14. An American President Who Went to Extraordinary Lengths to Silence His Victim
Grover Cleveland was the only American president to serve two non-consecutive terms, winning the 1884 election, losing in 1888, then winning in 1892. He was also known for surviving a sex scandal that would sink any Democrat today. It began in 1873, when Cleveland, then a prominent Buffalo lawyer and former Sheriff of Erie County, invited Maria Halpin to dinner at a restaurant. After a pleasant meal, he escorted her back to her boarding house, where he raped her, then threatened her into silence. A few weeks later, Halpin discovered she was pregnant, and eventually gave birth to a baby boy.
When she named Cleveland the father, he had the child seized and placed in an orphanage, and had Halpin committed to a mental asylum. She was released after an evaluation concluded that she was not insane, and had only been sent there in an egregious abuse of power by corrupt officials. Cleveland got away with it. He went on to get elected Mayor of Buffalo, then Governor of New York, before running for president in 1884. A chant by opponents, mimicking a baby crying “Ma! Ma! Where’s my Pa?!” dogged Cleveland. He won, however, and his supporters retorted with the counter chant: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”