Sex scandal congressman names 'abuser' priest

The sex scandal that has hurt Republicans in the polls expanded on two fronts as Washington’s ethics committee continued its investigation.

Meanwhile lawyers for the former congressman at the centre of the scandal revealed to prosecutors the name of a clergyman he said molested him as a teenager.

Republican Mark Foley resigned last month after he was confronted with sexually-explicit electronic communications he had sent to male teenage congressional assistants, called pages.

The ethics panel in the House of Representatives is investigating his actions and questions about how the Republican leadership handled the matter.

Recent polls show that both issues have contributed to a decline in Republican popularity just three weeks before the November 7 elections, when all 435 House seats are up for a vote and Democrats hope to regain control of Congress.

Foley’s civic lawyer, Gerald Richman, spoke with a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Miami yesterday, but did not reveal the identity of the accused clergyman, Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said.

In a joint written statement, Richman and Foley’s criminal defence lawyer, David Rothlater, said they “have agreed with the general counsel for the archdiocese that the identity of the clergy member Mark Foley has identified as having committed sexual misconduct upon him should first be disclosed ... to the state attorney’s office.

“To the best of our knowledge the clergyman no longer resides in the US.”

Foley has been in seclusion at an alcohol rehabilitation centre at an undisclosed location.

In Washington, a Republican congressman and sponsor of a page who later received questionable emails from Foley went before a House ethics panel yesterday to explain how his office handled the teenager’s complaint last autumn.

Congressman Rodney Alexander testified for three hours, telling reporters afterwards that he told the panel “what we know, when we knew it and what we did about it”.

He says that after he and his staff learned of the emails to the former page, his aides contacted the office of Speaker Dennis Hastert, the top House Republican, for advice on what to do about communications the boy’s family thought were inappropriate.

Foley’s former top aide, Kirk Fordham, has told investigators that he told Hastert’s chief of staff at least three years ago of problems regarding Foley and pages.

Neither Hastert nor his aide has testified so far.

Alexander’s testimony is a small piece of a more confusing puzzle that puts Hastert and his aides at odds with the accounts of other top Republican politicians and their aides.

Two of those figures, Republican congressman John Boehner and Jeff Trandahl, a top House aide, are due to testify today.

Boehner, a House leader, has said he discussed the Foley situation with Hastert last spring after Alexander informed him of the emails.

Republicans are bracing for testimony this week by Trandahl – who was the day-to-day overseer of the page programme until last year. Trandahl confronted Foley about too-friendly emails sent to the ex-page.

Trandahl also has handled other alleged incidents regarding Foley, including a 2001 or 2002 episode in which Foley sent emails described as “creepy” to a former page sponsored by Repuplican Jim Kolbe. Kolbe’s office went to Trandahl and the emails stopped.

Separately this week, Page Board members discussed a camping trip Kolbe took with two former pages and others to the Grand Canyon in 1996, a congressional official said Tuesday. The trip is under review by the Justice Department.

Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, is retiring at the end of his term. He has denied through an aide that anything inappropriate occurred during the trip.