In 1989, Steve Gobie, a personal aide and driver to Rep. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts, revealed in a newspaper interview that he was a male prostitute whom Rep. Frank had paid for sex – and that he (Gobie) had continued to run a prostitution ring while living in Representative Frank’s house.
Frank quickly admitted the relationship, noted that he paid Mr. Gobie with his own money, and asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate – in essence, throwing himself on the mercy of a quasi-court.
The ethics panel found that there was no evidence Frank had any idea that a person whose ways he was trying to reform had continued to run an illegal service out of his residence. It did reprimand Frank for fixing numerous parking tickets for Gobie.
The generally liberal voters of Frank’s district did not seem to care about the scandal – at their next chance they reelected him with 66 percent of the vote. However, Frank recently announced his retirement, in part because he would have had to compete in a newly redrawn district more conservative than his old one.
