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WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following release was issued by the Democratic National Committee today on the matter involving former Rep. Foley:
The Associated Press has reported that Kirk Fordham, a former aide to disgraced former Republican Congressman Mark Foley, and until today the Chief-of-Staff to NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds, said that he alerted Speaker Dennis Hastert's office in 2004 about "worrisome conduct" that Foley had with teenage pages. Specifically, Fordham said that he engaged in "more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene." (AP, 10/4/06)
"The House Republican leadership put the interests of the Republican Party ahead of protecting our kids," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "Today we learned that Speaker Hastert's office was informed of Rep. Foley's despicable behavior four times since 2004. How many times did the Republican leadership need to hear this information to act?"
Hastert Was Informed Four Times
Hastert Informed for the First Time in 2004
Foley's Chief of Staff Fordham Told Hastert of Concerns About Foley's Behavior in 2004. "Fordham said Wednesday that he alerted the office of the Republican leader of the House of Representatives two years ago about worrisome conduct by former Rep. Mark Foley with teenage pages. Fordham (said that) when he was told about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward pages, he had 'more than one conversation with senior staff at the highest level of the House of Representatives asking them to intervene,' alluding to the office of Speaker Dennis Hastert. The conversations took place long before the e-mail scandal broke, Fordham said, and at least a year earlier than members of the House Republican leadership have acknowledged." (AP, 10/4/06)
Hastert Informed for the Second Time in Fall 2005
Fall 2005: Alexander's Office Contacted Hastert's Office About Inappropriate E-Mails, Who Told Him to Contact House Clerk. Alexander's Chief of Staff "contacted the Speaker's office about Foley's email exchange. Alexander was concerned about it." The speaker's deputy Chief of Staff and in-house counsel "told Alexander's aide to contact the House clerk." (St. Petersburg Times, 10/1/06)
9/05: In The Meantime, Foley Requested Picture of 16-Year-Old Boy. "Foley requested a picture of a 16-year-old boy and asked him what he would like for his birthday. The former page forwarded it to a staffer for another member of Congress in September 2005, describing it 13 times as 'sick' and saying, 'This freaks me out.' The staffer's office informed a Hastert aide shortly afterward and the speaker's office referred the matter to Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Page Board, who asked Foley to cease communication with the teenager." (Chicago Tribune, 10/3/06)
Fall 2005: Shimkus and Trandahl Met With Foley About the Emails. "Shimkus and Trandahl met privately with Foley and his chief of staff last fall to ask him to cease interaction with House pages. Shimkus said he acted based on the text of the e- mails and because the messages concerned the page and his parents." (Chicago Tribune, 10/3/06)
2006: Foley Considered Not Seeking Another Term, But Reynolds Convinced Him. Bob Novak wrote, "A member of the House leadership told me that Foley, under continuous political pressure because of his sexual orientation, was considering not seeking a seventh term this year but that Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), talked him into running." (New York Post, 10/4/06)
Spring 2006: Alexander Told Boehner About Foley's Inappropriate Emails; Boehner Sent Him to Reynolds. "After a second round of press inquiries in the spring, he again notified the family and discussed the e-mails with the new majority leader, John Boehner of Ohio, on the House floor during a vote. Alexander said Boehner turned first to Reynolds, the architect of the Republican midterm election strategy. 'I went to Boehner before Reynolds,' Alexander told AP. 'He sent Reynolds to me to talk about it. Within a minute Reynolds and I were talking.'" (Chicago Tribune, 10/3/06)
Hastert Informed for the Third and Fourth Times in Spring 2006
Spring 2006: Boehner Says He Told Hastert About Emails. Boehner told the "Washington Post" that he "had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert." (Washington Post, 10/1/06)
Spring 2006: Reynolds Says He Learned of Emails in the Spring, Told Hastert. "Mr. Reynolds, who runs the fund-raising committee for House Republicans, was told in the spring that Mr. Foley may have acted inappropriately toward pages. He said he alerted the Republican speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, to the issue, but Mr. Hastert said he had no recollection of the contact." (The Sun, 10/3/06)
Spring 2006: Foley Chief of Staff Urged Members to Withhold Concerns About Foley From the Full Page Board. "The complaint about Foley (emails to a teenager) was brought to the chairman of the page board, Congressman John Shimkus (R-Ill.). He then consulted with the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl. At Fordham's urging, according to the sources, the matter was not given to the full board, and instead Congressman Foley was privately approached and told to stop all contact with the page he had been e-mailing." (ABC News, 10/4/06)
6/06: Emails Came Up in a Capitol Hill Bar Conversation, Were Passed on to News Outlets. In June, the reports resurfaced on Capitol Hill, where a neighborhood resident struck up a conversation in a bar with someone who had provided the e-mail messages. He said he passed them on to several news outlets. The resident, who said he was not affiliated with either party and was motivated by concern for the teenager, would talk only on condition of anonymity. (New York Times, 10/3/06)
7/21/06: CREW Sent Emails to FBI. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington forwarded the messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 21 and requested an investigation. (New York Times, 10/3/06)
8/06: ABC Learned of Emails. Brian Ross of ABC News said he learned about the e-mail messages in August but was too busy with Hurricane Katrina and the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue them immediately. (New York Times, 10/3/06)
8/7/06: NRCC Took $100,000 from Foley. The NRCC accepted a $100,000 contribution from Foley's campaign committee. (fec.gov)
9/28/06: ABC Reported On Suggestive Emails. ABC reported initial suggestive emails on Sept. 28. (New York Times, 10/3/06)
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Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, http://www.democrats.org This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement issued by Amy Berg, director of the film "Deliver Us From Evil," on the Foley Scandal and the Catholic Church:
"As the details of the Mark Foley scandal unfold, I am struck by the chilling similarities between the behavior of the Catholic Church and what we are seeing right now with the leadership of the U.S. Congress. My documentary film, 'Deliver Us From Evil,' will open in theaters in Los Angeles and New York and Boston on Oct. 13, and then nationwide on Oct. 27. The film is the true account of Father Oliver O'Grady, the most notorious pedophile in the history of the modern Catholic Church. Despite warning signs and complaints, the church played an elaborate shell game for years, moving O'Grady from parish to parish in an effort to avoid liability and responsibility. The consequences of their actions were tragic.
"The Catholic Church would like us to believe that the clergy abuse scandals are behind us. 'Old news' they say. But with the revelation that Mark Foley was sexually molested as a teenager by a member of the clergy, this issue is clearly not behind us. It is not old news. We don't know the full extent of Foley's abuse as a teenager, but we see clearly how the long term effects of this kind of exploitation, which took place nearly 40 years ago, is causing havoc today in the lives of many people. It may even play a pivotal role in a national election.
"As I discovered in making 'Deliver Us From Evil,' clergy sexual abuse creates lifelong trauma for everyone involved -- for the victims, their families and loved ones, the perpetrators and the institutions. And the more these actions are denied, rationalized or covered-up, the worse they become. Sexual abuse creates a repeating cycle where many of the priest abusers were themselves victims of child molestation. And rather than being a few 'rare exceptions,' we now know that, by some estimates, 100,000 people, most of them children, were sexually molested by priests in the United States in recent years alone. This number doesn't include the countless others who are still too ashamed to come forward and report their abuse.
"'Deliver Us From Evil' shows clearly how the church hierarchy participated in a long-term pattern of denial and deception, choosing to protect its reputation instead of dealing with these systematic problems honestly. Today, we see Congressional leaders acting precisely in the same manner in trying to manage the Foley crisis. ABC News reported that Republican House staff warned congressional pages as far back as 2001 to stay away from Foley. For five years, House leaders have known about this potential problem, but failed to take sufficient corrective action to protect their underage charges. Similar to the Catholic Bishops, the House leaders seem to have been only concerned about self-protection, keeping their power and fundraising structure in place, and hoping that the abuses never saw the light of day. Simple honesty, morality and common sense were completely abandoned in their drive to conceal the truth and protect their own institutional interests.
"For both the Catholic Church and the Congress, the well-being of children does not seem to matter enough to rein in the behavior of adults in their own ranks.
"If you want to understand more fully the behavior of Congressional leadership, watch the disturbing depositions of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and his lieutenants in 'Deliver Us From Evil.' Mahony would like us to believe that these scandals are all ancient history, but the Associated Press reported just last week that his archdiocese could soon sign a $60 million settlement with dozens of alleged victims of clergy abuse. The cases being settled are but a fraction of the more than 500 clergy abuse lawsuits filed against the Los Angeles archdiocese since 2003.
"Old news? Hardly."
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WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mark Foley, who resigned from Congress Friday for using the Internet to solicit underage male pages for sex, was apparently online Tuesday under his notorious Maf54 screen name at a time when he is supposedly in alcohol rehab.
Mike Rogers, the leading gay activist who has been reporting on his blog for over a year about former Congressman Foley's closeted gay lifestyle, was interviewed last night on Fox News Channel's 6 p.m. broadcast with Brit Hume. Rogers stated that, once the scandal broke, he had added Foley's Maf54 screen name to his buddy list on America Online's Instant Messaging service. Rogers said Foley's screen name popped up as being online for two or three minutes before it was logged off again at 9:21 a.m. Tuesday. That is the same AIM account that Foley allegedly used to have Internet sex with a teen while the House was voting.
House leaders were unable or unwilling to stop Foley's persistent conduct for over a year once they became aware of it, and failed to report it to law enforcement authorities. Foley announced Monday that he was entering alcohol rehab. On Tuesday his attorney acknowledged that Foley is gay, as Rogers reported on his blog a year and a half ago in stating that Foley was being hypocritical by voting for anti-gay measures in Congress such as the Defense of Marriage Act, and failing to oppose a measure in Congress that penalized gay scouting leaders.
Also on Tuesday, Rogers offered to join with prominent leaders of the Christian right in calling for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign his leadership post for failing to act when informed of Foley's sexual advances to House pages. In a letter to James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, Rogers wrote, "For once, gentlemen, we might have something in common and an opportunity to work together to clean up Congress." Full text of the letter may be seen at http://www.proudofwhoweare.org .
Rogers' comments were also included in ABC News coverage this week, and in an article in Saturday's Miami Herald (see www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15643524.htm ). He may be reached at 202-588-9446, or by emailing mrogers@proudofwhoweare.org
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MANHATTAN, Kan., Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congress has an affirmative duty to ensure the safety of the youngsters who come to Washington, D.C., to serve as pages, and to take prompt, appropriate action at the first sign of abuse, according to Robert Shoop, a Kansas State University professor of educational administration.
Shoop said focusing solely on the alleged sexual harassment of teenage male pages by Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., through sexually- suggestive electronic messages misses the larger questions of oversight and training.
"The two key issues are power and grooming," Shoop said. "In the nation's capital, few are more powerful than a congressman or senator. Whether it is a church, a school or the U. S. Congress, a person who controls working conditions, promotions, salaries, raises, scholarships or references has a great deal of power. In the case of an underage child, the power differential is even greater."
According to Shoop, in the grooming process a perpetrator might say something mildly inappropriate to see if the target says "no" or goes along with it. From there, the grooming process gradually escalates as perpetrators see what they can get away with before the child either rejects them or tells someone.
Shoop said people who molest youngsters in a work or school environment seldom use force, but work gradually gain the trust of the child. Often the child does not know how to get out of the situation. If not stopped, these threshold behaviors, that may appear innocent, often lead to harassment, abuse and rape.
"The grooming process is very typical in sexual abuse cases," Shoop said. "Often, the abuse starts out with e-mails like, 'What did you do for the summer? What do you want for your birthday? How are you doing?' From there, they progress into 'What are you wearing or take off your shorts and get relaxed,' which often eventually results in sexual activity."
According to Shoop, all organizations, particularly ones that assign impressionable youngsters to be supervised by very powerful adults, must have clear policies prohibiting sexual harassment and abuse, and a specific training program for both adults and youngsters that clarify appropriate and inappropriate actions.
Although rules involving congressional pages were allegedly tightened in 1983 after two congressmen were censured for sexual misconduct involving pages, Shoop said current and past pages have said they never had any training.
"No one ever talked to them about the possibility of sexual abuse or harassment," Shoop said. "They should be told that while being a page is a wonderful opportunity, and the vast majority of the people you will be working with are ethical people, some people may not be ethical. They should be told exactly what to do if someone crosses the boundary from mentor to molester."
Shoop said while the page in the Foley's case apparently resisted the congressman's alleged advances, some youngsters, in other circumstances, might be afraid to challenge the power of a mentor.
"Had the page not ended the correspondence, it very likely the inappropriate behavior would have escalated into a sexual relationship," Shoop said. "This kid did say 'no.' What would have happened had the youngster not rejected and reported the inappropriate behavior? It does not appear that there was an adequate system to investigate complaints and protect pages from abuse."
Shoop said this case emphasizes the need and responsibility for parents, educators and the office that supervises congressional pages to make a point of talking to their children or charges about sexual abuse and harassment, and the warning signs associated with those behaviors.
Shoop said given the previous incident involving pages in the 1980s and the scandals involving congressional interns, it will be interesting to see if a training program is instituted, policies developed and grievance procedures adopted -- or whether lawmakers just "make this go away."
"I am afraid that many people, including governmental officials, will see the Foley incident as an aberrant personal problem, as opposed to a system problem," Shoop said. "They may say, 'that was just one weird guy, punish him -- but that surely no one else will do this in the future.'"
If the system is not examined and improved, Shoop said the power paradigm between a page and a congressional representative or an intern and a president opens the very real potential for future occurrences.
"Some have suggested the page program be abolished," Shoop said. "I believe this would be a simplistic solution to a very serious and complex situation. Apparently the majority of pages have good experiences. If my child wanted to be a congressional page, I would want assurances this was an aberrant event. And, most importantly, I would want to know that changes have been made to see that it does not happen again."
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