A priest who knew disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley has come forward to confirm that he maintained an inappropriate relationship with him.
But, like Foley, the priest, 72-year-old Anthony Mercieca had an excuse ... tranquilizers.
The relationship, which, at one point, involved teaching Foley "wrong things about sex," Mercierca said, took place in the 1960s when Foley would have been in his adolescent years.
May we expect any Republican or those they consort with in their corruption to accept responsibility for their actions or will we always and again be treated to complicated explanations of how it just wasn't their fault things went awry?
I fully expect Mercieca's revelation to lead some of our less-than-astute fellow Americans to conclude that this is how Foley "became gay."
More on the jump ...
Here's the pertinent portion of the Associated Press story that just broke:
SARASOTA, Florida (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest said he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with former Rep. Mark Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude, but he did not specifically remember having sex, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. They include massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.
Mercieca said there was one night when he was in a drug-induced stupor and there was an incident but he couldn't clearly remember, the newspaper reported. (Watch why Foley doesn't want to discuss details yet -- 3:05)
"I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown," the newspaper reported Mercieca as saying from his home on the island of Gozo, south of Sicily. "I was taking pills -- tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit."