Posted on 10/01/2006 7:45:10 AM PDT by Dane
Former page: We knew about Foley 'for years' By M.E. SPRENGELMEYER AND AMIE PARNES Scripps Howard News Service October 1, 2006 WASHINGTON Sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley to one former congressional page might be just the tip of the iceberg, the leader of an alumni association for former congressional pages told Scripps Howard News Service on Saturday.
While Foley resigned this week after published reports of "friendly" e-mails to one 16-year-old male page and the pending broadcast of more sexually explicit instant messages, similar graphic messages from him were received by at least three other teenage boys who once worked in the page program, said Matthew Loraditch, a Maryland college senior who runs the U.S. House Page Alumni Association's Internet message board.
Advertisement "I've known about them (messages) for several years now," he said Saturday.
"It was more like, 'Hey, look at this,' " said Loraditch, 21, who served in the page program in the 2001-02 session. "I don't think the people in question felt that uncomfortable. It was more, 'Ooh, look at that creepy guy.'
"It was definitely crossing-the-line stuff. The instant message stuff, and stuff I've seen and heard about, definitely couldn't be misconstrued" as merely "friendly" or innocent, Loraditch said.
Loraditch said during his time on Capitol Hill, Foley was one of the members of Congress who expressed what appeared to be a sincere interest in the young pages, often visiting the areas where they congregate in the corner of the House of Representatives chamber to chat or offer stories and advice.
Loraditch said he and other pages viewed Foley as gregarious and "flaky" at the time, and that he offered several of them, not including Loraditch, his personal e-mail when they were graduating from the program and saying goodbyes.
After Loraditch returned to Maryland and began attending college at Towson University, several male former pages told him they had received Internet messages that were similar to the graphic messages first reported by ABC News last week.
"At the age we were when those things happened, 16 or 17, when you see that kind of stuff, most people our ages know what's going on and know what's happening," Loraditch said. "You're not like a little kid who can be roped into that."
Loraditch said his friends all thought the messages were disturbing, but they did not report them, either because they did not think the messages posed a serious threat or because they might have worried about career consequences.
He added all his friends received the questionable messages only after they had graduated and left the program, when, theoretically, that would not raise the same in-house sexual harassment issues as if they had been sent when the former pages still worked for Congress.
"This all happened after we were outside the protective umbrella of all our supervisors, not when we were there," Loraditch said. "To me, that indicates some sort of thought process going on in Foley's mind."
The case has prompted many congressional leaders to talk about stepped-up vigilance to protect the young men and women who serve as congressional pages, who get an up-close look at Congress while doing messenger-like duties for lawmakers.
Loraditch is a big backer of the program for its one-of-a-kind educational benefits, and he believes none of the supervisors who run the program were aware of any inappropriate messages at the time.
"The supervisors I worked with, if any of them had been told, it would have been dealt with at the time promptly," he said. "All of our supervisors were great people. They love pages. Half of them were former pages, and they've got kids of their own. If they had known about it, it would have been dealt with."
In the wake of the Foley scandal, many pages worry the program could be altered drastically or eliminated in an overreaction intended to protect teenagers.
"The page program is a good program. I firmly believe that the program could not have done anything more to protect the pages," Loraditch said. "It all happened after we left and had done our service."
It is NOT central to Foley(he is obviously guilty of this and more).
BUT...it is central to deconstructing the dem spin that the GOP leadership was complicit. Notice that starting the day it came out, that the dems went straight to implicating Hastert et al in some 'covering up'!
They have said nary a word about Foley's despicable behavoir and now the media is dutifully carrying the DNC template on this scandal to ruin the GOP and call for congressional hearings into blahblahblah...
We all know how they operate and I just don't think we should let them get away with it.
What is contagious is congress covering one another's *sses. As if everyone who dealt with Foley didn't know what kind of creep he was is beyond shallow.
Instead, it seems like Foley was studying hard, L. Ron's leather bound book.
/group-shame
I don't know how many threads we're going to have here, but it's already tiresome trying to separate fact from democrat talking points.
The newspaper held these emails & text messages for over A YEAR! Why did they wait until six weeks BEFORE AN ELECTION to release them?!!!
What is sickening is that this kind of behavior is known about and tollerated on both sides of the isle until election season.
Politicians give prostitution a bad name.
Thanks for the info. I thought he had inappropriate contact with young or underage boys from the thread. He should have been tossed for the parking tickets but I don't see inppropriate sexual stuff here.
Well, he used to be Roman Catholic..just do a web search on him.
So what? Your linking him to the Church is incorrect.
You and I both know the answer to that!
"Timing is everything."
I'm hardly a hater of the RC Church-I'm RC myself, and baby sockmonkey's a cloistered Nun.
When I see one of the Clinton defenders out claiming to be disgusted over this I only remember how they were all for keeping a LYING CREEP in the Presidency because it was his 'personal life'!
I have always disliked Foley but I didn't know why! I thought he looked like a creep who kept licking his lips. It looked freaky!
I can't wait for the TRUTH about who knew what & when. I will guarantee more people knew about this than they are willing to admit (including a bunch of liars aka RATS & 'reporters').
was running a prostitution business from Frank's apartment (ILLEGAL!)
Preying on young men, barely more than boys, in their teenage years. Let the light of TRUTH shine on ALL and may it disinfect everywhere it shines.
Agreed.
Too many people are getting fixated over whether the Dems or the media are behind this, or are falling into the libertarian trap of "what did he do wrong," or are trying to split legal hairs as far as age of consent, etc.
The reality is, it's out now and you can't put genies back into bottles. And the reality is, IMHO Foley is a cancer that had to be excised ASAP before the situation mestastized even worse, whether we take a hit in that district or not.
And if it is proven by "stand up in court" evidence, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our leadership knew about this and sat on it, then they should be held to account. The hell with Barney Frank and Slick Clinton and all the other sideshows that are being discussed here. I've been involved in conservative politics for 30 years longer than FR has been in existence, and you know what? Another reality is that we are held to a double standard. Is it fair? No. But it's not going to change. So we need to do what's right and move forward.
And IMHO, moving forward needs to be the national and Florida Republican parties getting together and picking a good candidate for this GOP-leaning district and educating the folks on the procedure here, letting them know that even though it may be Foley's name on the ballot, they're actually voting for somebody else. It's going to be very tough, but I think it's doable and THAT is where we need to be directing our time and energy.
"I'm 18 and finally of age
I'll go to Washington and be a page
In the Senate or House, I don't care
I'll be b**fing with my congressman everywhere
UTB, UTB, I want a congressman UTB"
Lyrics here (for the morbidly curious):
U.T.B.
I guess since I'm a member of the RC Church, a parent, a Republican, a United States citizen, and a member of the human race, his inappropriate, perverse behavior which was a betrayal of his responsibility and duty to all the above, plus his duty to those he represented pisses me off.
I would like to smack him with a sock full of pennies.
Good for you.
I am Roman Catholic too, so what IS your point?
"You are entirely wrong. They only knew he wrote mildly inappropriate e-mails to pages after they returned home. They were told that the parents just wanted the e-mails to stop and did not want to file a complaint. No one new about the sexually explicite IMs until the other day and then they immediately came down on him. In other words, Foley didn't make any advances on the pages while they were pages, he waited until they returned home before making his moves."
That's nonsense. I worked in government. These things are always known. The rumor mill works overtime continuously. And Foley was outed in 1996. There is no excuse for this at all except for incompetence.
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