Diocese opens inquest of Foley priest

ROME - A Roman Catholic diocese has opened an investigation of a priest who said he fondled and shared saunas while naked with Mark Foley when the former U.S. congressman was a boy in Florida.

In interviews in the past two days, the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 69, who is now retired and lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, has given different details about his encounters with Foley four decades ago.

On Wednesday, he told the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune by telephone that he massaged the boy in the nude, was naked in the same room on overnight trips with him and had gone skinny dipping with him. On Thursday, he told The Associated Press that he was naked in a sauna with Foley.

Also Thursday, he told WPTV of West Palm Beach, Fla., that he touched Foley "once, maybe."

"It's not something you call, I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that, you know," he told the TV station in a telephone interview. "It was just fondling."

On Friday, the Archdiocese of Miami confirmed that Mercieca is the person Foley said abused him as a teen. The archdiocese planned to release a statement later in the day with more details. It received the name in an e-mail from Florida state prosecutors, who got it from Foley's lawyers.

Foley, a 52-year-old Florida Republican, resigned from Congress last month after the release of his sexually explicit computer messages to young male pages.

After Foley's resignation from Congress, his lawyer said that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a boy by a "clergyman." Foley's civil lawyer, Gerald Richman, said the alleged abuser was a Catholic priest whose name he shared with Florida prosecutors.

A statement from the diocese of Gozo, a small Mediterranean island off Malta, said that its bishop, Mario Grech, contacted the Archdiocese of Miami on Thursday evening seeking further information about the case. The statement, issued late Thursday, said the diocese had learnt of the case for the first time in the international press.

"In the light of all this ... Bishop Grech will instruct the response team to investigate these allegations according to the policies established by the Maltese Ecclesiastical Province with regards to cases of sexual abuse in pastoral activity," the statement said. "Grech will pass all information he receives pertaining to this case to the response team as he has done in similar cases."

The Maltese Church instituted the team in 1999 to deal with any sexual abuse allegations.

Charles Buttigieg, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Malta, the main island of the archipelago south of Sicily, said Friday he was not aware of any other complaints involving Mercieca. "I don't know of any other complaints about this priest," he said by telephone from Malta. Buttigieg said the archdiocese's response team has yet to meet on this matter, as Mercieca's case was just being referred to it.

Mercieca, a Maltese citizen, is retired and does not serve in any parish on the island, the Rev. Anthony Refalo, the Gozo diocese spokesman, told the AP. However, Mercieca regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral, one of two main churches on the island.

The U.S.-based group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests urged the Maltese bishop to immediately "move the cleric to a secure facility where he will not have access to children."

Gozo, 60 miles south of Sicily, has a population of about 32,000 and is one of Malta's three inhabited islands — filled with vacation homes and holiday resorts.

"Bishop Grech, conscious of the gravity of pedophilia, reiterates that he will cooperate with those responsible for investigating such cases so that justice is done to the victims, the perpetrators are reformed and the common good is safeguarded," the statement said.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune published an interview with Mercieca on Thursday in which the priest described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate.

Among the activities described by Mercieca in the newspaper were massaging the boy in the nude, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth, Fla., and being nude in the same room on overnight trips while he was a priest and Foley was a parishioner.

Mercieca later told The Associated Press in Rome by phone that the report was "exaggerated."

"We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers," Mercieca said in the AP interview. Asked if their association was sexual, the priest replied: "It wasn't."

Mercieca told the AP that he and Foley would go into saunas naked when he was a priest in Florida and Foley was a parishioner, but he said that "everybody does that."

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Executive Editor Mike Connelly said Thursday the story is accurate, including the reference to a night in which Mercieca said he was in a drug-induced stupor due to a nervous breakdown and couldn't clearly remember what happened.

"The reporter talked to the priest four times yesterday and carefully reviewed his account, especially of the one night," Connelly said. "The story accurately reports what the priest said."

Mercieca had worked at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967, according to church records. Foley would have been 13 at the time.

A spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach, Mike Edmondson, said that an e-mail from Foley's attorney was received late Wednesday identifying the alleged abuser. Edmondson said law enforcement action is over, unless other alleged victims come forward, because Foley's attorneys have said that the politician doesn't want to prosecute.

Associated Press writer Brian Skoloff in Wast Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this report.

'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Oct. 19 transcript

OLBERMANN: Remember when Mark Foley was at the center of the Mark Foley scandal? How many years ago was that?

In our fourth story on the COUNTDOWN, continuing repercussions threatening to swamp even more Republican members of Congress in the Republican sex scandal. House majority leader John Boehner took a little time out from coordinating GOP campaign efforts to testify before the House Ethics Committee today about what he knew about Foley.

So did Jeff Trandahl, the former clerk of the House. According to ABCNews.com, he told the committee a top aide to House speaker Denny Hastert was briefed regularly about issues with the page program, including, quote, “a problem group of House members and staff who spent too much time socializing with pages,” not just Foley, a group, and not just Hastert found out last month, but a top aide was briefed regularly.

And there is news about Mr. Foley himself today, a 72-year-old priest telling at least two media outlets he had contact with Foley when Foley was in his early teens that Foley might have considered inappropriate, like overnight trips and naked saunas, that priest issuing a somewhat less than reassuring denial today.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MERCIECA (ON PHONE): I touched him also, you know. But I didn’t, it’s (INAUDIBLE) with us than, it’s not something (INAUDIBLE), I mean, rape or penetration or anything like that, you know, it was just fondling, (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the time, did you think you were doing anything wrong?

MERCIECA: Because then, I didn’t. He really seemed to like it, you know. So it was more—sort of more like a spontaneous thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: As associate editor of “The Hill” newspaper, A.B. Stoddard covers Congress, and not that stuff, and probably knows more than she can say about the Foley scandal.

Ms. Stoddard, thank you for your time tonight.

A.B. STODDARD, “THE HILL”: Thank you.

OLBERMANN: Do the details about Foley’s past, other than, you know, giving us all a kind of a sick feeling, does it change the story? Or is Foley, at this point, almost a footnote as the focus has shifted to the coverup?

STODDARD: Oh, I, well, of course the coverup is more important. But I think it’s so interesting, what happened today, because Mark Foley is in seclusion in an alcohol treatment center, in hiding. We don’t have any, you know, B-roll of him leaving the, you know, the building through the back door or anything. He’s in hiding.

And he has chosen to contact the diocese and identify, locate, and get interviewed—succeed in having this priest interviewed and for all the world to see. So I think he’s exacting his revenge upon the leadership of the House and is probably enjoying this. This is all something, you know, he has not chosen to do for 39 years, and could have done privately.

And he knows exactly what this will do. It doesn’t exonerate him, he doesn’t think, he’s telling us he doesn’t expect it to. And it will infuriate the religious Republicans in the party, the cultural conservatives, that they, that he knows really need to turn out and save this majority in this election. So I find that development really quite stunning.

OLBERMANN: To the particulars of the coverup, the Trandahl testimony today, ABC reporting that he told the Ethics Committee he briefed a—or at least a top aide to Hastert was briefed regularly. How does Dennis Hastert move out of the way of that?

STODDARD: Dennis has, well, you know, that’s sort of at this point a moot point, because Dennis Hastert is, no matter what happens, it looks like they’ll lose the House, but Dennis Hastert, the expectation is at this point is going to leave.

So really we’re looking now at what happens to the number two, and that’s John Boehner of Ohio, who’s the majority leader, who hopes to be speaker or minority leader. And if he gets caught in this wake, I mean, depending on how bad the fallout is from this matter, and how much more is revealed in the coming weeks about what was covered up, then we’re, you know, we’re talking about him possibly losing his political career, as well.

And that remain, you know, we’ll see what happens with that. But it’s clear at this point that Hastert is in deep trouble, and so are the members of his staff, in terms of the future of their possible lobbying careers, I guess. They, they, but they were expected to leave. This was going to be his last, Hastert’s last two years.

The interesting thing also today is that Steve Gunderson, a former, an openly gay Republican former congressman from Wisconsin, is saying that he, his friends with Jeff Trandahl and has spoken with him, and that he is saying that he is confident that the leaders were informed.

So it’s really, you know, Jeff Trandahl is bringing in the big guns here, and I think that it’s just a matter of time before we learn some very damaging details about what they kept under wraps.

OLBERMANN: And the reference, supposedly in Trandahl’s testimony, to a group of congressmen and staffers with inappropriate relationships with pages or contact with pages, that’s not the first time that’s flitted around Washington. Do you think we are close to hearing specific accusations arising about other members, credible accusations?

STODDARD: I (INAUDIBLE), I would have to assume they are rumors, but they are swilling around right at the surface. And they’re probably about to burst into the open. I’m assuming that Congressman Kolbe, who’s retiring of Arizona, is one of those in the group, because they’re now looking into his relationships with pages.

But certainly they’re are, this, the, obviously the potential for more. And Jeff Trandahl would be the person who knew, because as clerk of the House, he was supervisor of the page program.

OLBERMANN: And the upshot is that despite all this outcry, despite the plummeting numbers in the polls, Congress is shelving the idea of any kind of plan to reform or protect the pages? Is that true? How can that be true?

STODDARD: Well, I imagine that at some point, when they can think about that, that they will, there will be some effort. I would think that there would be some effort to reform.

But at this point, it’s sort of a laughable, you know, point for discussion, because what’s (INAUDIBLE), you know, what’s at stake with a, with a coverup at, that goes all the way to the speaker’s office, and underage kids, is just, I mean, it, it, it’s so much more important (INAUDIBLE), the, the coverup for political purposes is so much more important than sort of how you structure the page program.

There were lines of communication, there was a chain of accountability in place for the pages to be protected. Pages were warned about Mark Foley in 1995, when they entered that program. What happened was at the top, and no probably right at, at, you know, at the supervision of the pages. And so they, they’re likely to reform it, but I think that that’s their first order of business at this point.

OLBERMANN: Nineteen ninety-five, but the speaker of the House had never heard about it. A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of “The Hill.” Great thanks for your time.

STODDARD: Thanks.

House Majority leader John Boehner (R-OH) arrives to testify before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct House ethics panel on Capitol Hill, October 19, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young

Top Republican testifies in sex scandal

By Thomas Ferraro WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. Republican testified on Thursday in the investigation of a Capitol Hill sex scandal, and afterward said the sordid affair was not hurting his party's chances of retaining control of the U.S. Congress in the November 7 elections.

"It does not appear to be affecting any of our races," House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner said after emerging from a closed-door meeting with a congressional ethics panel. Boehner of Ohio said voters were more interested in such matters as taxes and national security.

Yet polls show Democrats making big gains nationally since the scandal broke on September 29 with the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley after it was disclosed that the Florida Republican sent sexually explicit e-mails to teenage male interns, known as pages.

A Time magazine poll earlier this month found that most Americans believe Republicans tried to coverup the matter. Yet others found people saying it will not impact their vote.

Boehner said he told the ethics panel privately what he had earlier said in public -- that he first learned about contact between Foley and a former page several months ago, and believes he informed House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican.

Hastert, Boehner and other Republicans, however, insist they did not know about sexually explicit e-mails by Foley until they were disclosed on September 29 by ABC News.

On Thursday, ABC News quoted a Republican familiar with the investigation as saying former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl was believed to have testified earlier in the day that a top Hastert aide was informed of "all issues dealing with the page program."

ABC quoted the source as saying Trandahl planned to name Hastert aide Ted Van Der Meid as the person regularly briefed about the program, including "a problem group of members and staff who spent too much time socializing with pages outside official duties." One of whom was Foley, ABC said.

Trandahl became House clerk in 1998 and left the post for another job late last year. As clerk, he helped oversee the page program.

"Jeff Trandahl has cooperated fully with the investigation," his attorney, Cono Namorato, said after his client's private testimony. "He answered every question asked of him and stands ready to render additional assistance if needed."

But, the lawyer added, "On my advice, Jeff will continue his position of not publicly airing his recollections," pending completion of the probe.

A former top aide to Foley said earlier this month he told senior Hastert aides three years ago about Foley's troublesome behavior. Hastert's office denies it.

Hastert's office has said Trandahl was advised late last year of an "overly-friendly" e-mail from Foley to a former intern and Foley was told to end communications with him.

Exclusive: Former House Clerk's Testimony
October 19, 2006 3:11 PM

John Yang and Brian Ross Report:

The former clerk of the House of Representatives, Jeff Trandahl, who testified for more than four hours before the House Ethics Committee today, is believed to have testified that a top aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert was informed of "all issues dealing with the page program," according to a Republican familiar with the investigation.

The Republican source said Trandahl planned to name Ted Van Der Meid, the speaker's counsel and floor manager, as the person who was briefed on a regular basis about any issue that arose in the page program, including a "problem group of members and staff who spent too much time socializing with pages outside of official duties." One of whom was Mark Foley.

Trandahl's testimony before the House Ethics Committee could provide additional evidence that key members of the speaker's staff were aware of problems involving the page program for years.

Van Der Meid declined to comment to ABC News, but a source close to Van Der Meid says he expects to be called to testify before the House Ethics Committee next week and plans to answer all questions.

Last week, Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, testified before the Ethics Committee about his public allegations that the speaker's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, was told about problems with Foley at least three years ago.

Palmer has said that Fordham's version of events "never happened."

Trandahl was known as a strict and protective overseer of the page program. He was mentioned in one instant message exchange obtained by ABC News that occurred between a former page and Foley in early 2003, when the teen was planning a trip to Washington to visit with other former pages.

Teen: i think everyone is going to be pretty wasted a lot of the time in dc too
Maf54: haha
Maf54: probably
Teen: well we dont have the a-- hole clerk to fire us anymore
Maf54: true
Teen: we didnt like trandahl that much…he isnt a nice guy…and he gets really scarey when he is mad
Maf54: does he
Teen: ya just a bit...oh well

Trandahl left his job as clerk of the House last year to become executive director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/house_clerks_te.html

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