Retired Priest Admits Encounters With Foley - washingtonpost.com Retired Priest Admits Encounters With Foley - washingtonpost.com: "Friday, October 20, 2006; Page A03

A retired priest from Malta acknowledged yesterday that he had intimate contact with a young Mark Foley that involved nudity and -- on at least one occasion -- 'light touching,' but he denied that he and Foley had 'sexual intercourse.'

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, in a telephone interview from the Maltese island of Gozo, said he was surprised that his long-ago interaction with Foley had become linked to the scandal that erupted last month and cost the former congressman his job."

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Mercieca, 69, told The Washington Post that issues such as molestation and sexual harassment are "in the eye of the beholder," and that Foley -- who was 12 or 13 at the time -- might have interpreted some of their contact "the wrong way."

During at least one encounter with Foley, "I was a little out of myself," Mercieca said, from using tranquilizers as a result of what the Sarasota paper described as a nervous breakdown. "The whole idea is . . . that I did something that he did not like, but at the time he did not say anything."

"It was not what you call intercourse. . . . There was no rape or anything. . . . Maybe light touches here or there," he said.

Mercieca said he could not explain why Foley might be attributing his broader problems to their contact.

"We had some kind of friendship. I was very friendly with him and his family," Mercieca said. "Then almost 40 years passed without him saying anything. . . . And now because he got caught, he recited these things."

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