Call to reprimand two congressmen

Press, 16 July 1983, Page 10

Call to reprimand two congressmen

NZPA-Reuter Washington A congressional committee has recommended reprimanding two congressmen for having improper sexual relations with teenage pages of the House of Representatives. The ethics committee has recommended that the House reprimand an Illinois Republican, Daniel Crane, for having sexual relations with a girl page, aged 17, in 1980, and a Liberal Massachusetts Democrat, Gerry Studds, for sex acts in 1973 with a male page who was either 16 or 17 at the time. Joseph Califano, the special investigator hired by the panel, also said that a House employee in charge of Democratic pages, James Howarth, had sex with a female messenger, aged 17, in 1980 and disciplinary steps would be taken.

Mr Califano said that an investigation of allegations of cocaine and other drug use .among congressmen could continue.

After the charges were

made public, Mr Crane, a dentist, aged 47, admitted the affair with the page and apologised. Mr Studds, a former White House aide to the late President John Kennedy, told the House that he was a homosexual.

The House Speaker, Mr Thomas O’Neill, calling the incidents most disturbing, accepted the committee’s recommendation.

A reprimand is about the least severe of possible penalties, less severe than censure. The harshest penalty the House can impose on any of its 435 members is expulsion. The investigation began last July after published allegations that some members of Congress had engaged in illicit sex and drug use with pages. The report said that it had found the allegations by those pages untrue, but that interviews with hundreds of former and present pages uncovered the three cases it had cited. Mr Crane said that he

was sorry he had made a mistake. He hoped his wife and children would forgive him.

In an exhaustive report, Mr Califano said that Mr Ciaue, who was 44 at the time, may have had sex with the girl on five different occasions in the (northern) summer of 1980. The report noted that the girl had consented to sexual relations and had said that she found Mr Crane as an older man attractive.