The long-awaited next shoe has fallen, according to the
LA Times.
Headline:
Ex-Page Tells of Foley Liaison
The young man says the then-congressman eyed males in the program. He says he was 21 when he and the Florida Republican had sex.
A former House page says he had sex with then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) after receiving explicit e-mails in which the congressman described assessing the sexual orientation and physical attributes of underage pages but waiting until later to make direct advances.
Now the question becomes, how many other pages, and were there cases when he didn't wait until they were over 21? Frankly, though, I'm not sure the latter question really matters very much, considering that the IMing and so forth all took place when the pages were younger.
A few more excerpts:
Yet the former page's exchanges with Foley offer a glimpse of possible predatory behavior by the congressman as he assessed male teenagers assigned as House errand-runners.
In the messages, Maf54 described how years earlier, he had looked to see whether the former page had an erection in his tight white pants while the then-teenager was working near the congressman. Maf54 also speculated about the sexual attributes of other males in the same page class, including the observation that one young man was "well hung."
The former page interviewed by The Times said he had not been contacted by the FBI or the House Ethics Committee. He agreed to talk to The Times only if his identity was protected, because of his fear that exposure could hurt his job prospects.
The Times found the former page after others identified him as someone whose contacts with Foley went beyond graphic messages. At an interview, the former page brought a computer containing his communications with Foley, and allowed a Times reporter to review them. The young man, who now manages a suburban office of a national franchise, says that he is gay and that he had only one sexual encounter with Foley before the contacts abruptly ended. The Times agreed not to publish the year of his page class to protect his identity.
Note how the Times found him: Through the gossip net. That means that other people knew. I'd be willing to bet that this isn't the only ex-page that Foley actually had sex with.
The former page, who served during Foley's first term, said that he believed Foley became bolder in his behavior during his decade in Congress.
He and other former pages were surprised that it took so long for Foley "to get caught," he said.
"It most saddens me because of the damage it could do to the program," the young man said of the page system. "It was the most spectacular year of my life. I would love to do it all over again."
Now, what was that about the story dying down?
-dms