WASHINGTON -- A former House page says he was warned in 1995 to steer clear of a freshman Republican from Florida, who already was learning the names of the teenagers, dashing off notes, letters and e-mails to them and asking them to join him for ice cream.
Mark Beck-Heyman, now a graduate student in clinical psychology at George Washington University, and more than a dozen other former House pages said in interviews and via e-mail that Rep. Mark Foley was known to be extraordinarily friendly in a way that made some of them uncomfortable.
Beck-Heyman, a Democrat, said the attention was "weird" and he provided a handwritten letter that Foley had sent him after the page left Washington to return home to California, suggesting that they get together during the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1996.
Beck-Heyman joined the page program in the summer of 1995. He said a departing page told him to be "very careful" of Foley.
Within weeks, Beck-Heyman said, Foley had learned his name and asked at least twice to take him to get ice cream. Beck-Heyman said he declined.