This is what it appears might have happened.
It does appear that Foley was at least cognizant of when his "friends" became "legal." That may even have been behind him asking about one's birthday---maybe it was even sexual innuendo---"what do you want for your birthday [when you are legal and can have homosexual sex]?"
It's still very gross and wrong to recruit and groom underage youths for a sexual relationship once they hit their birthday. But ABC may very well have pimped the sensationalism factor by picking out the most salacious IM and tagging it as having occurred when the page was underage.
Or maybe ABC was just incompetent and didn't distinguish between the IMs based on date.
A-ha!
All good points.
In the IM's, Jordan Edmund worries about his Mom finding out what he's up to. I wonder how Jordan feels now that his Mom can read the total content of his "dirty talk" with a 50+ homosexual? And so can millions of other people.