How Foley Skirted Rules To Pursue Relationships
Former Pages Describe Lawmaker's Advances
By Amy Goldstein and Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 22, 2006; Page A01
....The experience of the young man, now 22, who agreed to recount his interactions with Foley on the condition of anonymity, was characteristic of the way the six-term House member pursued the online relationships that, once revealed, forced him to resign from Congress late last month. No one interviewed for this article could cite any instance in which Foley had sex with a former page. Foley's lawyer, David Roth, declined to comment for this story.
Interviews with nearly three dozen former pages suggest that the Florida Republican befriended a wide circle of teenagers during their stints as House pages. Then, shortly before they left or soon afterward, he singled out certain boys to write to -- including four newly confirmed by The Washington Post, in addition to former page Jordan Edmund and one other whose illicit online conversations with Foley ended the congressman's career. Some of the correspondence was brief and casual. But over months or years, if a boy seemed willing to go along, some conversations grew more sexual....
***
Based on the interviews with pages, who spanned most of Foley's dozen years in the House -- and interviews with parents and former program employees -- the congressman's behavior went unchecked because he operated within accepted norms of the program's culture.
Although many pages regarded Foley as the House's friendliest member, his interactions with boys before they graduated often did not stray far beyond those of several other members of Congress each year who were known by the pages to take a caring interest in this corps of teenagers, most living away from home for the first time....
***
Most of all, his interest in the boys coincided with the ambitions of many of the teenagers, who craved contact with members in hopes of fostering political careers of their own....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102101050.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
