Foley will give archdiocese name of alleged abuser

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Florida Rep. Mark Foley will tell the Archdiocese of Miami the name of the priest he says abused him as a young man, his attorney said Tuesday.

"Mark Foley is intending to work with the Archdiocese of Miami and Greater West Palm Beach for the purpose of revealing the name of the particular priest who is involved so the archdiocese can then deal appropriately with the issue," said Gerald Richman, one of Foley's attorneys.

Richman said, however, he will not press criminal charges against the still-unnamed clergyman because of the difficulties the case would face.

"We've basically concluded that there's no basis to file criminal charges because of a number of legal obstacles, one of which is the statute of limitations," Richman said. "We're talking about issues that happened 36 to 38 years ago."

Richman said Foley decided to be open about his alleged abuse and struggle with alcoholism as a form of therapy.

"This is all part of the healing process for Mark Foley," said Richman. "He thinks it's important to go ahead and bring this information out and hope and encourage other people who have been similarly abused to go ahead and come forward."

Richman said Foley would accept an offer of counseling from the Archdiocese of Miami.

Ethics committee hears more testimony

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is scheduled to appear Thursday before the House ethics panel. Congressional sources said Boehner will testify about Foley's contact with teenage congressional pages and how House Republican leaders handled the concerns raised about the six-term Republican.

However, Boehner told Fox News Tuesday that between investigations by the ethics committee and the FBI, he thinks there is little he can add.

"Everything that can be said at this point in time has been said," Boehner said. "The real issues in this election are the issues that people care about -- keeping the economy prosperous, making sure we have a sensible immigration policy that begins with enforcing our border, and then, thirdly, supporting the president, giving him the tools he needs to take on terrorists and to defeat them," he added.

Paula Nowakowski, Boehner's chief of staff, spent nearly three hours in the ethics committee's hearing room Tuesday morning. She was followed in the afternoon by House Sergeant-at-Arms Wilson Livingood, a member of the House Page Board, which oversees the program that lets teenagers serve as messengers on Capitol Hill.

Neither stopped for questions from reporters upon leaving.

The three House members who sit on the Page Board have all testified. Two of the three have said that the board's chairman, Illinois Republican John Shimkus, did not tell them about a 2005 e-mail exchange between Foley and a teenage Louisiana boy.

The teen reported what House leaders have called "overly friendly" e-mail from Foley in late 2005, according to an account released by House Speaker Dennis Hastert's office after the scandal broke. The e-mails, which the boy called "sick," included Foley's request for a picture and a question about what he wanted for his birthday.

The boy turned the e-mail over to Rep. Rodney Alexander's office, leading to a private rebuke from Shimkus and then-House Clerk Jeff Trandahl. Alexander, who sponsored the boy as a page, is scheduled to appear before the ethics committee Wednesday, his office said.

Poll: Other issues more important

Foley resigned September 29 after details of sexually explicit instant messages to teenage boys who had served as Capitol Hill messengers became public. The scandal has added to the concerns facing Republicans as they battle to keep their majorities in both houses of Congress in November's elections.

However, only about a quarter of Americans say the Foley issue will be "extremely important" in how they vote in November's congressional elections, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday. (Full story)

The scandal triggered a round of finger-pointing among Republican leaders in Congress and calls for Hastert to step down over his office's handling of the matter.

Boehner, who told a Cincinnati radio station earlier this month that Hastert had been responsible for dealing with the concerns raised about Foley, told Fox that he supports the speaker.

"He has done a marvelous job leading House Republicans under frankly very difficult circumstances and a narrow majority. If he had had any clue of these instant messages or the behavior Foley was engaged in, I have no doubt he would have drug him out by his tie the instant he knew about it," Boehner said.

CNN national correspondent Susan Candiotti, congressional correspondent Dana Bash and CNN's Deirdre Walsh and Patrick Oppmann contributed to this report.

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