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Criminal probe pf ex-U.S. rep. Foley is opened by FDLE

By TIMES WIRES
Published November 17, 2006

WEST PALM BEACH

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has opened an investigation into whether former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley broke any criminal laws with sexually explicit computer messages he sent to former male teenage pages on Capitol Hill.

"It was a preliminary inquiry before, but we found the basis to open up a criminal investigation," Kristen Perezluha, an FDLE spokeswoman, said Thursday. She did not elaborate. The FBI is also investigating Foley.

Foley resigned from Congress on Sept. 29 after being confronted with the lurid communications.

Meanwhile, Foley has returned to Florida to attend his father's funeral after spending more than a month in an Arizona rehabilitation facility for alcoholism, said his attorney, David Roth. Edward Foley died Tuesday of cancer.

Foley entered the Arizona facility Oct. 1, shortly before his attorneys announced the former congressman was gay, an alcoholic and was molested by a priest as a teenage altar boy.

TALLAHASSEE

Court upholds laws on online sex predators

Two state laws passed in 2002 to crack down on people who use the Internet to prey sexually on children do not violate constitutional rights of free speech and interstate commerce, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The justices unanimously upheld the statutes that make it a crime to go online to lure or entice a child and to transmit material harmful to a minor.

"The state has a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors from harmful materials," Justice Peggy Quince wrote for the court and noted that the laws were narrowly aimed only at material directed at minors in Florida.

The decision upheld the convictions of Michael John Simmons, 47, of Spotsylvania, Va., who exchanged e-mails with a Columbia County sheriff's deputy posing as a 13-year-old girl. He sent nude pictures of himself to the fictitious teen, asked for a pair of her panties and came to a Lake City motel to meet the girl.

[Last modified November 17, 2006, 09:01:56]