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WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - Florida authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the sexually explicit computer messages that former Rep. Mark Foley sent to male congressional pages.
"It was a preliminary inquiry before, but we found the basis to open up a criminal investigation," Kristen Perezluha, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Thursday. She would not elaborate.
The FBI is investigating whether Foley broke federal laws, and the House Ethics Committee is looking into whether senior GOP officials hid what they knew about the messages.
Foley, a Republican, resigned Sept. 29 after being confronted with the lurid communications. His attorney, David Roth, has said Foley never had inappropriate sexual contact with minors.
Roth declined to comment Thursday on the criminal investigation.
Florida law prohibits seducing or attempting to seduce a minor. However, authorities have said the term "seduce" is open to interpretation.
Foley has returned to Florida to attend his father's funeral, set for Saturday, after spending more than a month in an Arizona rehabilitation facility for alcoholism, Roth said. Edward Foley died Tuesday of cancer.
Foley entered the treatment facility Oct. 1, shortly before his attorneys announced he was gay, an alcoholic and had been molested by a priest as a teenage altar boy in Florida.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, who has retired to Malta, has admitted having inappropriate encounters with Foley, including massaging him in the nude and skinny-dipping together. He denies having sex with Foley.
Foley has not been seen publicly since shortly after his resignation.
from The Los Angeles Times
MIAMI, FLORIDA - Another former altar boy says he was sexually abused in the 1970s by the same retired Catholic priest who acknowledged fondling former Rep. Mark Foley when Foley was a teenager, the man's attorney said Wednesday.
The new allegations against the Rev. Anthony Mercieca were made by a man who lived in North Miami and was an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church, where Mercieca worked, attorney Jeffrey Herman said.
Herman said he planned to file a lawsuit Wednesday against the Archdiocese of Miami. His client, now 40 and identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe No. 26, says Mercieca abused him when he was about 12 years old.
"He had been thinking about it before Foley came forward, and then when Foley came out and the church encouraged other victims to come forward, he decided to come forward," Herman said.
The man said "all of my nightmares came back" when Mercieca's picture appeared on the news last week amid Foley's claims that the priest had molested him. Foley had resigned amid accusations that he sent sexually explicit messages to teenage boys who had worked on Capitol Hill.
Mercieca, 69, now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo in the Mediterranean. No one answered the phone at his home Wednesday. His lawyer, Alfred Grech, did not return calls to his cell phone.
Archdiocese of Miami spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, asked about the latest allegations, said: "Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior."
The Miami Archdiocese barred Mercieca from all church work as it investigates Foley's claim that the clergyman molested him when Foley was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967.
Mercieca is now retired and does not serve in any parish, but he regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral on Gozo, according to the Archdiocese of Malta.
In multiple interviews last week, Mercieca denied having sexual intercourse with Foley, but he did acknowledge being nude with him when Foley was a boy.
Mercieca also denied having sex with any underage children.
Herman said his client and Mercieca took a bicycle ride together one day after altar boy practice and then returned to the church where the abuse occurred.
"It was fondling and he performed oral sex on the boy," Herman said. "He attempted on another occasion following altar boy practice, but the boy declined to go on this bike ride and he never went back to the church after that."
Mercieca served as an assistant pastor at the church from 1975 to 1985, according to church records.
Foley resigned from Congress last month after he was confronted with sexually explicit computer communications he had sent to male teenage pages who worked on Capitol Hill. He has since entered a 30-day rehabilitation program for alcoholism at the Sierra Tucson treatment center in Catalina, Ariz., near Tucson, according to his attorneys.
from The San Jose Mercury News
The Archdiocese of Miami on Friday barred the Rev. Anthony Mercieca from functioning as a priest anywhere in the world after confirming that he was the clergyman who Mark Foley said molested him in the 1960’s.
Father Mercieca, who now lives in Malta, can no longer publicly celebrate Mass, administer the sacraments or wear priestly clothes, said Mary Ross Agosta, a diocesan spokeswoman.
Ms. Agosta apologized to Mr. Foley in a statement and described as repugnant Father Mercieca’s intimate contact with him, which the priest disclosed to a Florida newspaper this week. Father Mercieca, 69, worked in South Florida for almost 40 years and remains under the auspices of the archdiocese.
“Such behavior is morally reprehensible, canonically criminal and inexcusable,” Ms. Agosta said.
Mr. Foley, 52, resigned from the House of Representatives last month after the release of sexually explicit messages he had sent to teenage Congressional pages. Soon after, his lawyer announced that Mr. Foley is gay, had gone into treatment for alcoholism and had been molested by a clergyman when he was 13 to 15.
“An apology is due to Mr. Foley for the hurt he has experienced,” Ms. Agosta said.
So far, she said, no one else had reported sexual misconduct by Father Mercieca. He worked in at least eight parishes in South Florida since 1966, most recently at Blessed Trinity Catholic Church in Miami Springs from 1993 to 2003. Ms. Agosta said he left Florida to retire.
“There were absolutely no other problems,” she said in an interview.
Ms. Agosta said the Archdiocese of Miami had begun an internal investigation that could result in further sanctions against Father Mercieca. A spokesman for the archbishop of Malta said an investigation was under way there, too.
Though retired, Father Mercieca was still saying Mass every morning at a cathedral on Gozo, the Maltese island where he was raised and now lives with his brother, also a priest.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group, said that both diocesan actions were insufficient and that Father Mercieca should be put in a secure treatment facility while the police investigated.
The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota, Fla., reported Thursday that Father Mercieca said he had skinny-dipped and lounged naked in saunas with the young Mr. Foley, massaged him and roomed with him naked on overnight trips. He said that once, on tranquilizers, he might have gone further with Mr. Foley but could not recall details.
Father Mercieca repeated the claims in interviews with other news outlets, but also said his relationship with Mr. Foley was not sexual.
The survivors group has urged Mr. Foley to press charges, but the statute of limitations has probably expired. His civil lawyer, Gerald Richman, said Friday that he had no idea whether Mr. Foley would pursue the matter.
Mr. Richman identified Father Mercieca to Palm Beach County prosecutors this week as Mr. Foley’s molester. Prosecutors shared the information with the archdiocese, but said they would do nothing more unless other victims emerged.
Ms. Agosta said the archdiocese, which includes Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties, would encourage any other victims to come forward by asking every parish to make an announcement about Father Mercieca.
from The Amherst Times
SARASOTA, FLORIDA - A Roman Catholic priest said he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with former Rep. Mark Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude, but he did not specifically remember having sex, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, described several encounters that he said Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. They include massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being nude in the same room on overnight trips.
Mercieca said there was one night when he was in a drug-induced stupor and there was an incident but he couldn't clearly remember, the newspaper reported.
"I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown," the newspaper reported Mercieca as saying from his home on the island of Gozo, south of Italy. "I was taking pills tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit."
Mercieca could not immediately be located for comment Thursday by The Associated Press.
Foley resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit e-mails to young male pages surfaced.
His lawyer said shortly after his resignation 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 state prosecutors on Wednesday.
Richman did not return phone messaged left Thursday by The Associated Press. Foley's criminal defense lawyer David Roth declined to comment.
Earlier this month, Roth said: "Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate" e-mails and instant messages. "He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct."
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.
The state attorney's office in West Palm Beach did not immediately return a telephone message Thursday. A phone for the Archdiocese of Miami wasn't accepting new messages because its voice mail box was full.
Mercieca, 72, said he and Foley became fast friends when he moved to Florida from Brazil and "loved each other like brothers," the newspaper reported.
Mercieca said he taught Foley "some wrong things" related to sex, though he wouldn't specify what he meant, the newspaper said. It reported the priest said that at the time, he considered the relationship innocent, but he now says he could see how his actions could be called inappropriate.
Mercieca said although Foley plans to "expose him to the world," he still has "great memories of our trips," the newspaper reported.
"I wish him well," Mercieca said. "Let bygones be bygones."
Mercieca was adamant that his encounter with Foley was an aberration, and that the Catholic Church never had to send him for counseling during his 38 years in the priesthood in Florida, according to the newspaper.
"I have been in many parishes, and I have never been" accused, he said.
A Web site for the Diocese of Gozo lists Mercieca as one of its priests. Joseph Calleja, a priest with the diocese, said Mercieca is still an active priest but that he lives at his own home. Gozo, a Mediterranean island, is part of the Republic of Malta.
from ABC News
WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - Florida authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the sexually explicit computer messages that former Rep. Mark Foley sent to male congressional pages.
