House’s Program for Teenagers Is No Stranger to Scandal (Foley not first)

[Robbien]

<snip>

Representatives Daniel B. Crane, Republican of Illinois, and Gerry E. Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, were formally censured by the House in the sex scandal. On July 20, 1983, the two were required to stand in the well of the House chamber and listen to the charges against them, which they did not dispute.

Mr. Crane, who lost his bid for re-election, was censured for having had sexual relations with a 17-year-old female House page. Mr. Studds, who went on to serve in the House until January 1997, was censured for having had sexual relations with a 17-year-old male page on a trip to Europe during a summer Congressional recess.

In the aftermath of the scandal, the minimum age for pages was raised to 16 from 14. Tighter supervision measures were put in place, including a dormitory just blocks from the Capitol, where pages are required to live and attend classes.

Lawmakers moved to create the Page Board, a bipartisan panel that oversees the program.

Representative John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois who heads the five-member board, had been looking into the case against Mr. Foley. But he kept the matter closely held. The Democrat on the board, Representative Dale E. Kildee of Michigan, said he had not learned of the episode until Friday, the day Mr. Foley resigned.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/washington/01pages.html

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Well, that great bastion of liberal journalism had to go back to 1983,

but they did succeed in finding a Dem culprit somewhere, so now it's officially a bipartisan scandal, I guess.

[MADem]

2. OH, but guess what--you actually have to go back to 73 with Studds

They censured him in 83 for a relationship that started in 73--the former page stood beside Studds after his censure (he was 27 by then) and forcefully averred that his privacy had been invaded and what he did consensually was no one's business.

Now, that's not an excuse for the guy--Studds behaved improperly. He absolutely did--in 1973. At the time, he was in his 30s and shouldn't have been messing with a 17 year old teen in his workplace.

But hey, they'll do what they can to try to paint a measure of "equivalency" on this. Foley resigned, he won't face censure...and he pursued children who apparently rejected his advances. It's pretty rough when the class of pages has to be "warned" about the guy before they start their internship.

[Eugene]

3. Crane and Studds were censured

while Foley was discreetly asked to tone things down.
House Repug leaders chose to look the other way
until the story broke in the MSM.

[Demit]

4. I'll bet neither of those guys was in charge of a high profile group to

protect the youngsters from sexual exploitation. Foley was the chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. I'll bet they didn't introduce legislation to protect children from the very thing they themselves were doing, as Foley did. I'll bet they didn't denounce the Supreme Court as siding with pedophiles over children, as Foley did.

There's absolutely no equivalency here, and hopefully NYT readers will see right through this tawdry attempt to create it. It is sick that House Republican "leaders" allowed this to go on. And sick of the Times to downplay it in ANY way.