A Roman Catholic priest has admitted to having an intimate relationship with Mark Foley when the disgraced Republican lawmaker was about 12 years old, Florida media reported on Thursday.
The revelation came amid an explosive scandal over revelations that while Florida's representative in Washington, Foley had sent sexually suggestive messages to teenage congressional aides.
Foley resigned last month, and his lawyer said the prominent Republican was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a priest.
Roman Catholic priest Anthony Mercieca, 72, admitted to a newspaper and a television station that he had a series of encounters with Foley that might be perceived as inappropriate, but denied he had raped the boy about four decades ago.
"I was down, I was taking pills, tranquilizers ... then once maybe I touched him or so. But it's not something you call rape or penetration or anything like that, it was fondling," Mercieca said in an interview with Palm Beach's WPTV station.
Mercieca told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune he had taught Foley "some wrong things" related to sex.
He said he had massaged Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipped with him at a lake and was naked in the same room on overnight trips, the paper reported.
Mercieca told the daily that after he moved from Brazil to Florida in 1966, he and Foley became close friends and "loved each other like brothers." Foley would have been 12 or 13 at the time.
The priest said he didn't understand why Foley has decided to come forward after almost 40 years. "Why does he want to destroy me in my old age?" Mercieca told the newspaper.
"I would say that if I offended him, I am sorry. But remember the good times we had together and how we enjoyed each other's company, and let bygones be bygones," he told WPTV.
Mercieca, who now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, said that, at the time, he considered his relationship with Foley innocent but now realized his actions could be labeled inappropriate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune said.
Republican leaders of Congress have been accused of failing to take appropriate action or even of covering up what they knew of the scandal, which has dominated US politics since the story broke late last month.
The widening scandal has increased pressure on the Republicans as they risk losing control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994 at the Nov. 7 mid-term elections.
Probes have been launched by the US Justice Department, a congressional ethics committee and Florida state authorities.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami said Foley's lawyer had given the name of his client's alleged abuser to the Palm Beach State Attorney.
"Once the State Attorney concludes its investigation and/or releases the name of the alleged abuser to the archdiocese, it is our intention to make the name public per our policy relating to the protection of children and vulnerable adults," it said in a statement.
"The Archdiocese of Miami prays that representative Mark Foley realizes he is not alone in his journey to recovery; the Holy Spirit is his guiding light," said the statement.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS