Alleged Molestation of Foley
After demands to do so, Foley privately identified the priest he alleged had abused him as a child. However, the public revelation of his identity, Anthony Mercieca, a 69-year old Catholic priest now living in Malta, came through the investigative reporting of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Parallel to Foley's disclosure, Mercieca held several interviews in which he described a two-year relationship with Foley from when the youth was a thirteen-year-old altar boy at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Lake Worth, Florida until he was fifteen. He told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune about a number of intimate occasions that the priest claimed "Foley might perceive as sexually inappropriate", such as "massaging Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping together at a secluded lake in Lake Worth and being naked in the same room on overnight trips." Mercieca hinted at an even more intimate event, which he claimed took place while he was under the influence of tranquilizers and alcohol, and which he could not clearly recollect, and that he taught Foley "some wrong things" related to sex, which he did not specify.
In a separate AP interview, he recounted that: "We were friends and trusted each other as brothers and loved each other as brothers. It was not what you call intercourse...There was no rape or anything...Maybe light touches here or there." And he told a Florida TV station that it was not abuse, which is against someone's will: "He seemed to like it, you know? So it was sort of more like a spontaneous thing." The Archdiocese of Miami issued a statement apologizing to Foley for "the hurt he experienced" from the priest's "morally reprehensible" actions, and suspended Mercieca's faculties.
According to Mercieca, he last saw Foley at a dinner meeting 18 years ago in a restaurant in Fort Worth. When asked whether he had anything to say to Foley, Mercieca said, "Remember the good times we had together, you know, and how well we enjoyed each other's company." He added, "Don’t keep dwelling on this thing, you know?" Mercieca could not be prosecuted for his activities with Foley because the relevant statutes of limitations had expired, and the Palm Beach County state attorney's office "cannot conduct an investigation because Foley has declined to press charges."
A childhood friend of Foley's, Jon Ombres, confirmed the close friendship between the two, and suggested that there may have been a second priest, sexually interested in youths and with whom Foley was on good terms, active in the parish at that time. As of October 25, Mercieca faced new accusations, leveled by a former altar boy who claims having been abused by him in the seventies at the age of twelve. Mercieca, speaking through his lawyer, denied the second accusation, claiming that it is "at best as a figment of the imagination and at worst a malicious fabrication." On July 18, 2007, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami settled a lawsuit brought against it by the former altar boy. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The lawsuit had sought more than $10,000,000 in damages.
Read more about this topic: Mark Foley Congressional Page Incident
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