FBI's Foley Case Eyes Legal 'Gray Area'

An unidentified U.S. Capitol Police officer changes the lock on one of the doors leading to the former office of former Rep.Mark Foley, R-Fla. House Republican leaders are facing questions of what, and when, they knew about the former GOP representative's inappropriate electronic communications with teenage males who had worked as pages. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke) (Lauren Victoria Burke - AP)

On the surface, the chat transcripts released by ABC News look much like any of the explicit conversations the FBI has used as evidence in its many Internet sex stings. In those cases, however, the sexually charged talk led to an arrest when adults arrived for real sexual encounters.

Graphic talk alone is rarely enough, said Joseph Dooley, a former agent who helped set up New England's first FBI unit targeting Internet predators. Many adults engage in explicit chats with undercover agents but never show up for the scheduled meetings, he said.

"We never charged anyone unless they actually traveled to have sex," Dooley said.

Investigators could consider federal obscenity laws, experts said, but the law prohibiting disseminating obscene material to children applies only to those under 16.

Benjamin Vernia, a former federal prosecutor specializing in such cases, compared Foley's online conversations with pages to "grooming," a law enforcement term for the way sexual predators bring along their underage victims. Grooming is a red flag for authorities, Vernia said, but it's rarely enough to bring charges.

The question for federal investigators is whether Foley's online chats ever led to real encounters. One chat transcript suggests Foley and a page had met in San Diego, but the chat doesn't indicate what took place.

Even if a sexual encounter occurred, however, that won't necessarily be enough to lead to charges. It depends on how old the pages were at the time and what the age of consent was in that state.

If a state law was broken and authorities can show Foley used the Internet to facilitate it, that could trigger federal jurisdiction, experts said.