New wrinkles in the Foley case

Suddenly Congresswoman Heather Wilson of New Mexico, who sits on the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's caucus (Mark Foley's former project), is facing charges that her husband inappropriately touched an adolescent boy and that she hid the evidence. According to The Raw Story, three days after Wilson became New Mexico's Secretary of the Department of Children, Youth and Families, she removed a working file containing the allegation against her husband. She denied moving the file, then apparently reversed herself.

Also, in 2001, Wilson began a three-year term on the U.S. House of Represenatives Page Board, but says she never heard anything about Foley's behavior until recently, when an ABC News story prompted Foley to resign from Congress. Bear in mind that practically everyone else within lunch delivery distance of the Page Board knew about Foley.

Then there is the matter of the priest. After Foley said he had been sexually abused by a priest, there was a loud demand for him to reveal the priest's name. That man is the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, who denies that his relationship with Foley was in any way sexual, but who just happend to be sitting naked in a sauna with him. Now, I realize that men sit naked in saunas, but priests sitting naked in saunas with 13-year-old boys is quite another thing.

Foley claims that Mercieca massed his nude body. Mercieca, though he denies that anything sexual occurred (and he may be using definitions from the Bill Clinton dictionary of sexual terminology), also maintains that he was in a drug-induced stupor during one night when there was an "incident that might have gone too far." In other words, Foley's accusations are credible.