. Kamal pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.
But this week, Kamal has been dominating local television just like the good old days. In his first interview since his arrest, Kamal has been proclaiming his innocence on WPLG-ABC 10. The final installment of the five-part series airs tonight.
''I miss the little things that you couldn't even possibly imagine,'' he says wistfully, ``like when I saw two Canadian geese in the recreation yard and I'm thinking they didn't know they were in prison but they flew away and I can't fly away.''
A twister tearing through a row of outhouses couldn't spread the dung any faster.
Kamal sees himself as the victim and blames everyone else for his many problems.
FACTS DON'T LIE
But before we get lost in Kamal's fantasy world, let's recall the basic facts. Kamal went into an online chat room called BoyzForMen, contacted a person he thought was a 14-year-old boy from Fort Pierce and for two hours engaged in sexually explicit banter. He described exactly what he wanted to do sexually to the 14-year-old boy and about how it would be their secret. The following weekend he set up a rendezvous with the boy/detective and was arrested.
In his interview with Channel 10, Kamal seems shocked that what he was doing was a crime: ``Who the hell would have thought that by being alone in my house, in the confines of my own secure home, that I was (A) committing a felony, and (B) that this would happen to me.''
Kamal just doesn't get it. Being alone in the confines of his home isn't a felony. The felony is trying to seduce a child to meet him for sex.
''I'm so damn naive that I don't even think that this could be a possible felony because I'm talking to somebody who could be under 18,'' he told Channel 10.
A DAMNING CONVERSATION
He's not naive. As the transcript of his online chat makes abundantly clear, he knew that what he was doing was wrong. Kamal tried to find out exactly whom the boy talked to about his sex life.
''Do any of your friends know you like men?'' Kamal wrote.
The boy/detective said, No.
''I like that,'' Kamal replied``Very discreet here too. I wish we were closer so we could have discreet friendship and relationship.''
The boy/detective said he didn't want to get into trouble.
''Me either,'' Kamal said. ``Sometimes someone says they're 14 and they end up being a cop.''
Oh, yeah, Kamal sounds real naive.
In the interview with Channel 10, Kamal denied the chat room was called BoyzForMen, saying it was either SonsAndDads or DadsAndSons. He said he was hoping to be a big brother to some poor, unfortunate kid, because he was a fat child and he knows what it feels like to be picked on and teased.
OK, if that's the case, why would he enter this chat room with an obscene screen name? I can't print the screen name here in The Herald, but the basic gist is that Kamal wants people to know he's greater than the sum of his sexual organ.
WHAT HE WAS LOOKIN 4
Read the transcripts and you realize he's not there to help anyone; he's there to prey on some weak, confused child. ''I'm really lookin 4 a real son . . . not just to trade pics and never speak again . . . I'm not just lookin 4 quick sex,'' he wrote.
This week, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Moore, who sentenced Kamal, received a letter from Kamal. It's a rambling screed in which he again blames everyone else for his problems.
''The truth is going to be told,'' Kamal wrote the judge.
Maybe so, but it wasn't told by Kamal this week.
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