Sunday, October 22, 2006

Foley And 'Hot Boys'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Florida Republican Rep. Mark Foley made friends with a wide circle of teenaged House of Representatives pages, then singled out "hot" boys to write to, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The newspaper said it had identified four more former pages who said they were sexually solicited by Foley, who has resigned since the scandal broke last month.

One former page, who was not identified, said Foley sent him e-mails when he was 16 asking about "my roommates, if I ever saw them naked." Later, the former page said Foley hinted about a job opportunity "because I was a hot boy," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Two years later, the page, now 22, said, he wrote Foley to ask about hotels in Washington. "You could always stay at my place. I'm always here, I'm always lonely, and I'm always up for oral sex," he quoted the disgraced former member of Congress as saying.

Another former page said he felt he had to flirt with Foley, who has said he is homosexual and an alcoholic and that he was abused by a priest as a child.

"I didn't want to piss off a member of an institution that I really revered," the former Republican page said.

"I figured maybe someday I will want to be involved in Congress," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "I didn't want to make an enemy."

Republican leaders have said they did not know about the explicit e-mails sent by Foley before media reports, but a former top aide to Foley has said he told senior aides to majority leader Dennis Hastert about Foley's behavior three years ago.

The scandal has added to a growing list of threats to Republican domination of the House in next month's elections.

Naked Republicans: A Full-frontal Exposure of Right-wing Hypocrisy and Greed