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	Questions Remain about Resigned Rep. Foley's Claim of Clergy Abuse By Nancy Frazier O'Brien Catholic Online October 5, 2006 http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=21521 Washington (CNS) – Much remains unclear about former Rep. Mark Foley's allegation through an attorney Oct. 3 that he was abused by a member of the clergy when he was a young teen. Foley, a Republican who had represented Florida's 16th district in the House since 1994, resigned his seat Sept. 29 following reports that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to House pages who were minors. David Roth, Foley's attorney, said at a West Palm Beach, Fla., news conference Oct. 3 that Foley wanted to name the person who had molested him when he was 13 to 15 years old, but was advised not to until he completed a 30-day treatment plan for alcoholism and mental health issues. "I cannot comment on whether the clergyman was a priest, a minister, an imam or a rabbi," Roth said. Alexis Walkenstein, director of communications for the Palm Beach Diocese, also declined to comment on the allegation. "It would be really inappropriate for me to comment on speculation at this point, especially not knowing what these allegations are or who they're being made against," she said. "We don't even know if it involved the Catholic Church or the diocese." Foley, 52, was born in Newton, Mass., but moved with his family to Lake Worth, Fla., when he was 3. A lifelong Catholic, he served as an altar boy at Sacred Heart Parish in Lake Worth and attended Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach until 1971, when he transferred to Lake Worth Community High School, from which he graduated in 1973. In interviews with Catholic News Service, Catholic experts on child sex abuse agreed that if Foley were abused it did not necessarily mean he would become a child abuser himself. "Being a victim is a risk factor for becoming an abuser, but the vast majority of victims don't become abusers," said Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti, director of St. Luke Institute, a treatment facility in Silver Spring, Md., for priests with sex abuse offenses and other psychological problems. "None of us knows whether he was abused or not, but even if he was it doesn't obviate his culpability" for any inappropriate behavior with minors, the priest said. "It may have been a precipitating cause, but you can't use it as a rationale." Msgr. Rossetti noted that Foley's attorney said in his statement that Foley "does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate e-mails." "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct," Roth added. Roth also announced at the Oct. 3 news conference that "Mark Foley wants you to know that he is a gay man" but said the former congressman "absolutely never had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor." Teresa Kettelkamp, executive director of the U.S. bishops' Office for Child and Youth Protection, echoed Msgr. Rossetti's point that not all victims of abuse become abusers themselves. She said the study commissioned by the U.S. bishops on the "causes and context" of clergy sex abuse could help society at large to better understand the cultural, social and psychological factors behind sex abuse and the reasons for the "surge in the late 1960s and '70s," the period when Foley said he was molested. "The church has learned a lot" since the bishops implemented their "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," Kettelkamp said, "and what we've learned can be beneficial to the larger community." Calling child sex abuse "a complex problem that's been going on forever," Msgr. Rossetti also said society at large can learn from the church's experiences of confronting the problem in the past few years. "The first step is complete disclosure, rather than the slow, painful leaking of information," he said. "You have to make a clean slate of it." Some questioned Foley's decision not to name his alleged abuser. "To throw it out there like that, I think it's despicable," William J. Brooks, a former priest who was a guidance counselor at Cardinal Newman High School when Foley was a student there, told the Palm Beach Post. "If there's somebody out there, name him." Brooks, now 72 and a member of the Palm Beach Town Council, said most of the priests who were at Cardinal Newman when Foley was there are dead. Throughout his 12 years in Congress, Foley identified himself as a Catholic. He was one of three congressmen who traveled to the Vatican in 2003 to present Pope John Paul II with the text of a resolution honoring him on the 25th anniversary of his pontificate, and he was part of the official U.S. delegation to Pope John Paul's funeral in 2005. Foley also served as co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
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