Rep. Barney Frank said today he hired a male prostitute as a personal employee but fired him two years ago when he became suspicious the man was selling sex from Frank’s Capitol Hill apartment.
“I was victimized,” Frank said in a telephone interview.
“I knew he had been a prostitute. . . . I was trying to get him to stop. I didn’t know he was expanding his business. From firsthand knowledge I (still) don’t know that,” said Frank, 49, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts who publicly acknowledged his homosexuality in May, 1987.
Poor Judgment Cited
During a news conference later at his office in this Boston suburb, Frank said he had shown poor judgment in hiring the man.
“Thinking I was going to be Henry Higgins and trying to turn him into Pygmalion was the biggest mistake I ever made,” he said. “He took me.”
Frank said he met the man in 1985 through an “escort-model” advertisement in a Washington gay newspaper. The congressman admitted paying for sex with the man one time but said the relationship quickly became one of friendship. He said he no longer uses escort services.
In a report in today’s editions of the Washington Times, a man identified as Greg Davis told the newspaper that Frank was aware that sex was being sold from the congressman’s apartment and was concerned that it might be discovered.
Frank called those allegations “absolutely untrue.”
“His suggestion that he was procuring sex partners for me is a lie,” Frank added.
When asked if the revelations might force him to resign from Congress, Frank replied, “Of course not. Why should it?” He said he planned to run for reelection for a sixth term in 1990.
“I don’t think I’m going to be heavily penalized by the voters for being suckered by a guy I was trying to help,” he said.
“I hired him out of a charitable impulse. I misjudged his character. . . . I think he was a pretty good con man,” he said.
$20,000 a Year
Frank said he hired the man as a personal assistant to do work around his house, drive his car and run errands. Frank said he paid him about $20,000 a year for about 1 1/2 years with personal money. He said no government or campaign funds were used.
Frank said he fired him in August, 1987, after his landlady told him for the second time that the man may have been arranging liaisons at the apartment in Frank’s absence.
“He was angry. He threatened me with a variety of retributions, and apparently he decided the way to do that was go to the Washington Times,” Frank said.