Inside Massa’s ‘Tickle’ House

DISGRACED ex-Rep. Eric Massa insists he never sexually abused anyone, but he filled his Capitol Hill rowhouse with low-paid male staffers in an arrangement ripe for trouble.
“It’s like he had people trapped,” said a Hill source.
Sordid new details emerged yesterday of a pattern of behavior that went back to his 20 years as a naval officer, as ex-shipmates came forward to describe incidents of groping and perhaps worse.
After resigning, Massa called his “inappropriate” behavior a carryover from his Navy days.
At the house on E St. Southeast yesterday, which Massa had shared with five of his staffers, clothes were piled on the floor and half-a-dozen pairs of shoes mingled with dirty towels next to an open pink suitcase in the living room.
A male staffer in his 20s who mans the front desk of Massa’s decommissioned House office appeared late in the day and went inside. He declined to comment, citing strict orders from the staff’s temporary employer, the House clerk.
In hindsight, Democratic insiders wondered about activities that before had just seemed odd. They said Massa hired a surprisingly large percentage of young gay men, and paid them so little that staffers were forced to live in the house with him.
“It’s not the gay part that’s a problem, it’s the abuse, if it’s true,” said one Hill source.
“The guy’s a freak,” a close friend of one embattled Massa aide told the Daily News.

Read more: (James Gordon Meek, Richard Sisk, Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michael McAuliff, “Inside the ‘Tickle’ House,” New York Daily News, 03/11/10)