3. Grover Cleveland Went to Great Lengths to Intimidate and Silence Maria Halpin
A few weeks after she was raped by Grover Cleveland, Maria Halpin discovered that she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy in September of 1874, but when she named Cleveland as the father, he used his power and connections in a bid to silence her. For starters, Cleveland had the child removed from his mother’s care and placed in an orphanage, then he had Halpin committed to a mental asylum. She was quickly released after an evaluation concluded that she was not insane, and had only been sent there in an egregious abuse of power.
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. News of the scandal and his illegitimate child came out during the presidential campaign, and his opponents attacked him for the contrast between his do-gooder public persona, and his seedy private life. A chant by opponents, mimicking a baby crying “Ma! Ma! Where’s my Pa?!” dogged the Cleveland campaign. He won, however, and his supporters retorted with the counter chant: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”