WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Oct. 3 — In another day of revelations about former Representative Mark Foley, his lawyer said Tuesday that as a teenager, Mr. Foley had been molested by a clergyman and had “kept the shame to himself” until now. The lawyer also issued the congressman’s first public acknowledgment that he is gay.

Jim Young/Reuters

President George W. Bush greeting students at an elementary school named after him in Stockton, Calif., today.

The lawyer, David Roth, who said Mr. Foley had enlisted him immediately after resigning from the House of Representatives on Friday, told reporters, “Mark Foley wants you to know that he is a gay man.”

The announcement came hours after ABC News released a new series of inappropriate messages that Mr. Foley is said to have sent to a teenager while waiting to cast a House vote in April 2003. The youth was a Congressional page, ABC News said on its Web site, but it was not clear if he had left Washington at the time Mr. Foley sent the messages.

Mr. Foley, 52, had been expected to win a seventh term in Congress easily until accusations surfaced last week that he had sent sexually graphic e-mail messages to young Congressional pages. His sudden fall has thrown Congress into turmoil just a month before Election Day, and several of Mr. Foley’s associates said Tuesday evening that his claim of childhood sexual abuse did not help matters.

“It doesn’t change anything,” said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. “In a way it makes it worse. A person who knows they have a problem and spends all those years covering it up, who leads a double life and allows themselves to be a leader of a community when their life is completely hypocritical, is worse.”

Mr. Roth, who said he had known Mr. Foley for 35 years, called a news conference on Monday to announce that his client had checked into a treatment center for alcohol and mental health problems. On Tuesday, he said Mr. Foley had decided to disclose his abuse by a clergyman he would not identify as part of his recovery.

“Based upon the experts that I’ve spoken to,” Mr. Roth said, “the combination of alcohol, mental illness can result in inappropriate conduct, which Mark Foley has fully accepted responsibility for.”

In Tallahassee, Commissioner Gerald M. Bailey of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said his agency was working with the F.B.I. to investigate whether Mr. Foley had engaged in criminal behavior and was “trying to determine, as we speak, what the Florida nexus is.”

Mr. Roth said that he had not heard from any law enforcement agency and that Mr. Foley had not been asked to turn over any computers or electronic files.

“Mark has absolutely agreed on his own and with our counsel not to do anything with any computer,” he said. “Not to delete any messages.”

He also repeated what he said Monday: that Mr. Foley had never had sexual contact with minors.

“Any suggestion that Mark Foley is a pedophile is false,” Mr. Roth said. “Categorically false.”

Battered with questions about the messages released Tuesday by ABC News, Mr. Roth said he had not seen them and could not comment without consulting with his client.

He said Mr. Foley, who was raised a Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Lake Worth, had wanted to identify the person he said had molested him from ages 13 to 15. But his civil lawyers had advised him not to do so until he had completed treatment, Mr. Roth said. He even refused to identify the man’s religious affiliation.

“I cannot comment on whether the clergyman was a priest, a minister, an imam or a rabbi,” he said.

“Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate e-mails,” Mr. Roth said. He added, “He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct.”

Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders here continued rallying around the substitute candidate for Mr. Foley’s seat, State Representative Joe Negron of Stuart.

Governor Bush said he would campaign with Mr. Negron to help surmount the challenge of Mr. Foley’s name remaining on the ballot in the sprawling 16th District.

With their party under attack because of the scandal, Governor Bush and other Republicans suggested that Democrats were hypocrites for taking them to task. In particular, Democratic leaders have attacked Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker, who is said to have learned about some communications between Mr. Foley and a 16-year-old page months ago.

Mr. Dinerstein said he and other Republicans intended to trumpet the story of Mel Reynolds, the former Democratic congressman from Chicago who was imprisoned for corruption and for having sex with an under-age campaign worker. Former President Bill Clinton pardoned Mr. Reynolds before he left office.

“If the Democrats want to fight on the issue of who’s protecting the public and the children and all that,” Mr. Dinerstein said, “God bless them, because two weeks from now Mel Reynolds will be a household name.”

Christine Jordan Sexton contributed reporting from Tallahassee

10.4.2006

Brian, yes, you were right, his site did go down today.

10.4.2006

Brian, you can post this part.

Seems that the book has been acquired, and will keep you posted.  You do realize how big of a story this is?  Be safe.

TMF

10.5.2006

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