1) The Foley Scandal

On Friday September 29, 2006, Representative Mark Foley of Florida’s sixteenth district resigned after serving six terms. After Foley resigned, he checked into a rehab facility in Florida, alluding to alcoholism and other issues concerning his behavior. Foley had resigned because ABC News found e-mails and instant messages containing sexual content that Foley had sent to male teenagers. These e-mails to former male pages date as far back as the year 2003. Pages are juniors in high school who come from all over to work as messengers, passing notes and delivering documents on Capitol Hill. All pages are sponsored by a member of the House or Senate and spend one or two semesters, or sometimes the summer. Pages are paid to do this work and even attend a “page school” during the academic year. On Thursday, the 28th of September, the House of Ethics Committee discussed Foley’s behavior and the House GOP leadership's handling of warnings of Foley’s actions. The committee approved four dozen subpoenas, or formal documents requiring appearance in court to give testimony, for witnesses and documents. The Florida law enforcement and the FBI are trying to figure out if Foley is violating any laws. All records relevant to the case are being preserved.

Representative relations with pages are not entirely unheard of. It was found in July of 1983 by the House Ethics Committee that Representative Gerry Studds of Massachusetts had sexual relationships with a seventeen-year-old male page. Also, Representative Dan Crane of Illinois had sexual relationships with a seventeen-year-old female page. Crane was voted out of office in 1984, after apologizing for his actions. Studds, on the other hand, was not voted out of office. He claimed that the relationship was purely consensual. The next year he won re-elections and served in Congress until 1996, the year he retired. After these scandals, a board was created to monitor actions made by representatives. This was done in hope to stop the scandal. Unfortunately, by looking at the Foley scandal, it did not work as well as it was planned to.